October 2002 posts
Season 7 Spoilers through 7:4 -- verdantheart, 14:08:52 10/18/02 Fri
Venturing timidly into the swirling waters here. I note a lot of controversy over Buffy's treatment of Spike so far this season. I'm starting a new thread here, since my previous comments may have been lost under a heap of other comments -- but, then, perhaps no one had anything to say in response.
This has to do with 7:4. I see a lot (!) of frustration with Buffy and I can understand it. But remember, she really put off going to Spike until the last minute (Friday). She waited until there really wasn't much time left. She's avoiding him. She wasn't afraid to touch him, now she is. Now she doesn't want to see him. The interactions since the revelation have been short; this is the first one that she undertook without company. The soul makes a difference to her, the rules have changed. I think she's afraid to find out how they've changed.
That may help explain some of the coldness. He's changed, a lot. He's mad, unpredictable. She may be unsure of her own response to him and afraid of how she'll feel. But when he begins striking himself, didn't you notice that she softened a little, and she did touch him, holding back his fist, gently, speaking to him more gently? Lastly, leaving him alone with "I think my being here makes it worse." Doesn't it though? She is, after all, a key to his pain.
I think that she has a problem with Spike's having a soul. After all, my theory is the whole reason that she came to him in season 6 was that he didn't have one; that he was evil and therefore it was, in theory, OK to use him. But what was the result of this? He ran off and got himself a soul -- and she sees herself as a direct contributor to this action. I'm sure she feels a certain amount of guilt about it. She shows flashes of compassion, but she's also hard, impatient, and reserved. Does she feel guilt? Fear -- of him -- that she'll care about him (if she thinks about it too much)? Or is it simply that she wants him to get over it already?
However, this is all conjecture because Buffy hasn't exactly been demonstrative about her feelings. Well, what's new? What's needed is for the writers to find a way to show us what's going on inside of Buffy. She's not depressed anymore, so they should be able to open her up a crack and throw the audience a clue. They should realize that suffering, deserved or not (and particularly when portrayed with the skillful eloquence of James Marsters), garners the sympathy of an audience and characters who seemingly contribute to or are unsympathetic to that suffering lose sympathy. I'm hoping for a little illumination soon.
Meanwhile, I'm willing to wait and see what happens.
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Oops, needs more of a title: More on the interminable Buffy debate; awaiting more info -- vh, 14:11:29 10/18/02 Fri
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I agree with your observations -- Pamela, 14:59:32 10/18/02 Fri
Now..please don't think I'm railing on the Buffster...after all her character is the title role. I agree that she's acted closed, and that it would be great to get a little more into what's going on in her head.
(This is part of the role Spike plays...he really does (or at least did) understand her better than the Scoobie pals or past loves or Mom or Giles or anyone). But she does things that even though falling under super hero stuff...they're the same kind of mind games that a lot of people play.
I'm not sure if she puts off seeing Spike...but she does seem to always find an excuse to see him...and usually the excuse is how she wants to use him for something. (then of course there's the real complex stories from last year where she comes up with excuses to use him so that she can use him for other purporses...if ya' know what I mean).
I don't think that Buffy knows what all is going on in her mind either. She's sorting through stuff. But that's been the equal and opposite story all along for these two characters cut from different sides of the same cloth.
They're both just as lonely and both working hard on their quests to find themselves. Spike states the way things are, just the way he believes it to be (usually alone with Buffy and telling her what he knows about her -- or talking to himself/others to psych himself into something)...Buffy says it like she wants it to be because she can't confront it being any other way (whether it's telling Spike he's unworthy, or misleading her friends about her activities, or refusing to look at her own lonliness and figuring out what it is she really wants).
I'm sure that before Christmas time, Spike/William will be much further along in his mental health...and the 2 of them will explore how things have changed and what it means. I think that Buffy will dangle a relationship carrot to Spike soon. We just don't know what kind of ship. (and I'm okay with that...because I don't think Buffy really knows either. She talks like she's consistent, but we saw last year how inconsistent her actions and words were).
The relationship between Buffy and her pals are getting repaired little by little. Through the acceptance of each other's weaknesses and strengths, maybe they'll have room to accept Buffy as she is -- and not their ideal of her. Who knows, maybe Buffy will be able to accept herself. Then and only then, will she really be able to open up her heart to accepting someone else as they really are too.
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Reinforcements/Spoilers through 7:4 -- alcibiades, 08:12:55 10/19/02 Sat
I agree too.
As I see it, a large part of the controversy over Buffy's behaviour toward Spike is that since the end of Season 5, when she responded to his allowing himself to get tortured on her behalf to save Dawn in Intervention by making him part of the team, Buffy (or anyone else) has never given him any kind of positive reinforcement. And he really needs some. (In Entropy it was he giving Anya all kinds of positive reinforcement when she needed it, whereas once Xander showed up on the scene, Anya was embarrassed that she had slept with the evil soulless thing.)
In some horrible way, maybe because he is such a fighter, this works in Spike's favor. After Crush, where he ties Buffy up and is disinvited from her house comes the utter rejection of IWMTLY and after that he saves Dawn in Intervention. Moving straight from nadir to apogee, with no in between steps is repeated once again a year later in SR through Grave, as Spike tries, in a moment of emotional madness, to take Buffy by force, and then immediately leaves Sunnydale in quest of his soul.
In Help, Buffy came unwillingly to Spike, but she did come to him. She gave him some relevant information about Cassie, and he came through for Cassie, just when Buffy needed him most. It is important that Spike made that decision on his own, just as it is important that he came to help on his own in Beyond You, before Buffy knew about the soul, but I can't see how a positive acknowledgement of what he has done is going to hurt his incentive at all -- and I can't see that it is good leadership for her to avoid dealing with the soul issue directly.
Spike is a survivor and bounces back stronger from every fall that does not kill him. However, it is worth asking is there not a less destructive path that could at least be tried with Spike.
Why not try the straight path with him -- maybe if he got some external reinforcement from anyone at all, not just Buffy, his journey onward might be that much smoother, less destructive and less wasteful for all of them.
Addendum: At the Bronze, once she realizes Spike has the soul, Anya did acknowledge that what he did is amazing -- shouldn't be possible -- and she is all happy face about it. Unfortunately, this support came at the worst possible moment -- if Anya had said it in private it would have been great, but in public, it was an unmasking he was not ready for.
Whereas, those three tears that Buffy cried for him, came only after he was burning on the cross and his back was turned. And since that -- face to face, no positive reinforcement. And behind his back, smelly remarks.
Which by the way, I think he did hear, since he was all cleaned up again this episode.
