| Previous October 2002 |
there's prophecy, and then there's prophecy -- leslie, 16:18:44 10/07/02 Mon
A thing that strikes me about Crazy!Spike is that he is starting to sound a hell of a lot like Drusilla. His breakdown in the alleyway included a very apocalyptic bit of prophecy about whatever it is beneath that will devour.
I've said a number of times that one thing that keeps getting hammered home in both BtVS and AtS is you just can't trust a prophecy. But, in truth, it isn't prophecy in general that is untrustworthy--it's specifically written prophecy, and the interpretation of that prophecy. Extemporaneous prophecy by the terminally or temporarily insane *is* to be taken very seriously. In essence, it is the attempt to rationalize prophecy that is dangerous. Prophecies are true when they are delivered and received unself-consciously, understood on a purely visceral level. I think it's interesting that so much of the misinterpretation of prophecy comes through (mis)translation (Wesley's downfall). Interpretation, especially of a written text, is always, at some level, a translation--translation from sound to sign and back again.
There seems to be a parallel between prophecy and magic--spells are dormant while they simply lie on the page as signs, but are activated when they are spoken and have real effect on the world outside the book.
Trying to interpret a prophecy means trying to pin it down to one meaning, trying to turn it into a plan of action ("X is going to happen, therefore take action Y"). But whenever a plan of action is taken from a prophecy, it is almost as though the prophecy then twists reality: "Oh, you thought I said "homes"? No no no, it was "Holmes"! Deciding the prophecy means X and acting accordingly actually ensures that it means anything other than X.
Maybe this is why crazy people are the ones who wax prophetic. Existing in two or more realities at once, they don't demand a simple one-to-one translation. They speak words, and the words mean everything at once. That is why poets are prophets. What the hell was Spike talking about in the alleyway? And who was doing the speaking? Does it matter? Will sealing off the earth so that whatever is "beneath" can't rise do any good? Hardly. But when crazy people start talking, we'd better listen.
[> Speaking of Prophecies -- Dochawk, 17:17:14 10/07/02 Mon
Did anyone else get a little chuckle on yesterdays Angel when the Burger King ad came on and they had the talking take out order sign? I had definite flashbacks to our talking prophecy spewing burger.
[> [> Re: Speaking of Prophecies -- leslie, 19:28:53 10/07/02 Mon
I think I would like those ads better if it actually *was* Legba in there.
Major dangerous spoilage for Same Time Same Place ep 7.3 (enter at own risk) -- ZachsMind, 20:31:16 10/07/02 Mon
Okay. So. I read the WildFeed. I know. That was very wrong of me to do, but I did. And now I'm freakin' my expletitive. Just in case you clicked here but still don't wanna be spoiled, I'll add some spoiler space here. Twenty lines of it. Really. If you don't want spoiled, please, go no further.
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Okay. Now that all those nonspoiler type people are gone, let's DISH!
This is the part I'm freaking over...
Anya opens up her door to the concerned face of Willow, who walks in somewhat uninvited, asking for help. Anya says she doesn't have any money, but that's not what Willow needs. Willow tells that she found a body, saying something horrible happened to a boy, took his skin right off. "Was it you?" both of the gals ask each other in unison. "No!" Both answer. Anya says the others will probably blame the witch, but she understands that Willow wishes to do good, or at least discover who's really behind the horror so she isn't blamed. Willow again asks for help. "Is it difficult or time consuming?" Anya asks, shrugging her shoulders.
"This isn't gonna get all sexy, is it?" Anya asks. They both sit cross legged on the floor, facing each other, candles surrounding them in the dark room, a map of Sunnydale lays between them. They are casting a spell that will cause a light to appear on the map wherever there's a demon. "Oh, pretty! Will it hurt the carpet?" Anya asks. They both sprinkle magic powder on the map and pinpoints of glowing light appear here and there. "Aaaaoooohhh! Hey look!" Anya points to a dot. "That's me. Hello!" Anya asks what the large group of dots in the center is, to which Willow tells her it's right over the high School, where the Hellmouth lies. Anya says things have been busy there lately. The large clump of dots then begins to grow brighter, and soon POOF, a small flame appears. Willow stomps out the small fire and lifts the map. "Hey! OK, remember our talk about the carpet?!?"
Anya says as she rushes to clean up the small burn. Willow looks at the map and says that one of the spots looks promising, a small group of caves in a rock cliff nearby. Anya says it sounds pretty thin, which is when Willow suggests she teleport over there real quick to check it out. It is then that Anya has to admit she can't teleport there, she can only teleport for official business. It's a privilege, not a right. It got taken away when she had to pull the Vengeance curse the previous week. Willow offers her sympathy to Anya, who says the Vengeance just isn't what it used to be. Willow says she thought Anya enjoyed... "inflicting." Anya says it sounds cool, but now it's quite upsetting. Vengeance isn't the same anymore, not as fulfilling. Willow compares her old situation with Anya's, wondering if she feels like her power isn't really all what she thought, and that it can be more trouble than it's worth? Anya says it's very over dramatically stated, but she's right. Anya apologizes to Willow for her sadness, and Willow does the same to Anya. They understand each other's feelings. "It did get a little sexy, didn't it?" says Anya, to which Willow momentarily smirks at, but then the witch shakes it off and heads for the door, saying she has to find the demon that killed the boy. Anya lightly tries to keep Willow there, asking if there's another spell she could do to help, maybe a spell to find Buffy and Xander? Willow says she tried that, and it went bad. The spell said that Buffy and Xander didn't exist.
Now okay. I can deal with the fact that they're not going into the whole Tara thing right now. I mean she got shot. They left her body laying there for like, eight hours and Dawn just kinda stared at her... That was creepy. But the body got carted out by the paramedics eventually and we assume she got buried and they had a funeral of some sort over the summer that we didn't get to see...
Well. I'm starting to be a little unhappy about all that. I mean I was being tolerant and patient and all that.. I was assuming eventually they'd get around to it, but isn't it a little early for Anya to be making GOOGLY EYES at Willow? Couldn't we at least have a scene where they acknowledge that Tara was there at one time and then she's not there anymore and they can like mourn or.. or SOMETHING?
This is just creepy.
[> There is a reason we have the Trollop Board for Spoiler Discussion -- Rufus, 20:48:00 10/07/02 Mon
There are many people on that board who will be happy to talk spoilers....but pre-show I won't talk spoiler stuff on this board.
[> [> Well I gave enough caution warnings, didn't I? -- ZachsMind, 21:17:04 10/07/02 Mon
I looked at the Trollop thing and it's one of those Yahoo mailing list thingies and if I wanted that I'd be over there but this message board is more user-friendly with less annoying ads.
But if you don't wanna dish, that's okay. If there's anyone who does, it's there. if they don't, they won't. This is a kinda out of the ordinary spoiler anyway. I think this is a major first for the series and it's kinda disturbing. [ <--- highlight to read my spoil rambling which I censored at the last second.]
[> [> [> Yes, but too many posts make others get archived quicker. And this isn't a spoiler board. -- Rob, 22:41:28 10/07/02 Mon
[> [> [> The caution warnings are good, and appreciated, but the real big problem is... -- OnM, 22:47:25 10/07/02 Mon
... that our board archivists are usually unspoiled, and they can't avoid seeing what you post when they archive.
I don't care for Yahoo either, so I know where you're coming from, but do consider it, or perhaps work with Rufus on copying spoiler material to another Voy board.
Just some suggestions.
[> [> [> [> This is difficult -- Rahael, 02:50:53 10/08/02 Tue
I like reading spoilery spec. But I hate Yahoo Groups with a fiery vengeance.
The ads, floating about the screen. The words turning into a black slurry whenever you have the temerity to try and scroll down.
Arrgh!
[> [> [> [> [> I do happen to have a voy board that is going unused...... -- Rufus, 02:58:27 10/08/02 Tue
We could maybe work out a thing where we talk spoilers on the Voy board and post mainly the articles and stuff that takes up real space on the other.....just tell me....the board is there......Conversebuffyverse Voy Spoiler Board.
I haven't even posted the Wildfeeds on it because I thought noone was interested in the board.....Yahoo is great for the information stuff and Voy I like for organized conversations.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Really! I thought it had been deleted or something -- Rahael, 03:03:33 10/08/02 Tue
But I'm definitely interested!
I knew the Spoiler voyboard was slower than the main board, but I still liked it as a place to go and pick up on stuff.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Really! I thought it had been deleted or something -- Rufus, 03:17:45 10/08/02 Tue
I use the Yahoo Board more because it can hold so much info...and is easy to find old stuff in. So I put articles and pics there, but everyday talk and spoilery reaction stuff can go on the voy board. The link is still on the Yahoo Board as well....it's getting people to use it. If I try to cram all the info on Voy it would crash.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> So did I! -- Sheri, 12:52:17 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> [> perhaps you could try... -- Solitude1056, 08:08:39 10/08/02 Tue
when folks archive, do they see the full code, or do they just have to read the posts in the voy forum itself? if archivists d/l the file and turn it into text, this won't work - well, it would if they wait to archive until after the episode has aired. so, anyway, here's an example.
spoilers follow: highlight to read. (or HTR for short)
woo hoo! many spoilerific ramblings here, already discredited by everyone but ME, and only Wanda is still convinced they're real, but you'll panic anyway!
to duplicate that, use the following code:
<font color="white">insert spoilers here</font color>
[> [> [> [> Or, if the purpose is just to give spoilers, you could take it to a spoiler board such as BC&S. -- Dyna, 09:03:32 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> [> The purpose was to discuss the topic... -- ZachsMind, 11:29:06 10/08/02 Tue
The purpose was not to ruin it for anybody. Personally I don't believe "spoilage" is bad. I just wanted to talk about the Willow/Anya issue, but there's no place to properly do that, because of this overprotective attitude all over the Internet regarding alleged spoilers.
Complaints about spoilage inevitably do nothing but derail the intent of any topic thread, and the argument of the thread deteriorates the thread beyond any usefulness. You might as well have called me a commie.
I've been unable to find a suitable place to talk about this topic, and the issue will prove to be moot in a few hours anyway. Thanks for destroying the fun that this thread potentially had.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: The purpose was to discuss the topic... -- shadowkat, 12:13:40 10/08/02 Tue
"The purpose was not to ruin it for anybody. Personally I don't believe "spoilage" is bad. I just wanted to talk about the Willow/Anya issue, but there's no place to properly do that, because of this overprotective attitude all over the Internet regarding alleged spoilers. "
Actually there is. Buffy Cross & Stake has some very good posters over there and it is a spoiler board so doesn't care. Last year most of my essays were first posted on B C&S and it had quite few amazing responses. I have friends from this board who know I'm avoiding spoilers who have forwarded posts from B C & S that are wonderful and spoilerfree, so i don't accidently see ones with spoilers.
CJL just reposted an amazing one from B C & S. If you want to find it - I don't have the url but spoilerslayer does.
As for your post? Why not wait until after 7.3 airs tonight and discuss it on this board then?? Believe me i understand your dilemma - had similar problems with posts last year and one or two this year.
Another place to go is Joss'Stakehouse - not sure if a board or listserve but many people go there and discuss and i think it may include spoilers.
Atpo is actually one of the very few non-spoiler boards out there, hence the strict rules. We few, we happy few who are trying to remain relatively spoilerfree...have just this place to call home.
Hopefully you're post will still be up tomorrow so I can read it and discuss the points.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> I have started the Voy board up again for people to talk spoilers -- Rufus, 14:35:06 10/08/02 Tue
go Spoiler board
There is also a chat room that's linked from both Yahoo and Voy so people can have spoiler chats.
[> [> [> [> My feelings about spoilers -- First Evil Pro Tempore (d'H), 15:59:22 10/08/02 Tue
I have not read the post in question, but, to the best of my knowledge, ZachsMind did everything right. The message is clearly marked as a spoiler for an upcoming episode. "Major, dangerous spoilage" and "enter at your own risk" certainly leave no doubt about the post's contents. This board is designed to be friendly to the spoiler-free, but that by no means implies that we have to be unfriendly to the spoiler-gluttons. ZachsMind's post met all the criteria listed in our spoiler policy, so I cannot in good conscience join in the condemnation of him.
OnM's point is appreciated; however, I must admit than when I code the archives, I can do so, for the most part, without reading them. (I cannot speak for either Masq or zargon though, who are our other major archivists and are both also scrupulously spoiler-free. However, it is with a certain level of humility that I must admit that we are no longer so up-to-date that we can code the archive the Saturday after the thread is off the main board, so concerns about our virgin eyes may be a wee bit optimistic.) The only reason I might read a post while archiving is to fix a broken tag, i.e., an italicization, emboldening, blockquoting, etc., which a poster begins but never or incorrectly turns off. It is a simple matter for a poster to recognize this in time to fix it (pay attention to the copyright notice in the Modify/Approve screen), so when a tag gets dropped in a spoilery post, I may get a little huffy (sorry, Ruf).
Sol's suggestion is a good one for making sure the spoiler-free are doubly safe-guarded, though the current archiving regime involves using the raw HTML rather than a text copy. However, for the above reasons, I am loathe to suggest that people insert even more HTML into spoilery posts. But, you're smart people who should be able to handle it. (Famous last words.)
There are plenty of alternative venues for the discussion of spoilers; however, I am not so sanguine about declaring this board absolutely spoiler-free. (I feel that this is a slippery slope that might end with the board being declared evolutionary biology-free or 17th Century English history-free or Joseph Campbell-bashing-free, and then where would I be?) As long as there are sufficient and clear warnings given, I have little problem with the posting of spoilers here. There may be other places where spoilers may be more welcome, but I would prefer to leave the unpopularity of spoilers to the democracy of quick archiving rather than to a tyranny of policy and deletion.
The key to this is courtesy; if you do not show respect for the wishes of those who wish to be spoiler-free, if you post spoilers for unaired episodes in subject lines or without sufficient warning, if you shove even rumor down the throat of those without the taste for it, you may be deleted with a prompt discourtesy that will match your own. It has been Masq's policy to delete posts with insufficient warnings or with spoilers in the subject lines; of course, like all humans, she can be inconsistent. The danger of discussing spoilers on this board is that eventually the discussion starts to seep through to subject lines and also into unrelated posts. This danger must be guarded against zealously, and I would prefer that the individual poster take this responsibility onto him- or herself rather than leaving it for others -- especially now that I find myself temporarily in the position of the other.
Basically, my feeling regarding spoilers is that people should exercise common courtesy and common sense. The posters here have, since the new seasons began, showed excellent, uncommon courtesy in marking spoilers for even aired episodes. This is to be both congratulated and continued! (Having not yet seen episodes 7.1 and 7.2, I'm trying to keep as unspoiled as possible; this is a personal thank you!) ZachsMind, in my opinion, showed the same courtesy in his post. If all of us show the same courtesy, I do not see why those who wish to cannot discuss spoilers here.
That's my feeling. In five days, my feelings have no bearing whatsoever on the policy of this board.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: My feelings about spoilers -- Rufus, 20:55:31 10/08/02 Tue
I have said before that I won't discuss spoilers here for one good reason......I'm way more spoiled than most of the other posters...and I find that too many times spoilers end up in the subject lines if the conversation really gets going. So I won't talk about specific eps until they air. Zack posted the appropriate warning but others may not.
[> [> [> [> [> My 2 cents -- dream, 12:32:39 10/09/02 Wed
For what it's worth, I too would prefer well-labelled spoilers to a no-spoiler policy. I did delve into spoilers last year, and found that I enjoyed watching the show less when I knew what was coming. I have remained spoiler-free since, and certainly don't want to accidently discover plot points in advance. However, there are things that don't bother me that other people prefer to avoid. For example, I don't mind knowing the title of the episode ahead of time, because the titles are pretty enigmatic. I enjoy speculating on what they MIGHT mean, but don't want to know what they do mean. I also don't mind hearing that a particular actor is contracted to appear. On Buffy, that could mean that the character that the actor plays is going to make an appearance. Or it could mean that the character makes an appearance in flashback. Or in a dream sequence. Or a hallucination. Or that a monster appears to look like the character. And I enjoy thinking about the possibilities. I like speculating on the teasers as well. So if spoilers are well-labelled "Spoiler for title, episode 7.4" or "Spoiler, rest of season" I can pick and choose.
Oh, and I tend to see the episodes after they air, so I don't often go onto the board at all until after I've seen it. Just seems like common sense.
Just my feelings. Others no doubt will disagree.
[> Spoilery reply -- Miss Edith, 16:28:07 10/08/02 Tue
I felt kind of bad for you with all the people ignoring your post and just fousing on the spoilers included so here is my reply to the actual post that you made.
What concerned me was the blatent analogy made of magic being linked with sex. I would have thought Joss would have wanted to avoid the suggestion that the magic that screwed up Willow's character has such strong ties to lesbian sex.
Willow becomes interested in magic which gives her confidence. When she meets Tara the two of them do spells which are clearly linked to sex. Joss even states that the spell in WAY is the two girls first time. In Family Tara's father expresses concern with her interest in witchcraft with a linking to her sexuality. Then Willow becomes corrupted by the magic and becomes evil. I don't know if it has been brought up here before but that is just a disturbing message to me personally.
And I agree Tara should be mentioned more and the Anya flirtation is disrespectful. But then I don't think ME are too concerned with what the Tara fans think. I heard that in America Amber Bensens past work has actually been digitally erased from the promos.
[> [> Re: Spoilery reply (Yes, spoilers for 7.3) -- Isabel, 07:56:30 10/09/02 Wed
Having seen the episode, I think they were going for humor. Perhaps to emphasize Anya's nymphomaniac slant. This is probably the first time since Spike that she's felt anything like that. They had Willow shrug it off and that may be the end of it.
And Miss Edith, what do you mean you've heard they've digitally erased Amber Benson from the promos? They've chosen new shots to go in the opening credits, but I think I've seen Tara's face. I can't check since I'm at work.
[> [> [> Re: Spoilery reply (Yes, spoilers for 7.3) -- Mis Edith, 10:22:46 10/09/02 Wed
I was told that promotional clips such as for the musical had put a huge blur over Tara. It was a month or so ago I believe and clips from old episodes were shown, avoiding Tara appearing in them as much as possible. Presumedly ME are hoping we don't remember Tara too much following the backlash they took for killing her.
The board that was talking about it actually linked to the promo and I believe the clip with Buffy dancing with Anya and Tara at the end just had a smear in Tara's place. All I can say is in Amber Bensen's place I would not have been too thrilled at that. Especially as a lot of the reviewers made a point of commenting on Amber's voice and saying she was one of the best parts of the musical. I would have thought she deserved recognition for her past work.
[> [> [> [> Re: Spoilery reply (Yes, spoilers for 7.3) -- Isabel, 17:48:42 10/09/02 Wed
I haven't seen any of those promotional clips with Tara fuzzed out. The only preview I saw with a face fuzzed out was last year for Entropy. The clip had Spike making out with a blonde woman on a table, they obviously intended the viewers to assume it was Buffy, the fuzzing was to hide the fact that it was indeed Anya.
Tara's face is on the cover art for the CD of "Once More, With Feeling." Since that only came out three weeks ago they would have had plenty of time to remove her face from the design.
I was under the impression that Amber got along well with ME & Co. It doesn't seem logical to me that they'd do something as petty or potentially actionable as cutting her out of scenes just because they didn't like the fans' reactions to her character's death. Of course, I may just be naive. If you've seen the clips, there's not much I can say to that.
[> Following up on my promise. (7.3 spoilers!) -- shadowkat, 16:12:55 10/09/02 Wed
Sorry couldn't do it sooner ZachsMind - but I had no access to the board all day. Very annoying.
I have to admit I watched last night's episode and didn't see that sexual come on at all. I truly didn't see Anya being interested in Willow or vice versa. I suppose it is possible, considering Anya's horrible experiences with Xander. But truly can't imagine it. I think what they were trying for was bonding. Friendship. I think the magic as sex metaphor may have been dropped last year. I could be wrong of course. If I am? I am as disturbed as you are.
While I try not to hope for ships, for ME tends to destroy them. I feel very strongly that placing Xander, Buffy or Willow with a new person right now would be out of character. Especially Willow. You realistically don't go from losing the love of your life to another girlfriend.
Also - how many people does Anya need to sleep with or kiss? We already have Xander, Spike, Giles...what is she doing now making her way through the women?? LOL!
Reminds me of Nancy's line: "Who in this group hasn't slept together?"
Personally I'd rather see some Xander/Spike action than Anya/Willow.
And the winner is... -- JBone, 20:33:35 10/07/02 Mon
Before I get to the results, I feel I should throw some thank you's around. First to Masquerade, if it wasn't for this community that she started, I probably never would have attempted this summer diversion at all. I probably should have cleared the Road with Masq initially, but I don't always think of these things in a timely matter. It's a good thing that Masq is so generous. I should also thank Pyche's site for their transcripts and the good people at Buffyguide.com for their wealth of information just waiting for my fingertips.
Next, to the regulars of the ATPoBtVS&AtS posting board. There are too many of you to mention, since I would surely forget someone. But, as I have muddled my way through this, you have given my vision of carnage encouragement and support. I don't know if you will ever know how much that means to me. But I like it, a lot.
And to those who post comments. Thank Joss for you. I'm going to single out Finn Mac Cool, Earl Allison and Lyonors, among others for their first round contributions, but for which, I would have gotten few otherwise. The rest of the tournament comments were plentiful and exceptional. But since I always knew that my voice alone would not make this thing work, the first round comments were greatly appreciated.
This isn't a thank you, but I've noticed some posters wanting to continue the matchups in one form or another. And I'll do it, but only during the time when both shows are in rerun hell. Keep in touch with me, and we'll do all the "fantasy" matchups you want like ëNumfar vs Parking Ticket Lady.' Please try to confine your suggestions to the Buffyverse, since I'd rather not have a ëSpike vs the Olson twins'.
Some fun stats.
Most Votes by Round
1st Round - Darla 36
2nd Round - Angel 43
3rd Round - Faith 45
Region Finals - Spike 43
Final Four - Spike 72*
Largest Margin of victory by Round
1st Round - Darla over Parker by 34
2nd Round - Cordelia over D'Hoffryn by 34
3rd Round - Faith over Jonathan by 28
Region Finals - Spike over Oz by 16
Final Four - Spike over Tara by 17*
Sure! We saved the world. I say we party! I mean, I got all pretty.
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/road2sunnydale/index.html
[> Great Job -- Dochawk, 20:50:00 10/07/02 Mon
As for those new votes, all those people who felt ripped off in the past formed a strong ant-coalition (not very organized but strong).
[> [> Ants are very organized -- E. O. Wilson, 20:58:52 10/07/02 Mon
[> [> Channeling Mr. Burns *Excellent* -- Earl Allison, 02:18:07 10/08/02 Tue
Sounds like karmic justice to me :) 'Sides, Mayor Wilkins was THE best villain for BtVS.
Take it and run.
[> [> [> I only can say one thing -- Ete, 03:51:56 10/08/02 Tue
That doesn't improve my respect for all the anti-Spike.
But, ofcourse, I didn't say that when it was about voting Chirac against Lepen so maybe i'm not the one to talk...
[> [> [> [> I watched ,,, -- Earl Allison, 08:34:17 10/08/02 Tue
my favorites, Faith and Drusilla, go down in flames (without complaint, BTW), so I'm entitled to be happy.
And since I didn't even vote on this round -- I don't feel all that slighted, although I do appreciate your comment about your own voting.
Take it and run.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: I watched ,,, -- Ete, 16:35:29 10/08/02 Tue
"my favorites, Faith and Drusilla, go down in flames"
me too ! And add Jenny to that little list. And Dawn. I saw plenty of favorites go down. of course that's my fault for liking underdogs :)
What I mean is, I find it sad that Wilkins would be voted (Come on, Wilkins ? I love him, he's one of my fav' villain, but really ? the winner of this ?) only because people wanted to do anti-Spike votes.
I've got the impression that a lot of people have gotten disgusted of Spike not because of him, but because of all the discussions aorund him and some of his more appologists fan. I just find it unfair that more often than not, Spike would be judged by that. Also I'm getting really tired that any post refering to "spike fans" or "Spike lovers" or whatever assumes that those people are to represent all of us people that are interested and fascinated in Spike's journey. So, well, sorry for the rant :) I don't wanna target anyone, or certainly not you, I'm just feeling fed up.
You didn't come out snarky, sorry if I was :)
[> [> [> [> [> [> May the best man win... -- Malandanza, 18:47:41 10/08/02 Tue
"What I mean is, I find it sad that Wilkins would be voted (Come on, Wilkins ? I love him, he's one of my fav' villain, but really ? the winner of this ?) only because people wanted to do anti-Spike votes."
It's a mistake to assume Wilkins won solely because of the anti-Spike vote. If that had been true, Jesse would have eliminated Spike in the first round. Yes, some people hate Spike and voted against him regardless of his opposition -- but some people think Spike walks on water and voted for him regardless of his opposition. I have a feeling Spike received a net benefit from this sort of voting.
I thought Warren was a more important character than the Mayor -- however, the reasoning in favor of the Mayor is fairly persuasive. He built Sunnydale as a town for demons to feed upon -- Sunnydale is his legacy. The Mayor's influence on ByVS is felt from episode one until Buffy goes off the air. How important is the Mayor? If he had never come to Sunnydale, how would things be different? Compare that to how great an influence Spike has had.
Spike helped prevent an Apocalypse -- except he helped set the Apocalypse in motion.
Spike helped defeat Adam -- except that it was by his assistance that Adam was a problem
He provided Buffy with information when she beat it out of him -- but so did Willy
He was the obstacle for her progress in Season Six -- but also a catalyst.
BtVS might not have been that different at all if Spike had died in Season Two -- but without the Mayor, there would be no Sunnydale.
I don't entirely agree that the Mayor was that important, but the reasoning is not simply "we hate Spike".
Then, the Mayor has a strong fan base (like Clem and other minor characters). The Mayor was the underdog (and we all love underdogs). There was a strong pro-Tara block that was unhappy with the "stolen" election between Spike and Tara (where rabid pro-Spike voters pushed him into victory as time was running out).
Do I think Spike should have beaten the Mayor? Yes (although I cast a sympathy for the Mayor because I thought Spike was going to crush him). But I also don't think Spike should have made it as far as he did -- he is not the most important character on BtVS (although I do think he will play a bigger part this season). He made it as far as he did because of the same irrational voting that you decry.
Anyway, if the best team always won, who would go to sporting events?
[> [> [> [> Just re-read my post and ... -- Earl Allison, 08:41:23 10/08/02 Tue
If it came off as snarky, I apologize.
Take it and run.
[> Next Contest...Campbell vs Nietzsche!! ;o) -- Wisewoman, 08:49:27 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> If so, can I stuff the ballot box for None of the Above? ;o) -- CW, 08:54:38 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> Re: I am NOT writing pre-game for that!! ;o) -- JBone, 16:04:00 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> [> Ah, c'mon, JB...it'll be fun! -- dub ;o), 18:58:28 10/08/02 Tue
[> Re: And the winner is... -- Lyonors, 09:22:58 10/08/02 Tue
*Blushes* Awww....thanks JBone! and Thank you for the contest! It really helped while away the Buffy free months!
Ly
[> Proposed format for the Road to the Hyperion -- cjl, 09:59:10 10/08/02 Tue
JBONE, you handled the first contest with extraordinary skill for a rookie, and I'm sure you don't need web design illiterates like myself giving you suggestions...
But what the hell, I'm going to give them anyway.
For the Road to the Hyperion, I propose you keep with the tradition NCAA divisional rankings and split the Angel characters into four divisions with 16 characters each.
The division "captains": Angel, Cordy, Wes and...ANGELUS.
With Angelus as Division 4 "captain," you could, of course, classify it as the "EVIL" Division, and put Angel's biggest (and smallest) baddies into bloodthirsty competition with one another. (Then again, it might be a bit too limiting--the rankings could read like Wolfram and Hart on payroll day...) Similarly, Cordelia's division could be the Hot Babes division (always in abundance on this series), and so on.
Imagine the level of competition here! Dru vs. Darla, Holtz vs. Lilah, Skip vs. Numfar (ooo!), and Justine vs. Doyle (well...that one's a no-brainer).
Think it over.
[> Congratulations -- matching mole, 11:54:32 10/08/02 Tue
on a job well done. And, in keeping with the show and the board that inspired the contest, I have to say that I found it a source of insight as well as entertainment. The rationales of voters for their choices were often quite surprising to me as were their assumptions about the reasons for other people's choices.
[> Will the Asterisk be removed? -- Doug the Bloody, 16:13:15 10/08/02 Tue
You said on your site that Spike got the essentially same vote total here as he got against Tara. Seems to me that he's been vindicated.
Why did Wesley wait? (spoilers Angel 4.1) -- lulabel, 22:01:55 10/07/02 Mon
So the huge question in my mind is why did Wesley wait so long before going to fetch Angel? I had to watch it twice to get a couple details straight - it is clearly implied that Wesley knew from Justine about Angel's situation for some significant length of time before acting upon it.
The implied trigger is Wesley's conversation with Lilah - she hints at Angel's absence and Wesley proclaims ignorance as to his whereabouts. As soon as she leaves, he immediately goes to Justine and says "it's time to go boating". The implication to me is that Wesley was waiting to find out if Wolfram and Hart knew anything about the situation before acting.
The fact that Wesley waited for a considerable length of time is confirmed by a comment that Fred makes at the end - she questions why he didn't warn Gunn and herself sooner that Connor was potentially dangerous. The implication here is that when Wesley called to say that he was bringing Angel home, he informed them that Connor was to blame, and that he had known for months Connor was not to be trusted.
So what on earth is this all about? Why would Wesley care whether or not W&H knew anything? If he was going to get Angel out anyway, why not sooner rather than later ?
[> Re: Why did Wesley wait? (spoilers Angel 4.1) -- Freki, 22:10:05 10/07/02 Mon
The impression I had was that Wesley knew that Angel was at the bottom of the ocean, and had been searching for him all summer. That just happened to be the night that he finally found him. Justine made some comment about finding more junk that sounded like they'd been out looking on a regular basis for some time. Justine probably only had a vague idea where she and Connor dumped Angel, and currents would have moved him around more, so it would take a while to find him.