But once again wearing black. Surely not an altogether good external sign about what the character thinks about himself now.
It's true that early Buffy did not get positive reinforcements from the people she helped, but it is also true that Giles constantly gave her reinforcement about what she was doing -- the good, the bad and the ugly. As Giles did with Willow in Season 6 and Season 7. A Buffy is doing with Dawn. As Dawn does with Buffy. As Buffy and Dawn did with Xander over the summer when he saved the world with his mouth.
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Re: Reinforcements/Spoilers through 7:4 -- LeeAnn, 10:19:51 10/19/02 Sat
Two tears...it was ONLY two tears.
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Two Tears/Spoilers through 7:4 -- Retread, 12:57:28 10/19/02 Sat
Two tears...it was ONLY two tears.
Yes, and those two tears show us (the audience) that Buffy does have sympathy for Spike even though she can't/won't show Spike as yet.
Spike and Identity problem (general spoilers from S2-S7) -- Sang, 01:03:01 10/19/02 Sat
Who is Spike now? And why should he look for his soul? They were the questions in my mind for all summer. And one minor thing in 7.4 made me write this ridiculously long article with my not so perfect English.
Who was William? He was a good man (or at least he thought for himself). But noone saw him as such, nobody repected him. For him, it was enough only if just one soul who he admired noticed it from him. But she told him she could not see him, he was beneath her. He lost everything he had as a human at that moment and literally stopped being human.
After he became a vampire, fear was what he got from others. He had pride since he was now a monster everyone feared. And one thing really mattered to him was one (undead) who admired him for his monsterness.
When he heard about slayer, he faced them instead of running away. So he can be ultimately respected. As the most feared monster.
Buffy broke his pride by defeating him, making him cripple. That was the beginning point of his obsession to her. She took away his identity and he wanted it back by killing her.
He lost more important thing by Angel. He took away Dru's respect from him. It made him compromise and join forces with Buffy. His priority was Dru's love and respect. Eventually he lost it,too. It is very interesting, though, that he wanted more human aspect than demon.
Since Dru left him and he cannot get that respect and love, he wanted his demon pride back by killing Buffy. Unfortunately for him, he was capture and chipped by Initiative. He felt he diminished to nothing and tried to kill himself. But when he found out he can kill demon, he started killing demons. That made him feel "bloody animal" again.
Now season 5 gave some twists. He was obsessed by Buffy, who deprived his pride, his identity. He wanted Buffy love him or fear him and maybe respect him (or all three). This would make him something, either noble man or monster, anything other than nothing.
What Buffy gave him was (at the end) her trust. When she let him walk in his house and asked to protect Dawn. It was the highest point in his life. He was trusted like a noble man.
We could see, at the end of S5 and beginning of S6, that how precious her trust to him. That was the only thing he had, only thing that made him a 'man'. He was finally respected by someone really mattered to him.
When Buffy's despair and fear to her own feeling toward 'souless evil' being bested her, she accidently took that respect away from him. (She hit him and called him 'evil souless being' and denys that she considered as a human.)
That was the moment that Spike found out his chip was not working for her. Originally, he thought the chip was not working at all, so he tried to be a monster again. (he needed to work it hard, since he had felt he was a human.)
Lust replaced their respect. Maybe they were both monsters, they thought. When Buffy broke down that she was not, she eventually ended their sexual relationship.
Interesting thing about their conversations, Buffy told Spike several times that she 'never' trusted him. But it was trust that they kept together until the AR scene. Even after Buffy knew that Spike could hurt her, she let him come to her house and let him touch her. She even depended Spike against Riley's accusasion.
Even without the respect, nor the relation, Spike still felt like a man, since she treated him like one. She gave him her trust. He told her that he would never hurt her and she replied she knew.
With affair with Anya and revealing their relation to others, Spike broke Buffy's trust. Then he attacked her when she was vulnerable.
He lost only thing that made him a human. He was not a monster after he had that chip. He wanted to be a man and Buffy's trust was the only thing that made him feel like one. After he destroy it, he destroyed his identity as well.
He wanted to be something, if he wanted to be a monster again, he would wish his chip removed. But what he really wanted was being a man, a good man that Buffy can trust and respect or maybe love. He remembered that William was a good man. So he wanted his soul back.
His soul didn't make him a good man. It made him realize how horrible man he was. What he thought he was, what he wanted to be, his former identities, are all turned upside down and twisted with his soul. They haunt him mock him and make him crazy.
What is he now? What does he think who he is? Spike's journey was started from William's word 'I know I am a bad poet but I am a good man.' from that fateful night. And we reached this point. "Who are you?" "I am a bad man." Not a monster, just a bad man.
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Re: Spike and Identity problem (general spoilers from S2-S7) -- Silky, 07:16:37 10/19/02 Sat
I liked this and agree. You also made it clearer to me where Spike/William is mentally right now. Thanks.
Silky
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Re: Spike and Identity problem (general spoilers from S2-S7) -- LeeAnn, 09:47:54 10/19/02 Sat
I agree too.
I think Spike is dead and the Vampire Formerly Known as Spike is more William with each passing day.
Interesting Article in NYT Mag about TVw/oPity, with some references to BtVS -- jnk, 10:43:20 10/19/02 Sat
A long article (registration required): www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/magazine/20INTERACTIVE.html?8hpib
There are a few references to BtVS, this one near the end:
Of course, there are limits to viewers' understanding when it comes to the inner workings of Hollywood. No show runner discusses the boards without using the phrase ''grain of salt.'' Marti Noxon, executive producer of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' has had to cut back on her Web visits, in no small measure because some loyal fans quite unjustly turned against her -- by name. Internet fans blamed Noxon for changing the tone of the show, which was created by Joss Whedon. One British viewer went so far as to post: ''I think Marti Noxon should be on BtVS. And I think Drusilla and Spike should tie her up and torture her, then kill her in the most painful way possible. Then hacking her body beyond recognition so there could be no possible way to make her rise from the grave. Then they should STAMP on the bits.''
Says Noxon: ''It all gets very personal. I don't have a strong enough ego to go in there. People on those sites blame me for the darkness of last season's shows, and those story lines were created by Joss a year earlier. This show is a slow-turning ship. But suddenly, I'm the Queen of Darkness on the Net! This year, we've made the show . . . well, a bit less dark. We get the sense, having read those criticisms, that maybe we've just been amusing ourselves.''
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Marti article -- alcibiades, 11:09:41 10/19/02 Sat
Here's a longer more interesting less self-pitying Marti interview:
http://www.scifi.com/scifimag/december2002/transcripts/index.html
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That was great! -- DickBD, 14:16:00 10/19/02 Sat
Thanks for the reference. The human side of her really showed through in that interview. I think we sometimes forget that even big-time writers can be insecure--and that may not be a bad thing! One of the things I liked about the interview is the way she kept giving so much credit to Josh for everything.