[> Re: Why did Wesley wait? (spoilers Angel 4.1) -- Valhalla, 22:21:50 10/07/02 Mon
I've only watched this once, but I took the Wesley/Lilah scenes to be that Wes was making sure he had convinced Lilah/W&H that he knew nothing, so they wouldn't follow him or send along even more revolting beings than Lilah to get information out of him. At first I thought he was just trying to see whether W&H knew anything, but he seemed to emphasize how much the AI part of his life was 'dead'. It goes along with how hard Wes has tried to make Lilah think he might actually play for her team since the other AI folks cut him off.
Btw, Wes has come a long way from his 'rogue demon hunter' days, hasn't he?
Wes hinted at why he didn't tell Fred and Gunn about Connor -- I don't recall exactly what he said, but something about them being safer in ignorance. Which, given what Connor did to Marisa, and how he tossed them around at the end before Angel brought him to rein -- they were probably better off with him not knowing. Wes was safe from Connor because Connor had no idea he'd even try to find Angel -- Connor may not even know who Wes is. Plus, there may have been just a hint of wanting to be the hero.
I'm very interested to see how/when Angel et al will take Wes back into the fold; what Connor did to Angel was so much worse than what Wes did.
[> [> I disagree....(spoilers Angel 4.1) -- Marie, 09:00:06 10/08/02 Tue
with this bit of your post:
"what Connor did to Angel was so much worse than what
Wes did."
Simply because I know that a parent will forgive his/her child just about anything, but would find it very hard to forgive someone taking that child away from them. Just about the only thing that might make that possible, in this case, and, of course, in my opinion, is that Connor came back.
Marie
[> They had searched before -- oboemaboe, 22:35:20 10/07/02 Mon
Remember on the boat, they had a map divided up and were going sector by sector until they found something. He meant "it's time to go boating [just like we have the last x nights]."
Wes knew that Connor had no reason to hurt Fred or Gunn since they were humans, and obviously all summer he was right.
But some things about that didn't make sense. Why did they dump him in the harbor or whatever so close to land? Wouldn't it be pretty easy to go far enough out that it'd be too deep for scuba diving/rescue? The Marianas Trench is 11 miles deep and 40 miles across, pretty easy to drop the box right down it. Where would they get a bathysphere? Wherever the heck they got the metal coffin and the barge. The Trench is between Hawaii and the Phillipines. They plan to lock Angel away "forever," but can't afford to sail a few days to do it? Would that all villains were this half-assed. Oh wait, most of them are.
And also, Justine could have screamed even with that gag, when she heard that Lilah was in the next room. What would have happened if W&H had taken Angel into custody and only gave him the barest minimum of blood to keep him weak and crazy and brainwashable?
[> [> Re: They had searched before -- lulabel, 22:52:11 10/07/02 Mon
Yeah, OK that makes a lot more sense. I guess Justine's comment about finding tires and shopping carts referred to previous searches.
I do think that Wesley's blithe assumption about Connor not being a potential threat to humans was pretty dodgy. Fred clearly thought so too, when she asked Connor " how soon before you turn on us?" Connor is not a slayer, he has no mandate to protect or not protect humans, demons, whatever. He clearly has learned Holtz' version of morality - righteous, yet flexible to the demands of vengence.
[> [> [> yes, but... -- Solitude1056, 23:08:26 10/07/02 Mon
Conor has also stated before that his mandate to destroy is only towards demons. Even demons like Cordy, who sure look human, and demons like Lorne - who look demony but are clearly on the side of good. The appearance makes no difference, and Conor seems to consider humans just a necessary evil but not necessarily one to destroy.
What I can't figure out is why Conor stuck around AI all summer. It's not the issue of "I killed the person you're looking for," but an issue of: what was there at the hotel that he needed, to make him stay? A family, of sorts? Membership in some sort of human society that he'd lacked for the first however many years of his life? Why not just do the deed and split? What kept him going back?
I'd guess, now that I mention that (and glance at the clock again!), perhaps Conor was also conflicted about this. Gunn and Fred mention several times during the episode about Conor's disappearances, so I'd presume that he's been rather hard to track for the majority of the summer. Perhaps he's been battling with himself about whether he should go or stay. I would've said that's a sign in his favor (in that he feels some affection for Gunn and Fred, which at times he appeared to), but his reaction when Angel arrived - and his attack on Gunn and Fred - didn't show him shedding much tears over hurting either. Then again, Fred had let him have it with both barrels...
[> [> [> [> Re: yes, but... -- alcibiades, 23:16:12 10/07/02 Mon
And wasn't it sad finding out just how much pain had gone into the making of Connor. So much pain that he no longer cared if he felt more pain.
[> [> [> [> [> hunh? -- Solitude1056, 23:25:33 10/07/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: hunh? -- alcibiades, 10:15:19 10/08/02 Tue
Fred in VO: I would have done anything for him....And now all I want to do is hurt him.
Connor: Go Ahead. Hurt me some more, Fred.
Fred: Shut up.
Connor: You think I care. You get used to it.
The implication being that growing up, he got hurt a lot. Whether by Holtz or by others. It is pretty clear that the nature of Quor Toth was that it was a hell dimension and the other beings hurt him a lot. The extent to which Holtz did, we still don't know. But we know from the relationship of Justine and Holtz that Holtz forges bands of love through pain. Justine came to love him based on the pain he dealt out to her. Perhaps Connor did as well. Who knows if Holtz was capable of any other kind of love at that point in his existence. And if you look at his final gift to Connor -- his death at Justine's hands -- it was meant to cause Angel a great deal of pain, but surely he knew it would cause tremendous pain to Connor as well. And Connor was a son he had grown to love according to his own words. And he wanted to insure that Connor would keep on loving him. So he gave Connor a "Gift" -- death is your gift -- that would not only hurt Angel, but hurt Connor as well.
Certainly Connor's hatred of Angel and demons and the fact that he himself knows he is the son of two demons means that he is filled with self-hatred. He exudes it from every pore.
He might stop hating himself so much if he really grasps that demons can also be good -- the way Cordelia was tending before she got lost on the way to Point Dume.
[> [> [> Connor seemed to like Gunn and Fred -- oboemaboe, 23:24:56 10/07/02 Mon
Else why would he have stayed with them? He's more than capable of taking care of himself. He at least partially deferred to Gunn's authority and interacted warmly with Fred. Why appear out of nowhere to stop that axe just in time?
One could say he just stayed with them to wipe out all their non-human leads, and then be on his way, but that's not really the impression I got. (Though there was something just a little off about Vincent's performance compared to last year, but I can't quite put my finger on it.) F&G are his adoptive family now.
"Righteous, yet flexible to the demands of vengence" sums it up nicely. He was only going to kill the drug dealer in A New World because they were threatening a defenseless girl.
Why would Fred or Gunn ever trigger such a vengeance?
And he's also a bit of a speciesist. Hating Lorne for no reason, repeatedly calling Angel a 'thing.' He didn't want F&G to hear Marissa's story, but he killed her. Why not simply kill F&G if he's so cavalier about killing humans? He could also have killed Justine or Wes to make sure no one ever discovered Angel's location.
I think doing so would have violated his ethic.
[> [> [> [> Yes, why does he stay?? -- lulabel, 13:15:14 10/08/02 Tue
Yes, indeed, why does Connor stay? That's still a huge question in my mind. Throughout this episode I was getting all these "unbelievably scary" vibes from Connor.
The first and most obvious reason to stay is because he is still quite young. He's a lot like Dawn in having this child/adult duality going on. Physically he's capable of caring for himself, but I imagine that psychologically he still needs and wants the comfort and care of parental figures. So why turn to Fred and Gunn? It would seem that the more obvious path with the least potential pitfalls would be to stay with Justine. While she is not maternal in the least, she would have taken care of him because of her devotion to Holtz. She also shares Holtz's mission, which one must assume is deeply ingrained into Connor. She is also safe ground - she knows Connor's secret, he doesn't have to pretend with her.
So the second reason to stay with Fred and Gunn is to ensure that they don't find out where Angel is hidden. This was pretty clearly demonstrated by Connor's lurking about which enabled him to hear the conversation about Marissa and ultimately to eliminate the possible lead.
So which is it? I actually think it's both, which I find really creepy. Connor stays with Fred and Gunn because he wants to be part of their family, yet he simultaneously plays them for fools. I think that was what seemed "off" about Vincent's performance, the fact that he was being both geniune AND false at the same time. And it's totally consistent with being Holtz's foster son, for he was a master at playing the double game. It's just like Holtz's end game, where he truthfully proclaims his love and devotion for Connor/Steven, while at the same time manipulating that love for his own purposes of vengence.
Creepy is the only word for it.
[> [> [> [> [> They really need an encore airing. -- oboemaboe, 15:39:08 10/08/02 Tue
"He was being both geniune AND false at the
same time." OK, that's probably what I was sensing. Buffy/Angel episodes are so dense, it's nigh impossible to catch every nuance after only a single viewing.
Enterprise gets an encore showing on Saturdays, so why not Buffy? And the WB has been showing season 1 of Gilmore Girls for three straight years. Why don't they repeat B/A for us? They did do Angel twice a week for a while last year, with S2 shown on Thursdays.
[> [> [> [> [> why he stays -- anom, 22:33:18 10/08/02 Tue
For one thing, where does he have to go? He doesn't know his way around, or have a way to support himself. Maybe he could scrounge out a living, but why should he when he can have a home? Connor has discovered the pleasures of having a dependable, comfortable place to sleep & a reliable food supply (wonder what he ate in Quortoth? never mind, I think I don't want to know), 2 things he probably never had before in his life. Not to mention a (relatively) safe place to live while he learns his way around this new world.
I agree that some semblance of a family is also a powerful factor. But staying w/Gunn & Fred also lets him keep an eye on their search for Angel so he can thwart it. It also gives him a chance to kill demons a lot--things may not be as black & white as he's used to, but he does get to live out the ideals Holtz raised him with fairly often. Even the fact his life is regularly under threat is something he's used to & might be almost comforting--he might not know how to deal with not having that happen. In effect, working (more than staying) with AI is probably the closest he can come to recreating the life he knew in Quortoth...except with clean sheets & better food.
[> Answer: He was keeping the baddies off the scent -- ZachsMind, 13:23:18 10/08/02 Tue
He had to make sure the devilish law firm firmly believed he had no clue as to Angel's whereabouts. We get indications that he had been searching off and on all summer, but couldn't devote all his time to it because of that nosy lady he ended up sleeping with to convince her he was oblivious.
Wes has always been smart, but this last episode showed he can be downright crafty. He also seemed to enjoy torturing Justine a bit much, however she did slash his throat so one could argue she had it coming to her. Still, Wes is supposed to be one of the good guys and he's dangerously treading that fine line.
[> [> Re: Answer: He was keeping the baddies off the scent -- Robert, 13:35:50 10/08/02 Tue
>>> "Still, Wes is supposed to be one of the good guys and ..."
Wes hasn't been one the good guys ever since he kidnapped Angel's baby back in "Loyalty". His goals may be good (prevention of Armegeddon and protect people from demons), but his methods are extreme.
the cages we keep -- Solitude1056, 22:55:48 10/07/02 Mon
Rather than hijack a thread below (Wesley=Spike), I figured I'd start a new one since I have a slightly different take on the issue - not to mention a radically different conclusion. So let's be kind and rewind...
There are two instances where we saw something of Wes other than the apparently incompetent and easily frightened weakling from his first showing on BtVS. One, with Angel, dealing with Demon!Boy in I've Got You Under My Skin:
[Wesley] defiantly brandishes the cross; Ryan recoils, HISSES.
WESLEY
Omnis spiritus immunde, in nominee Dei!
RYAN
All those hours locked under the
stairs and you still weren't good
enough. Not good enough for Daddy,
not good enough for the council...
WESLEY
Omnis spiritus...
(lost his place)
That is to say...
RYAN
Lose your place? What makes you
think these people want you around
any more than the others did?
Somehow it's no surprise that Wes had an unpleasant childhood (confirmed later when he calls home to tell his parents about his promotion). Yet, only two episodes later, we get a surprise about Wesley's hidden strengths. In Five by Five, Faith is torturing Wesley. For all intents and purposes, Wesley has no reason to assume that Angel will be able to track them down and rescue Wes...
WESLEY
I was your Watcher, Faith, I know the
real youÖ and even if you kill me,
I just want you to remember one thing.
FAITH
(lightly)
What's that, luv?
WESLEY
(cold and simple:)
You are a piece of sh--
Pissed, she stuffs the gag back into Wesley's mouth, pushing it in as far as she can.
Again, in Pylea, we see another facet of Wesley's inner traits: the loss of one human life is outweighed by the needs of the many. As someone else mentioned, the end, for Wes, always outweighs the means.
Now let's look at Justine. As others have mentioned, she fell in with Holtz, put up with his sadistic idea of training, and slowly (but not without some resistance) gave into his brainwashing, responding with eventual outright hero worship. She's gotten a raw deal in many respects, and little return on her hero worship investment. When Conor mentioned that Holtz had not intended to include her in the idyllic escape plans - and in fact hadn't mentioned her in 12, 13 years in the hellzone - it was too late for her to confront Holtz. So being a woman of few regrets, she appears to block that out and continue on her primary mission: dust vampires, but especially Angel (most likely in memory/remembrance of Holtz).
Those are just refreshers in case anyone's forgotten that both characters are more than just their original appearances. Wesley has a definite machiavellian streak, as does Justine, and both have exhorbitant amounts of hero worship for someone who has (to some extent) betrayed them, if only by exclusion. In Wesley's case, he's seeking family to approve of him the way his own father didn't; Justine is seeking an 'other half' to replace what she lost when her sister/twin died. And as a final comparison, Wes can retreat into a coldblooded mental stillness when faced with a fight, whereas Justine retreated into bloodthirsty freeforall anger - even Holtz' attempts to instill control in her don't always seem to work.
The key to Justine seems to be, to me, in something that goes back way farther than her appearance on the show. It's not a case of any clear childhood trauma (I won't make any assumptions on that), but at the very least the assumption that losing her sister damaged her, perhaps irreparably. Because, as has been pointed out only a few times, it wasn't just her sister, it was her twin. Look at BtVS, for comparison - Buffy and Dawn, thanks to monkish tomfoolery, are mother/daughter/sisters - maybe as close as one could get to genetic twins. Buffy's willing to let the world die rather than see her sister die; Justine is willing to kill the world in revenge for her sister/twin's death. Some cultures kill one twin when two children are born at the same time, fearing that neither will have a full soul and both will eventually sicken and die as a result. Many twins describe - even those raised apart - having similar experiences, longings, and beliefs; those raised together live life through a mildly symbiotic dual-vision, where each is an integral aspect. So if we consider Justine's loss symbolically, then her twin/sister's death wasn't just 'loss of innocence,' but also loss of at least half of herself. If for Joss the soul is one's moral compass, then Justine is missing North and East. She's partially adrift, and seeks a habor - yet hates the harbor because it isn't her sister/twin.