The speculation at the end about continuing BtS has me full of mixed emotions. I hate to see the series end. Yet, is even Joss Whedon enough of a genius to keep a show about the high school environment going even when the protagonists are long past high school age?
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Again, I will say it, I adore Marti! -- Rob, 09:14:35 10/20/02 Sun
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Re: Interesting Article in NYT Mag about TVw/oPity, with some references to BtVS -- TeacherBoy, 11:54:57 10/19/02 Sat
I was disappointed to read this article. I knew that the NY Times magazine was going to be doing an article on fans, the Internet, and television, but I can't believe that they spent the entire article on TWoP. Maybe I'm showing my age, but that site reminds me of a couple of teenagers who, having recently discovered sarcasm, proceed to beat it into the ground. I once tried to find a review of a show that was actually positive. I failed. Ok, we get it, you're snarky. But snark loses it's power when that's all there is.
TeacherBoy, who cannot believe he actually wrote "showing my age" at the ripe old age of 30.
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Re: Interesting Article in NYT Mag about TVw/oPity, with some references to BtVS -- Miss Edith, 13:36:22 10/19/02 Sat
The site Television Without Pity tells you just by the name what it's about. Being snarky and criticising tv shows. If you read the rules for the site one of the questions they answer is "Don't you have anything better to do than be bitter about tv shows". Their reply is "No". Hence any writer on Buffy will find nothing but nonstop criticisim (well except a lot of them like Jane Epsenson). It is the entire point of the site.
I don't recomend any television writer visiting it wanting a balanced idea of how their work is interpreted by the general public. It is very one-sided, that is its purpose. People disapointed with a particular show go there to slam the show and find like-minded individuals. Why Marti would want to visit it I have no idea. It is not a balanced reflection of how she is seen on the net at all.
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A more positive piece in TV Guide and agreeing with Teacherboy -- shadowkat, 13:36:30 10/19/02 Sat
I'd like to share with you a blurb I read in next week's TV Guide. It's about Blood Text and Fears Conference:
"You don't need a degree in gender studies or literary theory to enjoy BTvs, but if you're headed to "Blood, Text, and Fears", it wouldn't hurt. the international academic conference devoted to the series will be hosted by the University of East Anglia in Norwich England on October 19-20.
"Cool!" Says Joss Whedon, speaking to TV Guide as he eyes the program of 63 lectures for the first time. Zeroing in on the session linking Buffy's last season to the W.B. Yeats poem "The Second Coming", he says "I'm psyched because (last) season is the bastard child that everyone's mean to. We had a purpose. And for people to take it seriously and not just to say 'That season was depressing and the villians were nerds,' makes me feel good."
"Considering another lecture that Whedon fixates on, ...
Titled "The Spike/Buffy Relationship: Law, Morals, Rape and S&M; or You always hurt the one you love," the session promises legal, social and feminist interpretations of Buffy and Spike's infamous Season 6 bathroom scene. "I wish I could be there hearing the live debate," says Whedon."
So see? Not every media outlet is focusing on one source of fandom.
I've gone to TwOP and find them incredibly juvenile, course I'm 35. And I also find myself agreeing with posters that state what is going on in the show is more than ships or monster hunting. The story arcs are intricately plotted way ahead of time and have numerous layers. You either see it or you don't. I pity those fans who don't and insist on making idiotic statements about the writers...they are missing out on a wonderful hour of tv. I wish the writers would spend more time reading boards like Atpo than TWoP or Bronze Beta...but oh well.
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Re: A more positive piece in TV Guide and agreeing with Teacherboy -- Rob, 09:12:46 10/20/02 Sun
I agree. I've been to TWoP quite a few times, and each time I went I found it incredibly...snotty. There should be more intelligent television criticism to read than just reviews filled with obnoxious comments, tearing apart every aspect of every episode of every show on television, just to let the reviewers feel that they are more clever than they actually are. I am shocked, also, that the NY Times Magazine would print such a large article on such an infantile site that focuses on negativity. From the article, which I read this morning, it would seem that TWoP is the hub of all internet television postings and chattings, and that all internet fans love to rip apart TV. And that just isn't true. Their reporters should take a look at this site, and reconsider which is more worthy of recognition.
Rob
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TVw/oPity and snarky teens -- rabbit, 09:48:02 10/20/02 Sun
So you can imagine how a grandmother feels reading things on that site! ;-))
"All It Does Is Burn" - Dissecting Spike's brain.. -- ZachsMind, 12:59:09 10/19/02 Sat
This final scene in the 7.2 "Beneath You" episode has caused many fans of the series recently to contemplate the state of Spike's mind. Who is Spike now that he has a soul? Is he still Spike? Is he William the Bloody now? Is he an entirely different person?
The only comparison we can make as a point of reference is to compare Spike's present condition to that of Angel when he first got re-souled, because Angel's the only other vampire with a soul that we know about. Perhaps the only other souled vampire period. Before his turning, The little we've seen Liam in flashbacks, it seemed he was self-centered and heartless before he turned. Then when he lost his soul, Liam became Angeles. When the gypsy curse kicked in, Angeles & Liam became Angel, over a period of almost a century. At first the souled vampire Angel went a bit crazy, and did spend his fair share of time in back alleys feeding on rats. It wasn't until Whistler came along and pointed Angel in Buffy's direction that he started to return to some sense of mental stability. It would be unrealistic to think Spike could straighten himself out faster than Angel did, but the writers can't keep him freaking like this forever because it's keeping him a bit out of the picture. Also, Spike is simply not Angel. Angeles was souled against his will by a curse. Spike souled himself by choice. Although there are some comparisons between the two, since they share this condition now, Spike/William will not approach it as Liam/Angel/es did. He may not come to a similar conclusion.
Liam. Angeles. Angel.
William. Spike. ?.
So what's going on in Spike's head right now? My theory is that he's fighting between the contrasting personalities of vampy Spike and human William. Eventually he'll find an equilibrium, but so far this season we've seen glimpses of all the differing Spike personalities over the seasons of Buffy, coalescing to a degree at the end of the second episode. He's still flipping around, but while he's hearing voices in his head, what we're hearing coming out of his mouth are glimpses of differing voices.
When Buffy first confronts him in the church, Spike says the costume didn't work. This is definitely not Spike talking, because the costume was that of Spike. So we can infer from this that it's William talking for that line of dialogue.
"No more mind games. No more mind." This line could be either Spike or William, or perhaps it's both speaking in unison. A glimpse of the hybrid he's eventually going to become, unless one personality is able to push the other into a dormant state.
"Hey, hey, hey! No touching!" This is still William, because Spike hasn't shown in the past a difficulty with physical contact, while William came from the more inhibiting culture of victorian England.
"Am I flesh? Am I flesh to you? Feed on flesh. My flesh. Nothing else. Not a spark. Oh, fine. Flesh then. Solid through. (starts unzipping his pants) Get it hard; service the girl." Here we're seeing the battle going on in his head. He morphs in these words from William the Bloody to a sort of season six version of Spike, who would shrug and do as Buffy would ask whenever she appeared alone before him showing signs of interest in physical contact. Trying to discover what's worked in the past so he can get into some kind of workable interaction between himself and Buffy, Spike falls back on what he knows used to work before.
Buffy throws him across the room. "Right. Girl doesn't want to be serviced. Because there's no spark. Ain't we in a soddin' engine?" This sounds like William again. No spark, indicates at least an attempt at a poetic thought process, trying to understand the cause & effect relationship between himself and Buffy. The last part about the "soddin' engine" though, comes out of the actor's mouth remarkably differently, mimicking the accent of Spike as opposed to William. Perhaps an attempt at humor? I'm not sure what Spike/William's referring to when he mentions the engine.
BUFFY: Spike, have you completely lost your mind?
SPIKE: Well, yes. Where've you been all night?
This is definitely Spike again. The tone of voice & the dry humor is inescapably him. Also the matter-of-fact timing coupled with his pointed stare, insinuate that at least for an instant, Buffy's ironic question brings lucidity to Spike's deranged mind. Spike seems to be there with her until she asks him to explain what happened, then we see a morph between Spike and William.
"The spark. The missing... the piece that fit. That would make me fit. Because you didn't want... God, I can't... Not with you looking." He starts to cry, and I don't recall Spike ever actually crying (except when Buffy died), but perhaps it's both Spike & William who can't bear to see Buffy staring at him while he's this way? Something they agree upon.
"I dreamed of killing you. I think they were dreams. So weak. Did you make me weak, thinking of you, holding myself, and spilling useless buckets of salt over your... ending?" The matter-of-factness here differs from Spike's approach before. There's no dry sardonic wit. There's only an observation of memory. Like William scanning the memories of Spike in their brain since William wasn't there to experience them himself. He's remembering the summer after Buffy sacrificed herself to close Glory's dimensional rift. How he spilled useless buckets of salt which indicates crying. By the word 'useless' it may be Spike speaking again.
"Angel-he should've warned me. He makes a good show of forgetting, but it's here, in me, all the time. The spark. I wanted to give you what you deserve, and I got it. They put the spark in me and now all it does is burn."
This features a poetic sound but is unmistakably Spike's voice. He refers to Angel, who William did not know. And "Bit worse for lack of use" is again Spike's sarcasm leaking through.
"It's what you wanted, right? (looking at the ceiling) It's what you wanted, right?" The first words are Spike's, but then William turns towards God. "And-and now everybody's in here, talking. Everything I did...everyone I- and him... and it... the other, the thing beneath-beneath you. It's here too. Everybody. They all just tell me go... go... to hell." Most of that is Spike, again due to Marster's subtle change in delivery and the dramatic pauses, it could be Marsters is allowing each character to share portions of lines. Very deceptive approach to the dialogue, so it's hard to say. When he says "him" that may be referring to the other him in his head.
The last part of the speech though? I have no idea. Is it Spike? Is it William? Both?
"Buffy, shame on you. Why does a man do what he mustn't? For her. To be hers. To be the kind of man who would nev- (chokes up) to be a kind of man. (approaching the alter & a giant cross) She shall look on him with forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved. So everything's OK, right? (rests on the cross, his flesh starts to smoke) Can-can we rest now? Buffy...can we rest?"
When he asks Buffy that question, he's not referring to himself and Buffy. Buffy's not in his equation. He's asking if they can rest: Spike & William. Can the voices finally stop? Has he suffered enough and can this punishment finally end? It's an question Buffy simply has no answer for.
Liam. Angeles. Angel.
William. Spike. ?.
It's corny, yes, but maybe the proper name for a souled Spike is "Spark"? It is possible that the only way William & Spike can find peace is when Buffy is able to forgive them, perhaps even love them again. If and when that happens he'll find that Spark no longer burns.
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Re: "All It Does Is Burn" - Dissecting Spike's brain.. -- Miss Edith, 13:26:10 10/19/02 Sat
An interesting analysis. I just wanted to make a small point. You suggested that Spike rarely cried, except when he lost Buffy in The Gift. Actually Spike does cry quite a few times on the show. Even as a vampire he has always worn his heart on his sleve and has quite a lot of William left in him hence his demon never taking him over completely.
He cried in Lover's Walk when Dru had dumped him. He actually cries in front of an enemy, Willow one of the good guys. "She said we could still be friends/God I'm so unhappy" etc.
And he also cried when Buffy rejects him as beneath her in FFL. And in AYW he is near tears in front of Buffy and Riley when he says "No more games, that's rich coming from you. All you've ever done is play me. You know what I am you've always known, you come to me all the same". He is on the verge of tears and sounds particularly chocked up towards the end of the speech.
I would agree that the current Spike is often channeling William as well as Spike and I assume a new version of Spike will emerge just as Angel never became primarily Liam or Angelous.
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Egad you're right... -- ZachsMind, 13:47:38 10/19/02 Sat
Come to think of it, Spike does tend to go off like a fawcet, doesn't he? Must be that whole 'sensitive man' thing... So it could be Spike crying, then.
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I keep being surprised... -- Etrangere, 14:02:05 10/19/02 Sat
By the analysis of our current Spike that seems to think he's suffering from multiple personnality disorder or something like. Though those post, like this one, are very well written and often enlightening about Spike, I cannot help to wonder what allows you to define Spike's madness as such ?
Maybe it's only my foreign ear that is not educated to recognise different kind of accents...
Certainly I would agree that Spike do not know how to... present himself to be to the face of the world and thus change of persona very often in trying to find a new way to deal with it. But persona is not identity. It is the mask that we present to the face of the world. It's only our social set of behaviour and attitudes. (That's a jungian way of thinking, of course)
Spike's always liked to change his personna as it suited him because... well, he's a drama queen. It's very important to him that his behaviour suits a certain image of himself and the world. Like, he would NOT notice Buffy's Doublemeat smell... not only not to pain her, but because it didn't suit the image he wants Buffy to have.