But let's think about the alternatives, as Rahael pointed out: this is Joss we're talking about. Joss has reasons, and we can puzzle them out if we just take a step back and look at what other ways he could have had Wesley save the day. Wesley's a smart guy; hell, much of the past two seasons have underlined that element of his personality ad infinitum. So if he'd puzzled things out, tracked Justine down, threatened her and beat her in a mildly unfair fight, no surprise there. He's gotten a few turns on her in the past. How would that have changed things? We see Wes tracking Justine down, taking her out at the kneecaps with a two-by-four, and then forcing her to lead him to Angel's most recent resting place. Well, for starters, it's possible but it sure doesn't carry the weight of any sort of character symbolism, which - at least the last time I checked - is a heavy-duty part of this whole 'verse. Things don't just happen because they're cool; they happen because there's something the character is acting out or working out. So the simpler method - Wes finds Justine, forces her to tell him/help him, rescues Angel, end of story - doesn't work in the Jossverse, because it highlights no conflict and deepens no search.
Wesley's caught between a rock and a hard place; a cage not entirely of his own making but certainly due in great part to his instigation. He can't go back to AI thanks to Angel's and Fred's reactions, and he can't move forward to Lilah's camp. And he's too stubborn to explain his side to anyone in AI, either. Justine, meanwhile, is a walking target. She's pissed off huge numbers of vamps, no longer has her little army, has lost/killed Holtz, and doesn't appear to have kept ties with Conor/Steven either. So she, too, can't go back, and may not be able to figure out what to go forward to, either. Both are trapped in their own little hells.
When Wes opens the closet door to reveal Justine in her little cage, I didn't think, 'oh, he's gone so bad, he's keeping her like a dog in a kennel!' Nor, for that matter, did I think, 'oooh, Wesley cool now.' What I thought was, damn, it's about time someone figured out a way to shut Justine down. Her stark adulation - if sometimes expressed sarcastically - of Holtz got on my nerves, especially when I could see from the omniscient observer's viewpoint that Holtz considered her expendable. For that matter, Wes' original worship of his employer also got on my nerves; yet both Wes and Justine echo each other in that each is caught in that hero worship. Both distrust the attention/affection, and both are willing to destroy the giver if necessary. Wesley because he's aware of Angel's proclivities sans a soul; Justine perhaps because letting someone replace her sister would be a betrayal of her own Self.
But Justine's reaction/expression at seeing Wesley was hardly the beaten-down, abused, tortured soul one might expect in such a situation. That was definitely a spit-in-your-eye expression, full of hate and anger. Justine was hardly down for the count. (Dammit.) And as the hour wore on, I couldn't figure it out. This was a strange dynamic. Wesley is singlemindedly continuing his search for Angel - and by Justine's remarks, this search has been going on for some time now. Justine, on the other hand, appears to be a broken record on certain topics near and dear to Wesley's self-esteem. For someone spending her time gagged and chained, she sure made up for it when the gag was removed. What's been bothering me is that Wesley didn't keep her gagged - it's possible, a good lock in the back of the head will make such things difficult to remove. But he didn't, and based on the contraption in the closet I'd say such technological awareness isn't beyond him. But then I figured it out: Wesley lets Justine prattle on, jabbing him verbally, because he agrees with her.
The more Justine talks, the more she reinforces his stubborn internal decision that AI doesn't want him and won't take him back. His actions in saving Angel are murky at first, but if you remember that Wesley thinks like a general - not like Justine's army grunt - then his actions make sense. If you don't want someone coming after you in revenge, what do you do? Take the oriental approach and put them equally in your debt. With one single gesture, Wesley could remove any reason to interact with AI, even if that interaction is based on Angel's need for vengeance against Wesley.
Which means that Wesley has no intention of freeing himself from his own cage, and in fact was letting his bars grow stronger through Justine's verbal ministrations. She wasn't the abused, put-upon helpless soul - she never has been. Misguided, manipulated, yes, but hardly forced at any point. Holtz put a knife through her hand and left her there. It's said that animals (and Holtz may have mentioned this, but I can't recall the episode to quote directly) will chew off their own paws if caught in a trap, while humans will wait for help or figure a way out first. Justine waited. So she's not an animal in one respect, but she does operate on questionable drives. For her, being pushed beyond the limits of human endurance is just one more thing to endure, to survive. As she tells Holtz, hate can get you through when nothing else can, and she's clearly grown to hate Wesley; she's also perceptive enough to know that knives won't kill him while words may carry a knife-jab that cuts deeper and takes far longer to heal.
As for the comment about the bucket, I didn't read that as abuse of someone beaten down beyond hope. Hell, most folks in that situation describe themselves - according to the literature - as no longer able to attempt a self-rescue. Justine's clearly still opportunistic, and Wesley is clearly not forgetting this. Does he have eyes in the back of his head, to know she'd make the attempt? Or was he just testing her instinct, leaving a weapon where she can see it and get to it, and then turning his back on her? From Justine's point of view, dropping the wrench because of a bucket threat didn't seem to have much to do with her worry about crapping on the floor. She doesn't seem to be someone with many hangups about propriety... No, I suspect it was because she was expecting that response, and having received it, that stage of the game was up, point to Wesley, regroup for the next round. She played on his emotions once, tricked him, slit his throat in cold blood, and left him for dead. She can hardly expect him to be all lovey-dovey towards her, nor would I support such attitudes either, were I his cohort.
It was Justine's reaction - and not Wesley's steely jibe - that belied Justine's willingness to attempt to take him down again. She wants someone to tell her what to do, someone to give her purpose like she hasn't had since she lost one-half her soul. With half a soul, she's only got half a conscience, and needs something external. What Wesley threatens isn't nearly as important as the fact that he does, and even more the fact that she knows he will carry it out. Shades of Holtz' single-minded perspective. Justine, in her empty half-souled existence, hungers for that sort of tunnel vision and lacking her own abilities to create it will cleave to the nearest rock. If that sounds a bit too much, consider this: she didn't need to attack Wesley to free herself. She could've attached the chains to Angel's own cage, given the tug for a signal, and swum off. She had the diving gear on, she could head for shore, I'd guess. (This is TV, anything's possible.) But she didn't chose to fight/flee that way; instead she raises a wrench and drops it after a simple threat. You could read that as "she's so beaten down she doesn't even carry the attempt through," but I don't. I read that as she's testing Wesley, she wants to reaffirm that his will is stronger. As long as it is, then she can just go along, insisting that she had no say in the matter. Physical force has never been much for convincing Justine, not nearly as much as mental force, which Wesley has in spades.
To segue into a discussion of Justine alone...
There's the other part: Justine, and her twin (Juliette? Julia?), have echoes in the stories from de Sade. From Tabula Rasa(!!) an internet zine:
The two girls are sisters, orphaned in their early teens and making their separate ways into the world. Some fifteen years later they meet again, Juliette a lady of means, Justine a condemned prisoner, the novels are the two catching up on each other's progress. And naturally Justine is pure of heart, her sister the most wicked of creatures.
Without the room to go into a detailed account of either novel I will try and convey some of their impact by reactions to them. Justine in particular is interesting because she is the only major character of the author's that spends any time at all expressing virtuous ideals, and she manages a pretty good job at it despite all her good intentions turning on her resoundingly.
To Gilbert LÈly, Justine is 'almost entirely devoid of psychological importance... a mere concept, an abstract construction, who would seem only to have been thought up by the author to prove his pessimistic thesis about the consequences of virtue' [143]. To Jean Paulham [144], Justine is de Sade, beset by the world but unshakeable in faith, whereas Simone de Beauvoir does 'not recognise him at all... in the bleating Justine, but there is certainly something of him in Juliette, who proudly and contentedly submits to the same treatment as her sister' [150]. On a more general level, some see Sade the feminist -- Justine as the down-trodden masses, Juliette as the potential woman has when taking her destiny in her own hands...
I recall that when Justine first appeared on the scene, several noted the Justine/Juliette comparison and wondered how Joss would rewrite the question of the dichotomy between the two sisters. Justine has frequently been seen as the Juliette half, taking everything into her own hands - but has she?
I'd argue, instead, that Justine really is deSade's Justine, in a Jossian way. She holds steadfastly to her black-and-white views of the world. Vampires bad, Holtz good. Even when faced repeatedly with the information that the world is gray, Holtz uses her, and Angel has a soul, she refuses to reconsider. In holding so firmly to her ideals, however admirable, she unintentionally sets herself up for much of the agony she later experiences. At heart, her role may be twisted from de Sade's original proposition that people/God are/is evil, and that the world sucks - for the Jossverse, the belief that the universe is or should be clear-cut and fixed will set one up for some serious reality checks. In the Jossverse, people/God are/is ambiguous. Justine has consistently refused to acknowledge this ambiguity, and her ideals of a fixed, rational, black-and-white universe are part and parcel of her true cage.
Wesley may be like Spike superficially, but in fact I'm beginning to think that it's Justine who is like Spike: restrained or caged by some external circumstance that has left her without a sense of an internal guiding star. Spike's chip prevented his internal demon from pointing him in the right direction. In retaliation, he moved to the nearest charismatic force (Buffy) and tried to adjust. Justine also moved to the nearest charismatic force (Holtz), but didn't try to adjust; Holtz instead played on her reduced moral compass of unambiguity. Her ideals of a fixed, rational universe where all vampires and demons have death sentences has set her up for significant difficulties - and even more so now that her external compass has gone and left her.
In some ways, Spike's loss of Buffy created similar conflicts, as it left him without a guiding star by which to judge the success or failure of his actions. While both are strong, independent, semi-intelligent and complex characters, both are at the same time relatively pathetic in their constant need for external reinforcement. Justine may be the walking wounded in a sister/twin sense, but I firmly believe that the walls of her cage - like Wesley pointed out - lie within her power to defeat. And at the same time, it's especially ironic that it's Wesley - Mr. Rock And Hard Place himself - who attempts to drive home the notion that she start disengaging herself from concepts that will do nothing but cause her additional pain.
Okay, rambled enough and I have a seven A.M. class...
[> Great post - and some more thoughts -- Rahael, 02:46:12 10/08/02 Tue
Looks as if it's not just Spike and Buffy who are 'in love with pain'.
Sometimes, when people feel lost, they get drawn toward a relationship which makes them feel safe and comfortable, even if it's one which is destructive.
"What's been bothering me is that Wesley didn't keep her gagged - it's possible, a good lock in the back of the head will make such things difficult to remove. But he didn't, and based on the contraption in the closet I'd say such technological awareness isn't beyond him. But then I figured it out: Wesley lets Justine prattle on, jabbing him verbally, because he agrees with her."
I agree - I almost see Wesley as the prodigal son, living in the sty, rather than go back and admit he is wrong. He found an acceptance among the AI that he had never really found anywhere before, not even in Sunnydale. And all that time, the little voice inside of him must have been whispering away, telling him he didn't deserve acceptance and love. Telling him that he would be found out. That he's as much a fraud of a good human being as he was a rogue demon hunter.
And so, when Fred rejects his love, and Angel rejects him, and Cordelia keeps away from him, that voice must be sounding a triumphant note of late: "See! you've finally been discovered - and I was right all along. None of them want anything to do with you". He keeps Justine around to feed his self loathing, and he's sleeping with Lilah, who, last seasn in 'A new world' told him he was Judas, that he was damned. Wesley is locked up in his prison just as much as Angel is and Justine is.
Justine doesn't want to be free either, because as you point out, freedom is frightening - to be lost, uncertain, to have the whole wide world out there waiting to be discovered - isn't it much better to stay in one tiny little space, cowering in the dark? Much safer, less surprises, no shocks. Like your 'father' betraying you.
I also wonder whether the fact that Justine is a twin could also work as a metaphor - I think that Sade is definitely being invoked. Not only because of the sadistic/masochistic references within Justine, but also the duality of Justine/Juliette. Justine is half a person, because she has rejected a whole side of herself, refused to explore parts of herself. Something about her died a long time ago, and now she isn't whole. And because of the virtuous/immoral dichotomy of Justine and Juliette, Justine's damaged nature indicates as you point out, a black and white, rigid view of the world. And I think both Wesley and Justine gravitate toward each other because they confirm one thing about the world: there is good and bad, there is a hell, where sinners go, they are sinners, and their punishment, their hell is to be trapped in a prison with each other.
Wesley betrayed *Angel* - Justine commits patricide (even if it is at her 'father's' behest.) Aren't these pretty horrendous crimes for two people who put these father figures above them?
Actually, there's one symbolic gesture which seems to me the most interesting point about this ep. Wesley feeds Angel his own blood. It's a sacrificial gesture, a nourishing, almost maternal one. (But I actually haven't seen the scene, so I'm just going on guesswork). It reminded me of the Elizabethan symbol of the pelican, which according to myth, fed its young with its own blood. It had overtones of sacrifice, most specifically the Christ sacrifice. So, Wesley, Judas, or Christ?
For me the dynamic of family, of the famalial tensions, father/son/colleague seem to be the most intriguing part of AtS recently. Justine is included in the dynamic as the 'daughter'.
But I think the main dynamic between Justine and Wesley is self affirmation - they both think they deserve to be treated that way. Changing their world view, admitting doubt, and grey, and ambiguity, and all the shades of error - that's too frightening.
My galley charged with forgetfulness
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine enemy, alas
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every oar a thought in readiness
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain
Hath done the wearied cords great hindrance,
Wreathed with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain
Drowned is reason that should me comfort
And I remain despairing of the port.
Wyatt
[> [> Very true - and I forgot to mention -- Solitude1056, 20:03:14 10/08/02 Tue
Actually, there's one symbolic gesture which seems to me the most interesting point about this ep. Wesley feeds Angel his own blood. It's a sacrificial gesture, a nourishing, almost maternal one.
I haven't puzzled that one out, yet. It wasn't a scene of intense passionate overt-sex like when Buffy let Angel feed off her; it was more of a suckling child or sickly adult being spoon-fed affectionately. The real dichomoty for me, though, was that Wesley was all business, as if this were just the usual run-of-the-mill, another-day-on-the-job kind of normal event. His body language towards Justine struck me as challenging, daring her to say or do anything to contradict his decision; his words and voice were definitely matter-of-fact. And while Angel's response was hardly a hungry one (relatively), Wesley didn't seem to be gritting his teeth during the short shot... but he didn't seem to be softening his expression, either. Some real complex dynamics going on there.
But the other thing I forgot to mention in more detail, which made sense by the end of the episode. Holtz saw Justine as expendable because he was so focused on vengeance (read: killing Angel) that nothing else mattered. Wesley uses Justine, too, in effect, albeit for different purposes. Angel's little speech at the end about being a Champion, I think, was the writer's short justification about Wesley's actions. In saving Angel, Wesley can vicariously assure himself of saving who knows how many others. Saving Justine, or freeing her with an incomplete mission, wouldn't save jack. It'd mean the death of a few more vampires but hardly anything to stack up against Angel's progress as a Champion. So perhaps that was also part of Wesley's motivation: in assuring Angel's survival, he could in some small part reassure himself that he is still working for good, even if his actions are questionable. End justifies the means, and all that...
[> Spoilers for Angel Season 4, Ep 1 (in all posts in this thread!!) -- Rahael, 03:19:03 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> Re: Spoilers for Angel Season 4, Ep 1 (in all posts in this thread!!) -- JM, 04:43:25 10/08/02 Tue
In some ways I'm sure that for Justine Wesley is acting as a replacement for Holtz. She herself draws a parallel between them in "Forgiving." "I trusted the wrong man." And just like last year, at least she isn't feeling nothing.