I'm not sure if I'm very clear...
Whatever, what I mean is, even if Spike has some troubles with his different personnas... that doesn't mean that he has different identities. He's self-conflicted, but he's not mind-divided. He's still himself. The only thing other than him that he mentions are :
- the voices of his victimes ("and now everybody's in here, talking. Everything I did...everyone I") that he again talks about in Help and that I identified in my rambling on Beneath You as the Eumenides.
- "and him" that's the harder one to identify. He might be talking about the Big Bad Shapechanger (BBS)...
- "and it... the other, the thing beneath-beneath you. It's here too." Is he still talking about the "him" ? Or is he talking about someone else, his demon, his Shadow ? (he has one now that he has a soul, souls are sparks that carries shadows on the wall)
That's all there is. No dozens of personnalities. Only Spike, his demon, his ghosts and the BBS.
Well IMHO.
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Great points -- Sophist, 14:27:13 10/19/02 Sat
I especially like 2:
Big Bad Shapechanger (BBS)
The perfect nickname in our current state of ignorance.
"and it... the other, the thing beneath-beneath you. It's here too." Is he still talking about the "him" ? Or is he talking about someone else, his demon, his Shadow ?
ME is playing with us here. Spike (the vampire) was "beneath" Buffy (FFL). The BBS devours from beneath. Which one does he mean?
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Not dozens. Just two.. That's enough.. -- ZachsMind, 16:43:01 10/19/02 Sat
When a human's turned, the soul is removed and replaced by a demonic influence. When the soul is returned to an undead creature like Spike or Angel, the demonic presence is not removed. So there are two entities residing in the same body. This is where the 'split personality' comes in.
It's not multiple personality disorder so much as a sense of duality, like having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, both are talking simultaneously and the guy in the middle is getting squeezed. William's the soul. Spike's the demonic presence, and from this duality a third presence or 'balance' between the two will eventually emerge, as the dual personalities begin to function as one.
Angel was successful in this transformation. Spike's not quite there yet.
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Re: Not dozens. Just two.. That's enough.. -- Ete, 17:08:23 10/19/02 Sat
Well the "dozens" might have been more in answer to OnM's analysis that's got at least half a dozens of different Spike's than yours :)
I don't know there something troubling me in the fact of watching Spike, or Angel, as different people, with different identity, wether they have a soul or not. Like Giles I think that "In the end we are all who we are".
So ofcourse, metaphysicaly, they've got a "demon" and a "soul", an Id and an Superego, but I dislike to the those two opposite components of one's personnality as two objective essence, I'd rather see it as a sense. I consider that suddenly gaining a soul would be like suddenly recovering sight for someone who used to be blind. Suddenly Spike is able to see what's wrong and what's not in actions where he saw nothing at all. That's why he's so confused. Spike is blinded by the suddain light.
Of course that's my own very personnal interpretation.
I like the idea of finding balance too.
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Re: Not dozens. Just two.. That's enough.. -- shadowkat, 18:07:01 10/19/02 Sat
A little clarification the multiple personality analysis...
We think there are two and the BBS.
The two have splintered a little:
1. Demon - is neither all evil or good, this is Spike as we've seen him from Season 2 - Season 6 (EvilSpike, DemonSpike, GoodSpike...all his shades and varieties)
Just as Angelus in Ats is shown as multifaceted (more so than in Btvs).
2. Soul - is neither all good or all bad - this is William, who unlike Angelus, resided a bit more in Spike than most ghosts of souls do. We see glimmers of William throughout the seasons as GoodSpike. So the shades of William are William, HumanSpike, GoodSpike.
Some people see the shades as five distinct personalities. I tend to agree with you - I see them as two distinct personalities which protect themselves and react differently depending on the situation and whose in control.
So really what we have inside Spike? Is all the voices of his victims and the memories of what he's done, he's live 130 years, that's a lot of memories and ghosts to haunt someone, and the two sides of himself which I'd argue were in conflict in season 6 and season 5. Actually I think Spike was going insane prior to getting the chip, he certainly was having a nervous breakdown in Entropy and Seeing red. The soul just threw them into sharper conflict, because before it was just the ghost of a soul - the demon had the control. Now the soul may have the upper hand.
Or they are wrestling for control.
Throw into the mix the BBS who I think has more control over Spike when he is either in the high school basement or close proximity. I don't think it's inside Spike, though it could be. I hypothesized to cjl that BBS was using Spike's chip to talk to him and getting through that way - but cjl reminded me that the chip is manmade and the show has been clear about demons not fiddling with manmade devices or technology. At any rate I'm still convinced that BBS is outside Spike and we'll soon see evidence of this in upcominging episodes. So Spike isn't really as insane as we may think.
So there's three in the basement. But only two inside Spike, just as there are two inside Angel. The difference is Angel has had 100 years to intergrate his two personalities.
SK
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Re: Not dozens. Just two.. That's enough.. -- Miss Edith, 18:10:25 10/19/02 Sat
Plus Angelous was truly evil. When he had a soul he became a completely different personality. Whereas even when lacking a soul Spike was interacting with humanity and fighting to save Dawn and Buffy. Having a chip makes Spike's circumstances significantly different to Angel's. It isn't as easy for Spike to see the vampire who tried to rape Buffy as completely different from the vampire he is now.
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Agreeing with Ete -- Arethusa, 13:03:11 10/20/02 Sun
I think there is only one personality: William's. The demon isn't a creature with a personality; it's an infection. I like Ete's example of a man who can suddenly see; he's still the same man, he just "sees" the world differently now. William's soul left when he was vamped but his personality didn't; it just changed, like an ordinarily decent man who becomes ugly when he's under the influence of alcohol. When the influence of the demon became subordinate to the man, he went back to being William-a much-older William, with a personality changed by time and a very wide variety of life experiences, and now dealing with the change in how he views the past 120 years. The memories now haunt him, he is dealing with the guilt and self-hatred he didn't feel in the past for his actions, evil voices are whispering in his head, and he is still under the influence of the demon infection, which is inciting mayhem in his head.
Spike's biggest problem is that he doesn't have two distinct personalities inside him; his behavior is fragmented by a tug-of-war between good and bad, and he can't balance the two. The last time Spike went "crazy" was when he got the chip; he couldn't reconcile his demonic influences with the good impulses superimposed by the chip. Now he's in the reverse position; his innate good impulses are fighting the submerged but still very viable evil influences. But Spike wasn't really insane when he got the chip, he was in terrible conflict, as he is now.
JMO.