Good catch on the feeding scene. It seems very maternal, especially compared to the hallucination with Cordy where Angel's feed has an element of the erotic in it. The scene with Wes is very short, the cameras having the propriety to look away. In the brief bit shown, Angel doesn't switch into vamp face and bite down. He seems almost to be suckling. And unlike with the animal's blood, where he is a passive recipient, he reaches out with his hand to steady Wes's arm, the way a baby will with a bottle.
I thought it was interesting how squicked Justine was by the whole scene, and looks away as quickly as the cameras.
[> On the next MTV Cribs.. -- neaux, 06:04:01 10/08/02 Tue
very good post. I really want to say..
but as a total aside I could not resist and could not help but think of Wes' cool cage and the craftsmanship involved.
Could this be the next trend on MTV cribs.. first there were stripper poles in the basement and now Closet turned Cages?
I think Maybe Wes is cooler than we think and probably a trend setter/Fashion elitist.
A Photographic Finish -- On Family and Frames in Deep Down -- sorry long -- alcibiades, 23:02:14 10/07/02 Mon
Deep Down begins with Angel and his family -- the family that he has made -- celebrating Thanksgiving.
This immediately rings a bell. We've seen a Thanksgiving episode before on BTVS -- Pangs. In this episode, Angel is the man who never goes inside -- he sees Buffy and the gang framed inside from the outside window. He looks in at the family Buffy has gathered around her, a family which includes a tied up Spike -- that other vampire -- once a member of Angel vampire family -- being fed gravy instead of blood. Spike is at the beginning of his trials that will ultimately allow him to replace Angel at Buffy's side as a vampire with a soul.
In Deep Down, Angel is not tied up and sits instead at the head of the table. The theme is about Family -- celebrating, giving thanks, after all the trials they faced during the summer -- everyone is happy. The moment is perfect. Angel states that he would like to freeze this moment in time. Last of all, Wesley comes into focus at the other end of the table. Momentarily it feels ominous, but he holds up a glass to toast to family. So we know down deep Angel still wants Wesley in his family. And then they begin to eat. All the food is passed around. Only problem -- there's nothing on the table for Angel to eat and his anxiety about his otherness as a vampire and his fear that because he is a vampire he'll never have nor deserve a family, begins to surface -- the gravy is mentioned, reminiscent of Spike, but no one thinks to give him any, and the food on the plate he does grab disappears. And so he knocks his glass of water over and it shatters into pieces.
Now I've had some problems identifying the image here: in Seeing Red the camera lingers on the glass that Spike's breaks and it simultaneously symbolizes his breaking point and the fact that the King of Cups is finally going to his picnic.
Here -- I suppose we could say this is also a breaking point in the sense that this is where Angel's vision is shattered.
Another symbol which works tangentially is the way the shattered glass is used at Jewish weddings -- it is supposed to symbolize that you should never be so happy that you forget that the temple was destroy. IOW, in this day and age, perfect happiness doesn't and cannot exist. The world is imperfect sinceGod has no abode and therefore your happiness should never be perfect either.
It was this vision of perfect happiness that Angel was seeking in Tomorrow. Happiness with his son, happiness with Cordelia who came to him robed in a long WHITE dress, as though for a wedding. Angel forgot that he in particular is not allowed ever again to know this perfect happiness he sought. It is his forbidden fruit -- a great temptation and one he must forever resist.
So the vision fades to ethereal blue smoke -- the same light we saw on Beneath You and Connor sits there mocking his father's deepest desire -- "Freeze the moment dad. It will last forever." And all that would exist in that picture frame would be Angel's anxiety and Connor's malice.
And then the camera moves back and we see that Angel's face and body is the one being framed -- framed by the box he was locked in at the bottom of the sea by his son, the son for whom he crossed so many forbidden lines, in the making of him and in his attempts to rescue him. Angel is all alone, decaying among the fishes. He has no family. He is a family of one, a sunken island.
This is also the last shot we saw of Angel in Tomorrow -- framed out alone in his box, although here he is the worse for wear.
And as I have said before, window framing is a metaphor used frequently in Angel to define who is in the family and who is out of it. It occurs in Pangs, in the Thin Blue Line and several of the episodes at the end of last season. Sometimes Angel has been part of the frame and sometimes he is outside looking in at the family he wants and does not have and sometimes he is all alone in the frame. The moment Connor first begins to change from his vengeful hatred of Angel in A New World is when Angel saves his life and then they jump together through a window frame.
Cut to later in Deep Down -- Connor is sitting alone in his room before Fred arrives to feed him some *bologna* before she tasers him. On the wall we see a picture -- perhaps the same one from last year in the room that Angel picked out for him. (Too lazy to look) Perhaps not. The important thing is that in each case, the painting on the wall is a landscape devoid of people. And that in the first case, Angel straighten the pictures but leaves it slightly askew the other way. And he doesn't notice that it is askew, that he has made it askew. Here we see the picture is still slightly set askew. Connor is still askew in ways that the people around him have neither noticed nor fixed.
Cut to the final scene. Connor is backed up against the wall, crouching low, as daddy speaks to him. We see that as he is thrown back against the wall, something spills down. At first this glints silver, seems unclear and unfocused. But as Angel reaches his finale and moves in closer, he tells Connor, "I love you Connor, now get out of my house."
And we see at last, close up, what these three photographs contain. They are three pictures of landscapes -- trees and grass and perhaps snow -- entirely devoid of people. Those are moments that previously Angel has chosen to freeze for eternity. Connor departs and Angel faces the wall where the three photographs have become distinct -- and then he collapses. And at that point he says, "I need Cordy." Connor has left, so he wants the other close family member.
Cut to Cordelia, framed in white, all alone. She's lost her family too. You'd think a proper higher being would be too busy to be bored now.
BTW, as Angel looks at Connor and we see the three pictures, Connor looks at Angel and sees not pictures, but a dart board -- a target. For Connor, Angel is not a person, not even an empty landscape -- but still a target for shooting purposes, for target practice.
[> More superficially... -- alcibides, 23:24:51 10/07/02 Mon
Looks like Lilah and Cordy now share the same hair stylist.
Isn't it CEWL that Lilah now has light colored streaks running through her hair -- and in fact as streaks go, they are jarring, meant to be noticed I believe, because they don't blend in at all with her coloring. They stand out.
And of course we know what signals can be told from hair tones. In Entropy, frex, both Spike and Anya's roots were showing. While Anya was helping the Scoobies at the end of last year, Anya was blond, but now that she really is a demon again, her hair is dark.
Cordy got blond tresses and immediately started aspiring to heaven.
And not only does Lilah have light colored streaks -- when last we saw her, her nails sported dark red polish. And now they are pearly toned, either white or light, light pink.
So it looks like Wesley has been getting under Lilah's skin more than she knows.
[> [> Undead prefer blondes -- oboemaboe, 00:02:02 10/08/02 Tue
My beloved Dawnie now has some blonde streaks, and she is starting to become a formidable force for good.
On the other hand, William was a brunette, right? Spike, not so much.
And old Willow had a little bit of blonde in Bargaining, right before she started to go zonky on the magicks.
Buffy's color seems to fluctuate a little, doesn't it?
[> [> Re: More superficially... -- Isabel, 08:08:51 10/08/02 Tue
First off, What does 'frex' mean? I've seen it used a couple of times and I cannot figure it out.
Lilah getting blonde streaks throws off a personal theory of mine. I think that Charisma Carpenter and Stephanie Romanov are stunning brunettes and I don't think they make good blondes. I got used to Emma Caulfield being blonde, but I think the actress looks better brunette too.
My "why are these characters going blonde theory" was psychologically based. Cordelia had always been attracted to Angel and last year I remember her making a comment during 'Carpe Noctem' that Angel always goes for little blondes. After that she went from that barely tolerable light brown to blonde. Why? Buffy. Angel always preferred blonde Buffy to brunette Cordy and when she was dating Xander he would drop everything (including her) to go running to help Buffy. I remember her complaining about that at least once.
Anya's the same thing. Anya started dating Xander and then went blonde. Xander always had a thing for Buffy and Anya has on several occasions stated that she's not threatened by Buffy, which of course means that she is. ("When things get rough, he hides behind his Buffy...")
Dawn getting blonde streaks could be trying to emulate her big sister. (I hope the streaks go soon 'cause she's another stunning brunette.)
That whole theory doesn't fit for Lilah, sigh. She's never met Buffy. Wes was never attracted to Buffy. It doesn't fit.
[> [> [> 'frex' - for example, presumably? -- Marie, 08:45:55 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> LOL, I thought it was a conjugation of frelling (NT) -- JM, 10:48:50 10/08/02 Tue
[> Great post (Spoilers, Angel S4, Ep1) -- Rahael, 03:17:34 10/08/02 Tue
Wish I could see the scene of the dinner. And indeed, Angel's other dreams But reading your post, two different dinners come to mind.
The last supper (I'm thinking of the Wesley feeding Angel blood theme as linking to this.) The Last Supper also has themes of betrayal.
The feast in Macbeth where Banquo's ghost appears to spoil things. Again, the theme of treachery.
Also, food, interesting, because, as you say, it emphasise Angel's otherness. He'll never be able to properly share, since he doesn't eat.
[> [> Re: Great post (Spoilers, Angel S4, Ep1) -- leslie, 11:45:37 10/08/02 Tue
"Also, food, interesting, because, as you say, it emphasise Angel's otherness. He'll never be able to properly share, since he doesn't eat."
But "doesn't" doesn't mean "can't." Spike shows that vampires are perfectly capable of eating if they want to, it's just that human food does not nourish them like blood does. This may seem like a nitpicky point, but there's more to sharing a meal than simply "consuming mass quantities" as the Coneheads so eloquently put it. Sharing a meal is a symbolic act of communion as well as a nutritive act. It's why that final scene in "Pangs" with Spike tied up but still at the table with *something* that the others are also eating set in front of him marks the beginning of his incorporation into the Buffy family.
Now, there's always been something weird about the amount of human food that Spike eats, even if it's mostly bar snacks. But this has been one of the aspects of him that seems to point up the fact that he still, on some level, thinks of himself as human. Nonetheless, it illustrates that there is nothing physiological that prevents vampires from eating human food; the choice not to do so is a symbolic choice that emphasizes their Otherness. Even at his most soul-full, Angel doesn't eat food--I can't remember the exact episode, I think it's shortly after they've moved AI into the hotel, isn't there a scene in which Cordy brings him a sandwich and he can't understand what she's doing it for? His refusal to partake of the sharing aspect of meals is an indication that *he* still thinks of himself primarily as a vampire, as Other; his refusal to eat food is a choice. It seems that the whole Thanksgiving scene here is the first sign we've seen that he even *wants* to share food with his family, and he's afraid that he will be left out.
Of course, it could also just be the kind of tormenting food dream you get when you're dieting or otherwise unable to eat!
[> [> Re: Great post (Spoilers, Angel S4, Ep1) -- alcibiades, 13:15:49 10/08/02 Tue
Thanks for your comments.
The last supper (I'm thinking of the Wesley feeding Angel blood theme as linking to this.)
I was also trying to find a Christ-like resonance there but couldn't quite do it. No outstretched arms -- crucifixion poses.
One interesting point is that Angel's starvation morphed into an anxiety at the dinner that the others -- his family -- were keeping the food away from him. In the dream with Cordy, he apologizes even as he tears her throat out because of his need for blood which no one was providing him.
Yet, when Wesley rescues him, Wesley feeds Angel his own blood entirely volitionally.
And Wes' cutting of his arm to feed Angel contrasts with Connor cutting his arm to look innocent in front of Fred and Gunn after he has dusted the Sunny look alike vamp in order to keep them from finding Angel. (And that's a weird thing. Was that vamp played by the actress who played Sunny?)
These two self cuttings allow us to contrast Connor and Wes.
Connor cuts himself to hide his true nature from those closest to him at the moment, to be self-serving. Fred and Gunn don't see past the obvious.
Wes cutting himself reveals his true nature, that despite his current trappings of evil, sleeping with one enemy and enslaving the other, he is self sacrificing to do good. The irony, then, is that Fred and Gunn are just as blind to this -- and in Fred's case it really stings -- as they were to Connor's self-servitude.
[> [> [> The door has always been open -- Malandanza, 17:49:29 10/08/02 Tue
I thought of the fantasy dinner in The Body (Buffy's dream that Joyce was saved) when I saw the banquet, but I do think that Pangs is more a more appropriate comparison. Angel as the outside.
Another thing I thought was interesting was that Wesley was at the table. Deep down, Angel wanted Wesley back at AI. I never found Wesley's complaints (that his friends didn't give him a chance to explain) to be convincing -- his friends did know exactly why he took the child. In fact, they knew more than Wesley because they knew that Sahjhan had rewritten the prophecy. So while Wesley pretended to be Achilles sulking in his tent, the door to AI really was open all along -- all he had to do was admit that he had been wrong. Like Angel did after his noir period -- Angel was meek, contrite, and apologetic and his friends eventually took him back. By contrast, Wesley has been arrogant, self-righteous, and unrepentant. He's surprised Angel, Gunn, Fred and Cordy have been standoffish? What would he have done if the situation had been reversed?
"Wes cutting himself reveals his true nature, that despite his current trappings of evil, sleeping with one enemy and enslaving the other, he is self sacrificing to do good. The irony, then, is that Fred and Gunn are just as blind to this -- and in Fred's case it really stings -- as they were to Connor's self-servitude."
Wesley want to be the one who saves Angel. Fred and Gunn would have helped him look for Angel had he told them what had happened and maybe (especially with Fred's genius with electronics) Angel would have been rescued earlier. Additionally, Wesley says that he knew who's door to kick down when Angel vanished -- the same would be true for Fred and Gunn. Except Justine wasn't to be found because she was bound and gagged in Wesley's closet. His actions prevented Gunn and Fred from having any leads on Angel's whereabouts. I do think that Wesley has drifted far from the side of light at this point -- he saves Angel out of selfish motives and his treatment of Justine is inexcusable (why, by the way, was her blood too thin? My interpretation is that she's anemic after having been malnourished for three months).
And what happens to Justine now? Angel will be looking for her to find out if she's responsible for Cordy's disappearance. The Destroyer knows that she killed Holtz and probably doesn't care about her reasons for doing so. My guess is she has to end up at W&H if she wants to stay alive -- and will tell Lilah all about Wesley's little slave girl. Lilah, meanwhile, needs a big success if she wants to keep her position (and her head) -- I am hoping to see Wesley get a little karmic payback and end up in chains in a W&H cell.
[> [> [> [> Re: The door has always been open -- JM, 19:30:57 10/08/02 Tue
Welllll, yes, deep down under the smother you with a pillow. No surprise Wes doesnt' jump at the offer. There have been mis-steps on both sides. The door hasn't been open, but it has been cracked for a long time now. That has a lot to do with Fred's reaction. She's been championing his cause for a while now and never believed Gunn fully till she saw it for herself. Wes doesn't want back in, not on their terms. Possibly because he isn't sorry. Yes, he regrets the way it turned out with Connor. Yes, he thinks he ultimately deserved what he got. Yes, he still believes in the mission. But right at this moment, presented with the same alternatives as last spring, he would do the same exact thing. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.
[> [> [> [> Re: The door has always been open -- Miss Edith, 19:34:35 10/08/02 Tue
The door was not always open for Wesley. Wesley was helpless in a bed when Angel tried to kill him. Gunn, and Cordy took Angel's side and won't even speak Wesley's name. And Fred only went to the hospital to warn Wesley to keep away from Angel Investigations as Angel is out for blood. In Deep Down Fred makes catty remarks about Wesley not caring when Wesley actually searched for Angel and rescued him.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: The door has always been open -- yabyumpan, 04:32:31 10/09/02 Wed
"In Deep Down Fred makes catty remarks about Wesley not caring when Wesley actually searched for Angel and rescued him"
That's true but I think Fred is right about Wesley not caring about her and Gunn. When asked why he didn't tell them about Connor, Wesley says because they weren't in danger and he (Connor)doesn't kill humans (I haven't seen the ep but I think that's right). How does Wesley know this? has he even met Connor? From the perspective of the audience and to some extent, Fred and Gunn, we know that's not true. Connor was ready to kill the Drug Dealer twice, the first time Sunny persuaded him not to so he only cut off his ear, the second time, after Sunny was found dead it was Angel trying to persuad him that it wasn't the right thing to do.
I think Wesley sees Connor as Angel's son, sharing the same morality of 'killing humans is wrong'. In fact he is the prodgeny of Holtz, a man who had no qualms about killing humans if they got in his way or he considered them evil.
Connor's world view isn't just 'humans good, demons bad', it's more about there is good and there is evil and if something is evil, you 'punish'. There is every chance that Fred and Gunn would have been in danger from Connor if he begun to suspect they were evil or if he thought they might find out what he'd done to Angel.
I think Wesley may well have used Fred and Gunn to keep Connor occupied while he searched for Angel. Once again deciding what they needed to know, once again treating them with no respect, once again deciding that only he was able to do what was right.
I'm not surprised Fred was p***** at him, he may have saved Angel but he again showed how little he thinks of the rest of them.
[> Re: A Photographic Finish -- On Family and Frames in Deep Down -- sorry long -- Rattletrap, 04:59:55 10/08/02 Tue
Fascinating post.
We have seen one other dinner scene in BtVS that sprang immediately to my mind -- the Christmas Dinner scene in "The Body." Here, as we see in "Deep Down," the scene is a light interlude that breaks up a very dark overall story. The scene in "The Body" was looking back to a happier memory of a time past, and the one in Angel to an imagined fantasy of a time in the future. Any thoughts on how this one ties in? I'd love to hear your take, alcibiades.
'trap
[> Most excellent analysis... hope you'll be doing this each week! -- OnM, 09:28:27 10/08/02 Tue
I haven't had the chance to view the episode a second time yet, but your metaphorical readings seem right-on. I must confess that I 'missed the target' on the dartboard one, in retrospect it's so obvious I could smack myself. I knew there had to be something there relative to its appearance in that scene, I just couldn't suss it at the time.
Great post! This board tends to be heavy on the Buffy discussion, and somewhat less so on Angel analysis, so I'm sure Masq will really dig this!
You have a really good eye for cinematic visual language, alcibiades-- wanna do a movie column? The position's available!
;-)
[> [> About that target... -- alcibiades, 12:57:00 10/08/02 Tue
It seems totally obvious in retrospect, but it was also the last point I got. I was so focused on the photography thing, I kept on overlooking it. It was a giant, head-striking duh.
Thanks for your comments.
The reason I love the Jossverse so much is that the visual imagery is so rich. And I don't really have a clue if any other TV shows do this -- or not. I have never watched a TV show over and over and felt a need to interpret it visually before.
I imagine the Sopranos or Six Feet Under must have stuff like this going on -- I've watched them in the past, but not now -- and I never really cared enough to spot these kinds of things.
Anyone know?
;-) So about that movie column? Er. What exactly are you talking about?
[> Re: A Photographic Finish -- On Family and Frames in Deep Down -- sorry long -- ponygirl, 11:16:52 10/08/02 Tue
Wow, that was great! I'm itching to rewatch my tape of the episode now. Your post also made me think of Connor's dramatic leaping off buildings exits. He keeps dropping out of frame, we don't follow him, or see him land. It emphasizes his supernatural otherness, and ties in to what he did to Angel. Unlike Angel though, Connor hasn't hit bottom, he's still throwing himself out into the void, still falling.
[> the breaking glass -- Elenphant, 21:56:31 10/08/02 Tue
One possibility for the close up of the glass...in the first season (the pilot?), Angel catches a teacup and saucer as they are about to fall from a table when he is in the bar. Someone then comments on his quick reflexes. At that point, things were looking up for him and he was confident that, by Doyle's assurance, he had a mission. Now, everything seems to be falling apart around him. Perhaps the shattering glass represents his anxieties? Maybe he feels he's losing control - losing his family and friends one by one. He was betrayed by Wesley, and then by Connor, and perhaps he felt abandoned by Cordy because she didn't show up for their rendezvous. With Buffy, her powers and strength become compromised when she is emotionally upset. Perhaps it's the same way for Angel?
-Elenphant
[> First Buffy/Angel crossover theme? (spoilers 4.1, 7.3) -- Scroll, 09:31:03 10/09/02 Wed
I've seen many posts referring to the symbolism of doors and gateways in the past 3 eps of "Buffy". Could this be linked to the use of framing in "Angel"? Doorways and windows are not only methods for moving from one locale to another, they are used to frame people on both shows. Angel and Connor dive through a window, Willow and Giles are framed in an open doorway. Cordy looks at a framed photo of Angel, herself, and Wesley. Angel's box has a glass window framing his face. Not sure what all this means, however...
Excellent post, alcibiades!
Schizophrenia is it in BTVS? -- neaux, 09:03:46 10/08/02 Tue
While doing research on stress for a health publication I produce at work, I came across an article on Schizophrenia at the nimh.
While I can say I would rule this out as a possible diagnosis for Spike 7.1/7.2 or even Buffy from Normal Again. I found this very informative and you can definately see some of these general qualities in Spike's new character.
Excerpted from NIMH.NIH.GOV
The World of People With Schizophrenia
*Distorted Perceptions of Reality
People with schizophrenia may have perceptions of reality that are strikingly different from the reality seen and shared by others around them. Living in a world distorted by hallucinations and delusions, individuals with schizophrenia may feel frightened, anxious, and confused.
In part because of the unusual realities they experience, people with schizophrenia may behave very differently at various times. Sometimes they may seem distant, detached, or preoccupied and may even sit as rigidly as a stone, not moving for hours or uttering a sound. Other times they may move about constantly ñ always occupied, appearing wide-awake, vigilant, and alert.
*Hallucinations and Illusions
Hallucinations and illusions are disturbances of perception that are common in people suffering from schizophrenia. Hallucinations are perceptions that occur without connection to an appropriate source. Although hallucinations can occur in any sensory form ñ auditory (sound), visual (sight), tactile (touch), gustatory (taste), and olfactory (smell) ñ hearing voices that other people do not hear is the most common type of hallucination in schizophrenia. Voices may describe the patient's activities, carry on a conversation, warn of impending dangers, or even issue orders to the individual. Illusions, on the other hand, occur when a sensory stimulus is present but is incorrectly interpreted by the individual.
*Delusions
Delusions are false personal beliefs that are not subject to reason or contradictory evidence and are not explained by a person's usual cultural concepts. Delusions may take on different themes. For example, patients suffering from paranoid-type symptoms ñ roughly one-third of people with schizophrenia ñ often have delusions of persecution, or false and irrational beliefs that they are being cheated, harassed, poisoned, or conspired against. These patients may believe that they, or a member of the family or someone close to them, are the focus of this persecution. In addition, delusions of grandeur, in which a person may believe he or she is a famous or important figure, may occur in schizophrenia. Sometimes the delusions experienced by people with schizophrenia are quite bizarre; for instance, believing that a neighbor is controlling their behavior with magnetic waves; that people on television are directing special messages to them; or that their thoughts are being broadcast aloud to others.
Substance Abuse
Substance abuse is a common concern of the family and friends of people with schizophrenia. Since some people who abuse drugs may show symptoms similar to those of schizophrenia, people with schizophrenia may be mistaken for people "high on drugs.î While most researchers do not believe that substance abuse causes schizophrenia, people who have schizophrenia often abuse alcohol and/or drugs, and may have particularly bad reactions to certain drugs. Substance abuse can reduce the effectiveness of treatment for schizophrenia. Stimulants (such as amphetamines or cocaine) may cause major problems for patients with schizophrenia, as may PCP or marijuana. In fact, some people experience a worsening of their schizophrenic symptoms when they are taking such drugs. Substance abuse also reduces the likelihood that patients will follow the treatment plans recommended by their doctors.
*Schizophrenia and Nicotine
The most common form of substance use disorder in people with schizophrenia is nicotine dependence due to smoking. While the prevalence of smoking in the U.S. population is about 25 to 30 percent, the prevalence among people with schizophrenia is approximately three times as high. Research has shown that the relationship between smoking and schizophrenia is complex. Although people with schizophrenia may smoke to self medicate their symptoms, smoking has been found to interfere with the response to antipsychotic drugs. Several studies have found that schizophrenia patients who smoke need higher doses of antipsychotic medication. Quitting smoking may be especially difficult for people with schizophrenia, because the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal may cause a temporary worsening of schizophrenia symptoms. However, smoking cessation strategies that include nicotine replacement methods may be effective. Doctors should carefully monitor medication dosage and response when patients with schizophrenia either start or stop smoking.
* Disordered Thinking
Schizophrenia often affects a person's ability to ìthink straight.î Thoughts may come and go rapidly; the person may not be able to concentrate on one thought for very long and may be easily distracted, unable to focus attention.
People with schizophrenia may not be able to sort out what is relevant and what is not relevant to a situation. The person may be unable to connect thoughts into logical sequences, with thoughts becoming disorganized and fragmented. This lack of logical continuity of thought, termed ìthought disorder,î can make conversation very difficult and may contribute to social isolation. If people cannot make sense of what an individual is saying, they are likely to become uncomfortable and tend to leave that person alone.
* Emotional Expression
People with schizophrenia often show ìbluntedî or ìflatî affect. This refers to a severe reduction in emotional expressiveness. A person with schizophrenia may not show the signs of normal emotion, perhaps may speak in a monotonous voice, have diminished facial expressions, and appear extremely apathetic. The person may withdraw socially, avoiding contact with others; and when forced to interact, he or she may have nothing to say, reflecting ìimpoverished thought.î Motivation can be greatly decreased, as can interest in or enjoyment of life. In some severe cases, a person can spend entire days doing nothing at all, even neglecting basic hygiene. These problems with emotional expression and motivation, which may be extremely troubling to family members and friends, are symptoms of schizophrenia ñ not character flaws or personal weaknesses.
* Normal Versus Abnormal
At times, normal individuals may feel, think, or act in ways that resemble schizophrenia. Normal people may sometimes be unable to ìthink straight.î They may become extremely anxious, for example, when speaking in front of groups and may feel confused, be unable to pull their thoughts together, and forget what they had intended to say. This is not schizophrenia. At the same time, people with schizophrenia do not always act abnormally. Indeed, some people with the illness can appear completely normal and be perfectly responsible, even while they experience hallucinations or delusions. An individual's behavior may change over time, becoming bizarre if medication is stopped and returning closer to normal when receiving appropriate treatment.
Schizophrenia Is Not "Split Personality"
There is a common notion that schizophrenia is the same as "split personalityî ñ a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde switch in character.
This is not correct.
Are People With Schizophrenia Likely To Be Violent?
News and entertainment media tend to link mental illness and criminal violence; however, studies indicate that except for those persons with a record of criminal violence before becoming ill, and those with substance abuse or alcohol problems, people with schizophrenia are not especially prone to violence. Most individuals with schizophrenia are not violent; more typically, they are withdrawn and prefer to be left alone. Most violent crimes are not committed by persons with schizophrenia, and most persons with schizophrenia do not commit violent crimes. Substance abuse significantly raises the rate of violence in people with schizophrenia but also in people who do not have any mental illness. People with paranoid and psychotic symptoms, which can become worse if medications are discontinued, may also be at higher risk for violent behavior. When violence does occur, it is most frequently targeted at family members and friends, and more often takes place at home.
What About Suicide?
Suicide is a serious danger in people who have schizophrenia. If an individual tries to commit suicide or threatens to do so, professional help should be sought immediately. People with schizophrenia have a higher rate of suicide than the general population. Approximately 10 percent of people with schizophrenia (especially younger adult males) commit suicide. Unfortunately, the prediction of suicide in people with schizophrenia can be especially difficult.
-END
You can make your own conclusion.. I just thought this was an interesting article.
Comments?
[> oops! Possible 7.1/7/2 spoilers -- neaux, 09:08:25 10/08/02 Tue
Visual imagery in Buffy (tiny 7.2 spoilers) -- Tchaikovsky, 09:21:08 10/08/02 Tue
This is almost certainly a thread which will be swamped by people's reactions to 7.3 later, but just for the moment:
I was reading OnM's wonderful review of 7.2 and his comments about the mask effect on Buffy's face, and the more open face of Dawn. I have to admit I didn't consciously notice this, but it got me thinking about visually intelligent aspects of Buffy.
My vote for the most interesting visual is the one at the end of 'The Harsh Light of Day' where Harmony, Anya and Buffy become the three sides of a triangle, linking their different circumstances. Throughout the episode, the three function in very different stories, (Xander/Anya's comedic sex scene, Buffy/Parker agonising main plot, Spike/Harmony as a side-thread). We also have different immediate reactions to the characters, because of their familiarilty. We're most likely to feel sorry for Buffy, because we already know her so well. We're inclined just to laugh at Spike's insults of Harmony. Our thoughts about Anya are more ambiguous. But the triangle at the end draws them together most eloquently, and without any unnecessary dialogue.
Any other visual stimuli in Buffy which 'caught your eye?'
[> Re: Visual imagery in Buffy (tiny 7.2 spoilers) -- LeeAnn, 11:20:11 10/08/02 Tue
Visual Imagery in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I was thinking how the healing cuts on Spike's chest in Beneath You mimicked the injuries that Buffy always left on his chest when she had sex with him. She always left him a little damaged. It's like the scaring over his heart, (of his heart) started then.
The fantastic lighting in the church scene, which made Spike's skin glow like it was lit from within, was the same as in the crypt scene in Seeing Red. Spike said then that he was not a monster and not a man, that he was nothing. He's still not a monster and not a man. Is he still nothing? No more mind at least. Was the lighting supposed to draw our attention back to the crypt scene. Or did it just look soo damn good they had to use it again.
I think that someone could write a thesis on Spike's shirts. When he was a full vampire he wore black with the red silk shirt. After he was chipped that shirt disappeared, only to return briefly in OMWF. When he and Buffy first made it in Smashed he was wearing a blue shirt over his black T-shirt. During their affair he usually wore a shirt with some color or pattern in it. Did this symbolize that while he loved Buffy and was having sex with her he was not purely evil, that there was some lightening of his darkness?
At the end of As You Were he's back to all black. The black is only interrupted once, in Entropy, the episode where he has sex with Anya. Seeing Red, he's back in black.
Then this year. He's back in Sunnydale. In all black. And insane. But when he goes to help Buffy he puts on a "costume", a bright blue shirt, and a faÁade of "goodness"? I can't tell yet if that is all fake or not. Certainly it didn't stop Evil!Spike from coming out at the Bronze.