Metaphorically, Spike's no different from a human. Some people deny that they have any evil in them; evil, they say, is what is done to people. It's an infection, like vamping, and if a person stays away from evil influences (drugs, drink, loose women, atheists, pornography, big cities, etc) they won't think bad thoughts or do evil. Like William, they avoid any thought of evil and hope all that nasty, scary stuff goes away. But souled Spike knows better. He now knows he's just as capable as anyone else of committing evil. So how can he be a good man? He must be a bad man, because he's done very bad things. Yet, he must behave like a good man, because that is how he feels good about himself. ("I'm a bad poet but I'm a good man," he says to Cecily.) Angel is able to submerge the demon influence except when its strength and ruthlessness are needed, and in Spike's eyes he made it look easy. But Angel wasn't able to pull himself together until Buffy needed him, decades after he was resouled. Spike doesn't have decades; Buffy needs him now. He's an incredibly strong and strong-willed vampire for his age (mentally, Angel is 200 years older), so he will probably pull himself together as soon as he needs to.
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comment... -- lynx, 15:32:27 10/20/02 Sun
>>>from evil influences (drugs, drink, loose women, atheists, pornography, big cities, etc) they won't think bad thoughts or do evil.<<<
i'm almost certain that this came across differently than it was meant - at least i hope so.
atheists are not evil, they simply do not believe in gods.
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Re: comment... -- Rahael, 15:41:51 10/20/02 Sun
I think Arethusa was referring to what 'some people' think - if you look at her quote below.
"Some people deny that they have any evil in them; evil, they say, is what is done to people. It's an infection, like vamping, and if a person stays away from evil influences (drugs, drink, loose women, atheists, pornography, big cities, etc) they won't think bad thoughts or do evil. Like William, they avoid any thought of evil and hope all that nasty, scary stuff goes away."
I don't think she's claiming that atheists big cities, drink etc are evil. Just that some people would prefer to look outwards to supposedly evil things, rather than looking inward at themselves, and seeing the possiblity for harm within the decisions they make themselves.
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Oh no, my alter ego meant EVIL! EVIL, I tell you! -- Medusa, 07:25:05 10/21/02 Mon
But I left out the good stuff, like comic books, National Public Radio, Democrats, short skirts, disco dancing, birth control, Hilary Clinton, books for children on human sexuality, tattoos, teenagers who wear black lipstick (extra evil points if it's a guy), women with authority, Hilary Clinton, peace activists, feminists, fairy tales, Halloween, foreigners, Hilary Clinton, condoms, gun-control advocates, anti-pollution laws, ecologists, global warming scientists, and, most of all, Hilary Clinton.
Arethusa, a lone and a-little-too-sarcastic liberal atheist living amidst devout conservatives.
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Re: Not dozens. Just two.. That's enough..vague spoiler ATS 4.2 -- alcibiades, 15:11:49 10/20/02 Sun
The difference is Angel has had 100 years to intergrate
his two personalities.
The thing is -- I believe Spike will integrate his personalities and take some responsibility for what he did in the past, but I don't think that Angel really has integrated Angelus -- there's always a split.
Fred and Cordelia and Wesley all mouth off from time to time about the horrors of Angelus re-emerging, because Angelus will suppress Angel so utterly -- just as Angel usually suppresses Angelus except when he is feeling extreme stress, like his reaction to Wesley in his hospital once Connor has gone.
In fact, the fear of Angelus re-emerging was one thing that motivated Wesley's stealing Connor -- because how else to explain Angel eating Connor -- but Spike re-emerging simply would not be as problematic. I think ultimately there will be less dichotomy between the two.
Right now we are getting an un Angeclusized Angel -- and it is very different and has much more emotional clarity and rationality and logic than Angel last year after Connor's kidnapping.
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Re: I agree, Ete -- aliera, 18:17:00 10/19/02 Sat
It may come out later that this was due to the difficulty of the portrayal; but, until the season is further along, I have to agree.
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Maybe there's just one... (Spoilers to 7.2) -- Indri, 18:51:01 10/19/02 Sat
I agree. As I understand it, based on Masq's site, the demon has no personality of its own. When one is vamped, you gain physical attributes but you lose any emotional understanding of right and wrong (you can understand the difference intellectually, however). Thus evilSpike is still William; he's just the worst that William can be, as tutored by Angelus and Drusilla.
I take this view partly because of Angel (I realise that ME may be dramatising the characters' struggles differently, but I have to start somewhere :). Liam was hardly a moral beacon, so one can't attribute Angel's heroism to his human past. Angel is someone who suddenly perceived his own evil (was cursed by a soul) and through a slow maturation process came to realise that he also had the potential for good inside him, even if little of that potential saw the light of day in Liam's time. I find it hard to conceive of Angel as a middle ground between Angelus and Liam; he's still Angelus and Liam just more growed up. I think the new Spike will be similar.
(I know others have commented on the "arrested development" view of vampires---thanks, I'm much indebted.)
The approach of OnM and ZachsMind is illuminating in some ways, particularly when, as in most of Beneath You, there are conspicuous jumps in behaviour. But I think the approach breaks down on a line-by-line basis because Spike is William. For example, poetic lines can't simply be labelled as William speaking, as Spike can/could be spontaneously poetic ("eyeballs to entrails, my sweet", "see the puffed-up manly man, all splotchy and possessive").
I like Etrangere's suggestion that Spike/William is switching between personas, rather than between essential selves, although one can argue to what extent the essential self (if such a thing exists) consists of personas in the first place. By the end of Beneath You I thought we saw what Spike/William might look like when stripped of as protective personas as possible.
I love your "recovering sight" metaphor for the soul, BTW. I think that's it exactly.
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Argh, Ete _is_ Etrangere, yes? And someday I will manage to post without a typo -- Indri, 19:03:11 10/19/02 Sat
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Re: Maybe there's just one... -- aliera, 19:35:24 10/19/02 Sat
and I agree with this also; Indri, if I'm understanding you correctly. The One may be a ways off yet. Miles to go and what not. I saw more; but again three is a lot to begin with so hard to say, yet.
Alas, the sprite that haunts us
Deceives our rash desire
It wispers of the glorious gods
And leaves us in the mire:
We cannot learn the cipher
That's writ upon our cell,
If but one hero knew it,
The world would blush in flame,
The sage 'til he hit the secret,
Would hang hi shaed in shame.
But our brothers have not read it,
No one has found the Key,
The patient Deamon sits
with roses and a shroud
He has his way and deals his gifts...
There's a feel that Spike, or who he has become will get his own journey now and Joss-wills, it's a good one and difficult. And, of course, there's much else going on beyond Spike. Beyond Buffy. I'm very happy with the season so far. ;-) Happy in a goth-sense, I believe.