In Wrecked, in Gone and in As You Were, Spike is naked or close to it and is vulnerable, especially to Buffy. In Beneath You his bare torso is used again to show his vulnerability to Buffy and to God. He is naked before Buffy and God (not sure if he make much difference between them), stripped of all his protections. Stripped of his strength ("Did you make me weak"), of his mind ("No more mind games. No more mind."), of his confidence, of his humor, even of his coat. Stripped of everything we associate with Spike. Stripped even of his shirt. Naked physically, emotionally and spiritually before Buffy and before God. He embraces the cross and his flesh is seared, so his embrace of Buffy seared him too but still he embraced her, accepting the pain.
[> Re: Visual imagery in Buffy (tiny 7.2 spoilers) -- shadowkat, 11:50:50 10/08/02 Tue
Because I'm horribly bored again and ran out of posts to read, I'll play:
1. Marks on the chest. Not sure if this is meant to symbolize anything or not. But! Riley's chip is removed in OOMM from the area near his heart. He sports up to the point he leaves in Into the Woods - a scar over the left part of his body or the heart. Spike when he get's the soul - Lurkey places his claw over Spike's heart leaving what appears to be a similar mark to Riley's. Buffy examines Riley's mark with concern in OOMM and Spike's with concern in Lessons and Beneath You.
2. Use of lighting. The church sequence is in blue light.
the scene in the Bronze is incredibly bright - brighter than the Bronze usually is. In past seasons the Bronze always seemed to be bathed in darker hues. Does this mean - that the bright lights have shown the characters and their problems in sharper focus? They don't appear to be able to hide anything in the scene at the Bronze, when usually they do hide there. In past seasons such as Season 1 and 2, Buffy and friends barely notice vampires or Angel and Spike sucessfully lurk in the backgroung. In Dead Things, B/S have sex unbeknowest to Buffy's friends. But in BY - everything (including but not quite Spike's new soul) is brought out. And their faces are shown in stark relief.
Nothing can hide. As Sophist and OM noted in OM's thread below - it's almost odd that we have a full-on demon battle in front of the oblivious inhabitants of SunnyD and Buffy engages Spike in battle without worrying about her secret identity. Does this mean the Bronze is no longer a place where anyone can hide? Has it become safer or less so?
3. Much has already been commented on Spike's attire. So no need to add to that. Did notice however that for someone in a quite a bit of torment - he doesn't smoke once. What?
Has he decided to go through nicotine withdrawl on top of everything else? Or is this more of the tv adage - only evil villains are allowed to smoke - otherwise we risk giving the wrong message to teens - sort of fits with Buffy' shooting the Smoking Sucks sign in Angel Season 1.
Though technically speaking? I suppose you could say he's smoking on the cross at the end (sorry bad joke - that
was beneath me...no pun intended)
4. There's seems to be quite a bit of snake imagery or worm imagery in this show. Two monster types that ME writers are fascinated by: bad eggs and worms/snakes.
-snake first appears as the many headed hellmouth which has monster heads that remind me of well DMP, BY.
-Shadow - we have the snake chasing after Dawn
-Reptile Boy - the snake in the frat house
-The Mayor becomes a big snake
-DMP - the snake like eel like thing on top of the old lady's head (yes I know it also looked like a penis)
-BY - the tremors worm
I'm sure there are more that I've forgotten.
Eggs
-bad eggs - the parasites that come out of the hard-boiled eggs in season 2 btvs
-forever - the egg that grants life or return to life that Dawn and Spike steal from yet another snake headed multi-headed demon
-the demon eggs in AYW
And I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting.
So what's with the snakes and eggs? Sex? NEgative aspects
of it? Our fear of it?
Drawing blank now...anyone else want to play?
[> [> A few thoughts- and a quick riposte -- Tchaikovsky, 12:05:59 10/08/02 Tue
Thank you both for your replies to this vague little thought, both much more interesting than my starter.
Should we consider snakes to have something to do with original sin, in at least some of the incarnations you name above? Our 'back to the beginning' theme fits in here: the first evil, in the Christo/Judao/Muslim creation story, is the serpent, who undermines Adam and Eve's bliss. Snakes are traditionally evil (poor things) and cold-blooded, but is there a spiritual theme in there somewhere? Just throwing out questions really.
Eggs also have to do with birth and nativity, obviously. And in Forever, if that's the one I'm thinking of, Dawn concocts a new life for her Mother. In As You Were, we could see the birth of Buffy's new perception of Spike, genuinely evil, but that's maybe being over-clever.
Finally, Shadowkat, thank you very much for your long and clever reply to my argument about Buffy/Angel linkage being useless. It got archived before I had chance to draw breath. Seems wrong to resurrect it in this thread, except to say that I believe a lot of the overlapping themes that you mention are close to being universal themes to all art, rather than specific to the Buffy/Angel universe, and therefore all interesting art should address these questions. Thus my need for overlaps is still not consummated. I think of them as two intricate mosaics, rather than one rich tapestry.
[> [> [> Snakes and Eggs... -- shadowkat, 12:48:28 10/08/02 Tue
Oooh fun.
(OT - note first. Thanks for the compliment on the B/A linkage. Although have yet to convince you...maybe this season will. ;-) At any rate as long as you continue to watch both? I'm happy. They've become my two favorite shows on TV.)
1. The snake isn't so much evil in myth as used as a symbol of temptation. (Okay this is taking me back 15 years so I may be off so bear with me) Some myth scholars, Neumann comes to mind - consider the snake a symbol of the consciousness or the collective unconscious awakening.
If you think of it - Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were stuck in the eden of unconsciousness - they knew not what they were, who they were, if they were naked...they were innocent of all awareness, then the snake came and tempted Eve to bite into the apple and become whammo! aware.
The image on some ancient pieces of art of the snake eating its tail symbolizes the concept of unconscious state of being, a state that some may consider purer than the conscious one. Some even go so far as to believe in our unconscious state - we are connected to everyone else.
Snakes lay eggs. As opposed to mammals whose eggs are inside them. We know from interviews that Whedon has an interest in the imagery of Alien. HE even wrote the script for Alien Resurrection. He finds the concept first explored by MAry Shelly in Frankenstein of giving birth to monsterous life and being changed by that birth to be fascinating - the sick mother so to speak. A concept similarily explored with Professor Walsh and Adam.
In Buffy I see the snakes as either giving life or attempting to devor or expose it.
The Mayor wants to devor all life. Yet in Faith's dream he removes the snake from their blanket - he is NOT interested in devoring Faith. Faith to him is precious. Instead he gives her what appears to be snakelike device that switches her essence and Buffy's or their consciousnesses, so both must walk in the other's shoes. By doing so, Buffy and Faith are forever changed and their awareness is increased.
The hellmouth - both gives birth to demons - allowing them to escape or retreat to it's womb of hell - the bride of the Master in Prophecy Girl (or maybe the Master's child/mother?)
The snake in Shadow - wishes to expose life, to show the key to glory. It's a traitor. (Traitorish snake)
The snakelike appendage in DMP - is symbolic of sex and it's paralyzing affect on both Buffy and Spike. Which we learn in BY harmed them both.
The worm in BY which is also a man - clearly a metaphor for sex and the violence of it or perhaps our fear of its violence - exhibited both by the teeth in the vaginal like hole at the end of the worm and by the penile shape of it.
Yet it is easily defeated and harms no one larger than a small dog. Which means the fear may be more in our heads?
2. Eggs. Exegy who used to post here did an amazing metaphorical post on AYW's eggs. I will try to remember some of it but if you want - go back to the June/July archives and see if it's there.
The eggs in AYW weren't so much evidence of Spike's evil as evidence of the seeds of the sexual relationship they were having. Their meaningless and unhealthy relationship planted seeds which sprouted to become devoring creatures which could have consumed them both. Both seem unaware of this threat until Riley dressed like the missionary from hell arrives and chastises them for it - uncovering B/S in bed as he does so (that's my take not Exegy's ;-) she came up with the seeds idea). The fact that neither are aware of the dangers is made clear by the fact that Spike does not appear to realize the eggs are about to hatch or the danger of them. They are merely one of his hairbrained schemes to make money. Without a soul - he can not conceive of the harm they cause. Buffy - in her desperation to feel and to lose herself - is ignoring the repercussions of the act. It's just sex after all. I can always leave him. HE's just a thing. IT does not matter. Yet sex does have consequences - it can result in disease, pregnancy, etc.
The demon eggs show this - they've sprouted from B/S' unhealthly liason.
The egg in Forever is also bad - it is stolen and results in the possibly demonic return of Joyce. The idea of being "god" may be emphasised here. Although this story reminds me a great deal of the horror tale Monkey's PAw which continues to scare me. Forever in some ways was one of the most frightening Buffy episodes I've seen. Again Spike has no clue of the dangers. He is as innocent to them as Dawn. Both know nothing of creating life.
The eggs in Bad Eggs - symbolize the fear of having kids.
Will the children take over your life, yourself? Will you become a parasite to them?
Finally there was a poster on B C & S who discussed eggs and liturgical rituals in I think Orthdox churches, but I can't remember any of it. Hopefully someone else will?
[> [> [> [> Here's to watching both shows -- Tchaikovsky, 14:55:28 10/08/02 Tue
I shall certainly continue to watch both shows- and they are also two of my favourites, I must say. It occurs to me, incidentally, that part of our disagreement may be down to my lack of clarity- I don't have any problem with characters referring back to the first three seasons, (that Angel line about MC Esher was funny), I just object to silly little connections like the almost superfluous role played by Willow in 'Disharmony'. Look, here's someone from our other show. Wow.
As for the snake: I guess that Genesis's serpent represents many different things: I would say that as well as temptation, and, as you imply, an awakening from innocence, (can we see Season Two Angel as the serpent for Buffy?) the serpent does have certain overtones of evil. In one of the richest and most beautiful lines in the bizarre prophecy which is 'Revelation', here rendered from the him 'Ye choirs of new Jerusalem' we have:
'For Judah's Lion bursts its chains
Crushing the serpent's head
And cries aloud through death's domains
To wake the imprisoned dead' (approx)
Here I don't think the snake represents temptation, or an awakening from innocence, but evil, which will finally be crushed by all subscribers to Judah's tribe, in other words, the worshippers of Yahweh.
Clearly the snake is also a phallic symbol, and I think there is at least a small suggestion of this in the hole found in 'Beneath You' as you mention.
Also, I agree with your citing Forever as being frightening. I loved the clever reversal in the final scene. Throughout the episode, we are supposed to see Buffy as the one with everything under control, very measured: but we later find out it's because when she stops will be when she will have to accept that Joyce is gone. Conversely, Dawn appears to be very much giving in to grief, but eventually must accept that her Mom is gone before reversing the spell. Dawn, not Buffy, ends up being the one who has dealt most emotionally honestly with the grief. And the thought of a Joyce monster, (heightened by the fact we never see it), is genuinely discomforting.
TCH
[> [> [> [> Re: Snakes and Eggs... -- aliera, 16:15:09 10/08/02 Tue
I haven't done eggs (are the eggs done yet?) one of my books on Easter myths mentions the Ukraine and some of the symbols that are used to decorate the eggs (something to do later) but I did a search on the intersection of kua & serpent & myth (because there is no paraguay passionflower by that name and I was trying to think of what else came out of the ground) and I came across this essay that discusses some of what you all are talking about:
www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/5789/serpent.htm
Read at your own risk...I'm not a scholar and can't supoort or deny all the references...also, have a glass of something-it's long.
Re: whether or not references between the two shows are intentional or not...I feel it's both...the writers and Joss are products of our culture too some things might be so prevalent as to be subconscious; but, not to the extent we see on these shows...and when they do something obscure or use an unusual word on both...well, it could be an inside joke; but, it's not an accident...and there's just too much discussion since last year about thematic linkage and plus, this is Joss.
[> [> [> Quick Mention Regarding Links between Shows. -- Age, 19:08:43 10/08/02 Tue
I'm not going to resurrect this topic either because the schedules of the two series are so far apart; however, in passing, I just want to mention that I've done several postings attempting to show that from season one episode one of 'Angel' the two shows have been linked for content on a weekly and arc basis. In season five I did read an article quoting Joss Whedon as saying that the 'Buffy' and 'Angel' eps had been co-ordinated for light and dark episodes in that particular season. How far back and to what extent the co-ordination of content went, I do not know. But my belief is that it started right from the beginning and not just for light and dark. Whether this is so or simply that I'm joining dots-to-dots, it's certainly a question topic I would love someone to pose to Mr Whedon.
Age.
Question about 7.2 (spoilers for 7.1 and 7.2) -- dream of the consortium, 10:40:29 10/08/02 Tue
I haven't seen much discussion of this - maybe I missed it -but what do people think gets Spike out of the basement? Is the general consensus that he leaves of his own accord after seeing Buffy? Or do people think he is being sent out by a larger force (shapeshifter demon, the other, whatever we want to call him)? That whole business about it being too soon (the speech while stalking the rat) seemed to imply to me that he was being sent, that the demon wanted him to go, though he believed he was not ready.
I actually found this the most mysterious part of the episode and would like some input before the next episode. (Sadly, for me that will be tomorrow...sigh.)
[> My unburdened-by-facts theory -- HonorH, 10:45:45 10/08/02 Tue
I think that when Spike felt the earthquake (caused by the worm?), it clicked in his fractured little brain that Buffy was in danger, so he managed to pull himself together enough to try and help. He pushed the soul-having business back far enough that he could make himself presentable and coherent. That, obviously, didn't work for terribly long.
[> Re: Question about 7.2 (spoilers for 7.1 and 7.2)Theory -- LeeAnn, 11:52:41 10/08/02 Tue
Theory of Spike and the Basement:
MORPHING MONSTER (as ADAM) ...I can be patient. Everything is well within parameters. She's exactly where I want her to be. And so are you, Number 17. You're right where you belong.
So the Morphing Monster has Spike right were he wants him. In the basement, near the Hellmouth, where he can torment and shape him without interruption.
The Spirits tried to keep Buffy out, " Actually, I'm thinking all you want is to get between me and that door. Who's for finding out why, " and away from Spike. It hardly seems necessary. No sooner does Buffy find Spike, lost in his madness, than she leaves the basement and leaves him to his fate, whatever that is. Doesn't come to check on him till a week later when she starts her job and she doesn't find him then.
So I think Spike is in the basement because the Big Bad wants him there, because he can be controlled better there, next to the Hellmouth. He let him out to interact with Buffy, but will reel him back soon.
[> Re: Question about 7.2 (spoilers for 7.1 and 7.2) -- leslie, 12:14:23 10/08/02 Tue
This is what I want to know: 1) where did he *get* the shirt? (Raiding the boys' locker room?) and 2) who the hell cut his hair? I accept that he can bleach it himself, but you can't get it that short at the back without help. Clem?
[> [> Re: Spike's hair -- Rob, 13:54:03 10/08/02 Tue
While I totally buy Clem doing it (he can do everything, can't he?) there was a whole day worth of story between the last time we saw Spike (the night Buffy had the dream? of the punky girl) and the night when he showed up lookin' all nice at Buffy's house. He easily could have gone to a professional barber or hairstylist during the day (if he covered himself with something) or early evening.
Rob
[> [> [> and paid them with what? -- leslie, 15:38:30 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> The same credit card Buffy used for her clothes and hair last year when working at the DMP -- alcibiades, 16:28:52 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> [> Joss Whedon's? -- HonorH, 17:48:05 10/08/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> The threat of a slow, fangy death? -- Rob, 20:29:25 10/08/02 Tue
Assuming EvilSpike was in control at the moment. ;o)
Rob
Fanfic archives? -- HonorH, 10:55:07 10/08/02 Tue
I'm getting a bit disillusioned with FanFiction.net lately and was wanting to find someplace else to house my fics. Does anyone know of a really good archive that doesn't specialize in a particular character or 'ship? Thanks!
[> Re: Fanfic archives? -- Just George, 11:32:51 10/08/02 Tue
My current favorite is the Buffy Fiction Archive at:
http://archive.shriftweb.org/
-JG
Quote from Joss Whedon back in May... -- ZachsMind, 12:51:42 10/08/02 Tue
Joss Whedon said back in May, as archived at Bronze Beta:
"I don't like most slasher films because they don't like people -- they're just kill fodder. Now there's also people preaching one thing while glorifying another, there's what Robin Wood calls the "Incoherent Text" of so many seventies movies, where peace and understanding may be the underlying desire, but horror and violence is the structure -- or the fun. My favorite example of the incoherent text is DIE HARD, where Buce Willis must learn to e more supportive of his wife -- while systematically stripping away everything (her boss, her workplace, her watch, her NAME) that she has. The decency running alongide the misogyny there is evident. I guess the point is, the best texts are incoherent. They EMBODY the struggle you describe. Horror is reactionary."
Here's a question: Who's this "Robin Wood" he claims to be quoting? Did he mean D. B. Woodside? Did he know there was gonna be a Principal Robin Wood back in May? Enough to quote him?
Another question: What "incoherent texts" do you see in Buffy or Angel? Obvious incongruencies that stand out for you as particularly incoherent.
One example that comes to my mind is Willow's search for identity. Losing herself in magic, using it like a crutch because she doesn't like just normal unpowerful Willow, yet the one person, Tara, who successfully got Willow to realize she was lovable without the magic, what do they do? The writers kill her off. That makes no sense. THEN, Willow goes on a rampage and XANDER of all people is the one to talk her down. XANDER. The one guy who completely DIDN'T accept Willow for who she is back in the first two seasons when she had a crush on him. Why? Willow wasn't Cordelia. WTF? That was totally whacked. No wonder Willow's so scatterbrained. I would be too.
What's your favorite incoherent text of the series?
[> Re: Robin Wood -- Desperado, 13:14:36 10/08/02 Tue
I believe Robin Wood is a film critic who has written several books on Film History.
[> [> Ah! -- ZachsMind, 13:39:59 10/08/02 Tue
Thank you! I found this link referring to Taxi Driver as an incoherent text, and how Robin Wood believed it to be because the screenwriter and director had different things they wanted to say with the piece, causing the end result to be incongruent. That would explain Die Hard too, having been adapted from Roderick Thorp's screenplay which barely resembled the final film.
Apparently Wood's reference to 'incoherent text' is a favorite quote among other movie buffs. Jonathan Rosenbaum refers to it too in his review of Coppola's revisiting his own Apocalypse Now. However, this is the first I'd seen it, and I thought it rather odd that the new character in Buffy just happens to have the same name. A tribute perhaps? An injoke on Whedon's part? Perhaps the principal will prove to be a 'critic' of Buffy's work and life?
Apparently, Robin Wood has had other things to say about the horror genre:
"One might say that the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses and oppresses." - Robin Wood
When I was in high school there was a fellow classmate with the name Robin Wood. However she was a girl. I didn't know her personally but a friend of mine would occasionally snicker, "but her mother wouldn't let her" after her name was mentioned by the teacher during homeroom roll call. ...Well it was funny back in high school.
[> [> [> Re: Ah! -- aliera, 15:11:43 10/08/02 Tue
by the way...
www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/15/horror_beneath.htm
[> Great .quote!! -- Rahael, 13:53:07 10/08/02 Tue
Thank you so much for pointing this out!! It explains so much for me, especially about the violence, and for example, our debates about the silent, non European Slayers on a month or so ago.
[> [> Re: Great .quote!! -- ponygirl, 14:02:08 10/08/02 Tue
Actually I think the first part of the quote is pretty interesting too, in terms of violence and representation. I've had this on my bulletin board for the past month.
"All right, you get the "kept Joss From Sleeping" award. (The ceremony is televised oct 11th). Your question is well put, and it's one I've asked since the only things I was writing were for my own 14 year old self to read. What is my responsiblity? How dark should I get, how much should every one of my characters represent an ideal or a reality? How far can you delve into evil before you are actually propagating it? Is propagating a real word? These are questions that must be confronted every time out to bat, and every time the decision is different. We have to delve into unconfortable and even awful places to find the heart of our stories (especially with the horror). These are fairy tales, not driving manuals. However, I have a mass audience, I have to show them something besides horror, I have to have values....
And so on. The fact is, if you are worried about these issues, you're probably worried enough. Too much of our culture today is controlled by people who don't give a rat's *** about their message, who just churn out crap. I don't like most slasher films because they don't like people -- they're just kill fodder. Now there's also people preaching one thing while glorifying another, there's what Robin Wood calls the "Incoherent Text" of so many seventies movies, where peace and understanding may be the underlying desire, but horror and violence is the structure -- or the fun. My favorite example of the incoherent text is DIE HARD, where Buce Willis must learn to e more supportive of his wife -- while systematically stripping away everything (her boss, her workplace, her watch, her NAME) that she has. The decency running alongide the misogyny there is evident. I guess the point is, the best texts are incoherent. They EMBODY the struggle you describe. Horror is reactionary. I'm liberal. But we get along. And DIE HARD is a great damn flick.
Did that make any sense?"
[> [> [> Re: Great .quote!! -- aliera, 15:51:55 10/08/02 Tue
I agree with him on this and I think it relates to the discussion going on below about philosophy and filters. I love the part about misogyny and decency and it feels very true to life. The thing I most wonder is about the desire to to put things back together post-deconstruction identification evoking emotion action realization... what's after that? What's beyond tricks up your sleeve and role reversals... that's the piece of Joss' mind I'd like to have.
[> [> [> [> Re: Great .quote!! -- ponygirl, 06:51:18 10/09/02 Wed
"The thing I most wonder is about the desire to to put things back together post-deconstruction identification evoking emotion action realization... what's after that? What's beyond tricks up your sleeve and role reversals... that's the piece of Joss' mind I'd like to have."
Maybe it's the desire after acknowledging all of the artifice to find the core truth of it, the meaning that has been dressed up with convention. That perhaps it's easier to feel an emotion when we recognize the manipulations. Maybe rather than trying to strip away artifice, to present some type of realism through the artificiality of film, this other approach of acknowledging, celebrating and finally subverting cliches and constructions allows the audience to move to another level.
[> [> Re: Great .quote!! -- JM, 14:47:02 10/08/02 Tue
Rahael, could you give me a hint of the tag line in the archives? I think I missed that and I bet it was very interesting.
[> [> [> Re: Great .quote!! -- Rahael, 15:28:23 10/08/02 Tue
It's part of a huge discussion, a great thread started by Slain: "Existential Much" - lots of twists and turns.
http://www.ivyweb.net/btvs/board/archives/aug02_pexist.html#1
The Silent slayer discussion happens near the bottom of the page (yes, that's how huge the thread was! It goes on forever.) Much discussion on existentialism, "Christian Buffy?" and Spike to be found within.
[> [> [> [> Re: Great .quote!! -- JM, 18:58:56 10/08/02 Tue
Thanks, Rahael. I've got to pack up but I promise to go spelunking forthright.
[> Disagree. Xander *always* accepted Willow for who she was. -- HonorH, 14:41:20 10/08/02 Tue
The fact that he didn't respond to her crush on him says no more about his acceptance of her than Buffy's romantic non-interest in Xander says about her acceptance of him. Xander always loved Willow--she was his best friend. I rather object to the idea that you've got to display romantic interest in someone in order to demonstrate that you fully appreciate them. This same thing's come up when discussing whether or not Buffy fully appreciates Xander. Of course she does--he's one of her two best friends and the most steady male in her life. So what if they don't smooch?
Oops. Guess one of my buttons got pushed.
[> [> Uhm... Ooh. Can of worms... -- ZachsMind, 15:57:03 10/08/02 Tue
I'd almost acquiesce to your rebuttal, except for the point where Xander and Willow saw each other decked out in prom clothes and then kissed. THEN Spike kidnapped them and Oz & Cordelia found them on top of each other cuz they thought they was gonna die. That was like, what? Season three?
Xander didn't accept Willow on Willow's terms in season two. She wanted to explore their relationship deeper and he was accepting Willow on HIS terms, which are basically the terms where he sees her as crayon breaky Willow. He sees her as they were when they were ten years old. He's never allowed their relationship to mature. Willow wanted it to mature and he couldn't handle it, because he still saw her as a little girl and that didn't do anything for his libido.
Two years later. Xander sees Willow dressed like a lady and for the first time he's noticably doubletaked -- to the point of whiplash. Here's a woman before him who is the whole package. His best friend. Intelligent. Funny. Knows him well. AND she's physically attractive. The problem? He's two years too late and now she's dating a werewolf and he's dating a demon (in the metaphorical sense. Cordy was a major pain in the butt back in those days).
So again. Xander's not accepting Willow on HER terms. He sees her from a very selfish perspective on his part. Not his fault. He's a guy. He's Xander. He's loyal to a fault but he's also very self-centered. It's the same thing that keeps him seeing Spike as an evil monster even though that's the Spike from five years ago and the Spike Buffy sees now is a bit more than just a shallow monster.
And Xander STILL sees Willow as like a kid sister. The Crayon breaky Willow speech is proof of that. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but he is just not willing to see Willow as she is.
Unless of course Giles is right and we are who we are, regardless of how we change. Maybe that's Xander's true power, that he has true sight. He can see who's good deep down and who's bad deep down. If that's the case, then I predict Anya will eventually become one of the good guys irrevocably and Spike's gonna betray everyone this season, because if Xander's actions are what Whedon's been following from day one, then that's how it'll go down.
[> [> [> Oooh, well said! -- Wisewoman, 16:58:34 10/08/02 Tue
I wouldn't be at all surprised if you turn out to be right.
Re: Willow/Xander--I agree that Xander saw Willow as his little friend for way too long, but something changed by the end of last season because he could honestly say to her, over and over, that he loved her, and expect her to accept that exactly as he intended it, IOW, there was no danger she'd suddenly revert to Nerd!Willow with a big ol' crush on the Xan-Man. I think they've finally reached a relationship of equals where neither expects more than the other is willing to give.
;o) dub
[> [> [> I see your point. -- HonorH, 17:46:43 10/08/02 Tue
From that perspective, it works. However, I do think Xander does now see Willow for who she is--more or less. As much as anyone can, that is. Like anyone who loves someone else very much, he's got his blind spots. See, for example, how long it took him to catch on that she had a problem with the witchcraft.
As for the crayon-breaky speech, it was also the scary-veiny speech. He was talking to Willow--the whole Willow, everything that was there, getting in touch with her remaining humanity. So I have to disagree that he sees her as a "kid sister." He sees her as a *sister*, period: older sometimes, younger sometimes, but always connected to him on a very deep level.
[> [> [> Re: Uhm... Ooh. Can of worms... -- vh, 09:09:46 10/09/02 Wed
Hm. He was against Angel too (non-Angelus as well as Angelus). I'm not quick to agree with the "true sight" assessment. He's been demonstrated to have his own predjudices and jealosies.
[> [> [> I'm with HonorH -- dream of the consortium, 11:25:26 10/09/02 Wed
Two years later. Xander sees Willow dressed like a lady and for the first time he's noticably doubletaked -- to the point of whiplash. Here's a woman before him who is the whole package. His best friend. Intelligent. Funny. Knows him well. AND she's physically attractive. The problem? He's two years too late and now she's dating a werewolf and he's dating a demon (in the metaphorical sense. Cordy was a major pain in the butt back in those days).
So again. Xander's not accepting Willow on HER terms.
He's seeing the whole package, but not accepting her on her terms? Not sure if I get what you're saying there.
This is the problem I have with people resenting Xander for not responding in kind to Willow's crush. Willow was rather deeply sexually repressed. I not talking about the same-sex issue here, though that is relevant to the discussion. I'm talking about her softer-side-of-Sears jumpers, her ghost Halloween costume, her Eskimo costume. It was well-established that she was uncomfortable displaying her sexuality. With good reason, a high-school boy is unlikely to be interested in a girl who doesn't seem to be comfortable with her sexuality. Lcuky for the girl, too - because she is probably unready to handle a relationship on that level, particularly with someone she has been close to forever. The power dynamic there would be terribly unbalanced. I would also argue that bringing a sexual/romantic component into a very close friendship at that age spells death for the friendship. High school relationships are rarely long-lasting, and usually fairly angst-ridden. There are exceptions, of course, but generally people are working out how to have relationships at that age, learning communications skills and emotional coping skills. The learning part, as in anything, is hard. It may be a cliche, but I do think it was better for the Xander/Willow friendship that they didn't get involved.
When Xander finally does feel attraction for Willow - well, it's not the same Willow as at the beginning of the series, is it? She has come into her own quite a bit, gaining confidence and self-assurance from her importance to Buffy and the Scooby gang, and from her relationship with Oz as well. Does it take a while for Xander to catch up with this? Sure. But I think its important to remember that two years before, Willow would never have worn that dress. The costume reflects inner changes. It's not surprising that "looking at linoleum makes me think about sex" Xander would find her attractive, and with her long-term fantasies about their involvement, Willow would reciprocate. But ultimately, she wasn't interested in dating Xander any more than he was interested in dating her.
I think that in many ways Xander was a safe person for Willow to have a crush on. He wouldn't be mean to her, he was always around - and he wouldn't like her back. Not that she would have said that at the time. But a lot of girls (and probably boys as well, though never having been a high-school boy or privy to their crushes, I can't say for certain) tend to choose impossible boys when they aren't ready for relationships. The freshman girl who obsesses over the senior football captain is testing out the waters of attraction, as much as she is really concerned with the particular object. That's why so many high school students can be deeply, painfully emotionally attached to people they've barely spoken to. The "best-friend crush" is a sort of inverse of that, but with the same result. It's trying out the fantasy of a relationship - just like hanging out with my best friend, but with kissing - without the danger of having to cope with the reality.
Now, by the way, as several people have said, I think Xander does see Willow in a more mature, all-encompassing, all-accepting way now. But he's had time to grow up, after all.
I got a little carried away on this one. Maybe I should add it to my buttons list.
[> Re: Quote from Joss Whedon back in May... -- Becky, 22:36:21 10/08/02 Tue
Thank you for posting that quote. On another list, I suggested that Joss might've taken the principal's name from the horror critic (I recognized Wood's name from an anthology I have, The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film). I didn't know if Joss even bothered with criticism. But darn if he doesn't sound like a critic in that quote!
Of course, even if Joss did name the principal after the critic, the character may reflect none of Wood's idea. But now I'm going to try and get my hands on Wood's "Return of the Repressed."