The spinx is drowsy...
"Who'll tell my secret,
The ages have kept?
The fate of the man-child;
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
Daedalian plan;
out of sleeping a waking,
out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?
Good ep. And nice post Indri.
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Yes, exactly ! Great points ! -- Ete, 05:17:40 10/20/02 Sun
"I agree. As I understand it, based on Masq's site, the demon has no personality of its own. When one is vamped, you gain physical attributes but you lose any emotional understanding of right and wrong (you can understand the difference intellectually, however). Thus evilSpike is still William; he's just the worst that William can be, as tutored by Angelus and Drusilla."
That's exactly how is see the transformation into a demon. It's the same self, only it goes in another sense, it's compelled toward another kind of morality by the demon, and the more it used to repress its darkest impulse (William saying he didn't like to think of such a dark buisness) the more it unleashes into a terrible demon.
Sorry about the confusion on my nickname. I've got the same identity wether I'm Ete or Etrangere :). Ete's just my lazy self ^_^ and welcome on board. (I don't think I answered one of your post before)
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Re: Not dozens. Just two.. That's enough.. -- Slain, 18:59:04 10/19/02 Sat
It's always fun to try and work out exactly what's going on in Spike and Angel's head, but I found that when I wrote an essay on the subject it gave me a headache - it's very hard to work out exactly how the demon-human-soul dynamic works.
The way I've always tended to think of it is in terms of the human body as only a vessel, like a suit of clothes. When the vampire kills the human, the soul which gives the body life disappears, and the vampire steps into the 'suit'. Then when the soul is returned, the vampire loses control because it isn't naturally supposed to be there, like a human soul is. It still has influence, but under a human sun it doesn't take control of body any longer.
However. This is based on what we've been told by Angel, and to an extent Spike. Despite having his own series, AtS doesn't often take Angel's POV, and we rarely alone with him when he isn't on some big mission or other. While I feel that I know what's going on in Buffy's head, and at least know that she isn't a big faker, with Angel I'm less sure.
Everything he's said has borne out the idea that the soul and vampire demon are completely separate entities, and that the demon can be harnessed by the soul for its own purposes. The soul has control. In demon realms this isn't quite the case, as in Pilea (and I think in the hell dimension Angel was sent to in S2-3), the demon can take control as if there was no soul there.
But Angel's assertion that he's good now, that having makes him a safe puppy isn't always borne out by events. Angel clearly isn't a human how happens to live in his own dead body; his is, in fact, a combination of demon and soul, with the two not so easily divisible, I think. For example, no sane human would ever think about eating their own son, but a vampire would.
It seems to me that Angel is less in control of his vampire self, and that during battle and in extreme circumstances the demon influences his personality. In fact, I think it always does. Angel is good precisely because he has the capacity to be evil; Liam didn't have that, but Angel is in constant battle with the demon part of his nature. I think Angel is, if anything, an exaggerated metaphor for the human (male?) condition. As Ete says, he has a superego (soul), but also an Id (demon) warring with each other - he does a good job of making it seem like his demon is a handy tool he can turn on and off, but I think it's more complex than, as he says, "I have a demon inside me". Spike doesn't have this outward face, which is why he seems like a mixture of his old self, and of William. In reality I don't think he's either; he's both, melded together into a new person.
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Re: Two in One -- luna, 19:38:56 10/19/02 Sat
Haven't seen every episode of BtVS and very few of AtS--does Angel ever experience two at once, as Spike appears to be doing here?
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Three -- LeeAnn, 04:19:27 10/20/02 Sun
And-and now everybody's in here, talking. Everything I did...everyone I- and him... and it... the other, the thing beneath-beneath you. It's here too. Everybody. They all just tell me go... go... (looks back over his shoulder to Buffy) to hell.
My interpretation is Spike(I), William (him), and the demon (it).
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Re: I keep being surprised... -- Rufus, 04:46:02 10/20/02 Sun
Whatever, what I mean is, even if Spike has some troubles with his different personnas... that doesn't mean that he has different identities. He's self-conflicted, but he's not mind-divided. He's still himself. The only thing other than him that he mentions are :
- the voices of his victimes ("and now everybody's in here, talking. Everything I did...everyone I") that he again talks about in Help and that I identified in my rambling on Beneath You as the Eumenides.
- "and him" that's the harder one to identify. He might be talking about the Big Bad Shapechanger (BBS)...
- "and it... the other, the thing beneath-beneath you. It's here too." Is he still talking about the "him" ? Or is he talking about someone else, his demon, his Shadow ? (he has one now that he has a soul, souls are sparks that carries shadows on the wall)
That's all there is. No dozens of personnalities. Only Spike, his demon, his ghosts and the BBS.
Well IMHO.
I agree with most of what you say just a few things I saw a bit differently...
Zack said...
"It's what you wanted, right? (looking at the ceiling) It's what you wanted, right?" The first words are Spike's, but then William turns towards God. "And-and now everybody's in here, talking. Everything I did...everyone I- and him... and it... the other, the thing beneath-beneath you. It's here too. Everybody. They all just tell me go... go... to hell." Most of that is Spike, again due to Marster's subtle change in delivery and the dramatic pauses, it could be Marsters is allowing each character to share portions of lines. Very deceptive approach to the dialogue, so it's hard to say. When he says "him" that may be referring to the other him in his head.
I agree a bit more with Zach in that Spike is William, always has been, now that the soul is back to allow William to feel a conscience he has to make sense of all the talking in his head. Therefore....there is I, and it is I because even with the soul gone it was still William...then Him...well him is what William became as Spike without a soul......then there is IT, the other.....that to me is the Shapeshifting entity that seems to be focused on keeping Spike in the basement...where his unconscious is battling to become whole, with the knowledge of what he has done.....but the It, the other is not allowing for Spike to move much from where he is, in fact keeping him from Buffy. My question is what potential does Spike have that the It/other wants/needs?
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Re: I keep being surprised... -- Etrangere, 04:54:44 10/20/02 Sun
My question is what potential does Spike have that the It/other wants/needs?
It's all about power, and having a soul is having the power to decide. That's my intuition.
Funny we inverse or supposition on "it" and "him" :)
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I like your interpretation better -- oboemaboe, 16:04:22 10/19/02 Sat
"I dreamed of killing you... holding myself, and spilling useless buckets of salt over your... ending?"
Will anyone else admit to thinking this was referring to Spike masturbating while fantasizing about killing Buffy?
Else why say dreamt of killing rather than had nightmares about killing? I thought he was lamenting the fact that she made him weak.
But crying probably makes more sense, so now I feel less icky.
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Well, if we're going to bring sex into it... -- Slain, 19:06:19 10/19/02 Sat
Let's not forget that death (le petit mort) is often a metaphor for sex, something no doubt Joss is not ignorant of.
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Yup we mentioned sex earlier when the ep first aired.... -- Rufus, 04:49:11 10/20/02 Sun
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Could easily be both. -- HonorH, 12:30:43 10/20/02 Sun
Given Spike's mental state, the thought of killing Buffy could easily have been a cause for sexual arousal, tears, and self-flagellation all at once.
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Listen to her...she has a wayyyyy dirtier mind than I do......;) -- Rufus, 19:17:02 10/20/02 Sun
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You flatter me ;-) -- HonorH, 21:58:52 10/20/02 Sun
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Re: "All It Does Is Burn" - Dissecting Spike's brain.. -- luna, 19:17:26 10/19/02 Sat
But you know, some of those lines doen't sound like either one--for example: "Oh, right, service the girl." That's not what Spike thought about Buffy--it was his desire for her, not so much bowing to her demands. I've really agreed with you about the two of them (Spike and William) and the ultimate sythesis that has to develop, but I also wonder if there's yet another voice we haven't identified....
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Re: "All It Does Is Burn" - Dissecting Spike's brain.. -- Miss Edith, 20:14:38 10/19/02 Sat
But surely the point was that season 6 was focused on Buffy and we never had the chance to find out how Spike felt about the relationship. We saw him on-screen telling Buffy she could use him and he wasn't complaining just as long as she didn't leave him but I assumed that the ending of BY was telling us the true impact that the relationship had on Spike.
When he says "Am I flesh to you. Feed on flesh, nothing else, get it hard, service the girl" etc I would have thought the point of that was not to introduce a new personality but rather to give us Spike's persepctive on the empty sex with Buffy.
We have examples of how Spike may have felt degraded. E.g in AYW Buffy has blown up his crypt and sided with Riley against him, punching him in the face because he won't shut up etc. Yet when Buffy turns up at the end Spike is still willing to service her if that's what she wants. Indeed earlier in that same episode Buffy was demanding Spike tell her he loved her and wanted her and Spike was basically being treated like a bot. Can't have been good for the self-esteem.
I am not suggesting Spike didn't enjoy the sex. I just think that Spike may have felt used. In DMP Buffy was using him to service her and has a dead expression on her face as she turns away from Spike's kiss and he buries his head in her neck instead. I would say that Spike did feel he was "bowing to her demands" and the dialogue in BY was the first hint of that.
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Re: "All It Does Is Burn" - Dissecting Spike's brain...what's left of it. -- aliera, 21:41:36 10/19/02 Sat
I definitely agree with your point about not knowing what Spike thinks/feels as written in Season 6. I think the flesh anvil has other implications, however...and remember Spike's not alone in his head anymore.
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What implications? Please elaborate -- alcibiades, 09:13:55 10/20/02 Sun
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Re: What implications? Please elaborate -- aliera, 13:57:22 10/20/02 Sun
Sorry, alcbiades (and Miss Edith) I worded that badly. In particular the use of anvil. I'm not always certain "who" I'm hearing speak at any given point with Spike. And I tend to hear more than one level of meaning, which again is just me. So there's the religious reference that automatically comes to mind with the word flesh. More than flesh. Word made flesh. Before the Word. Also the question of reality. Flesh and blood. Am I flesh? Am I flesh to you? And then the question of who is speaking. Feed on flesh. Another late night unintelligible post, have to stop that.
"Word made flesh is seldom
And tremblingly partook
Nor than perhaps reported
But I have not mistook
Each of us as tasted
With ectasies of stealth
The very food debated
To our specific strength--
Cohesive as Spirit
It may expire if He--
'Made Flesh and dwelt among us'
Could condescension be
Like this consent of Language
This loved Philology."
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Re: I'm not as smart as y'all, but... -- Mal, 10:33:17 10/20/02 Sun
Re: It's corny, yes, but maybe the proper name for a souled Spike is "Spark"?
I'm sure this has been covered (still reading!) but it is interesting that we have seen this concept of spark in so many other places -- not just in OMWF (over and over again), but also in places as simple as BBS!Warren (who, yes, used to also call Jonathon "Sparky" but now applies the nickname to Spike).
I agree that Spike would be greatly benefited by Buffy's forgiveness (shoot, so would Buffy, for that matter), but I disagree that he requires her love or a return of their relationship. Spike and Buffy, as a couple, are handicapped by the same problems that Xander and Anya are: Spike (Anya) is honest to a fault, struggles with greater issues of guilt and redemption, and has a love-hate relationship with mortality. Buffy (Xander) gets embarrassed and frustrated by these revelations of his true nature, and tries to pretend them away. Rather than loving Spike and Anya for who and what they are, Buffy and Xander are ashamed and make excuses for their behavior. Contrast this with Willow and Tara's relationship. (It was Tara who always apologized for saying something stupid, and Willow would give a reassuring pat on the hand. Moreover, Tara tried to warn Willow off of misusing her powers, but ultimately left the decision up to Willow.)
It strikes me that we need Whistler to step in, here, with Spike. I'm completely unspoiled, so this is pure speculation, but that was a great PTB errand boy played by a fairly-good actor and there were a lot of dangling threads which could be tied together to make for some good fodder.
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Nice comparison -- Rahael, 10:43:27 10/20/02 Sun
oh, and a belated welcome to AtPO!
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A telling comparison -- alcibiades, 17:39:40 10/20/02 Sun
A Simple Twist of Fate - Thoughts on *Help* ( ***Spoilers*** SPL-3 ) -- OnM, 09:28:38 10/20/02 Sun
*******
Jonathan: Get away from me!
Buffy: Okay, Jonathan, you wanna point that somewhere else?
J: You better not try and stop me.
B: No. No stopping. I'm just here for the view. Hey look, city hall...
J: Go away.
B: Never gonna happen.
J: You think I won't use this?
B: I don't know, Jonathan, I'm just...
J: Stop doing that!
B: Doing what?
J:Stop saying my name like we're friends. We're not friends. You all think I'm an idiot. A short idiot.
B: I don't. (pauses) I don't think about you much at all. Most people here don't. Bugs you, doesn't it? You've got all this pain, all these feelings and nobody's paying attention.
J: You think I just want attention?
B: No, I think you're in the bell tower with a high powered rifle because you want to blend in. Believe it or not, Jonathan, I understand. About the pain.
J: Oh, right. 'Cause the burden of being beautiful and athletic, that's a crippler.
B: I'm sorry, I was wrong. You are an idiot. (pauses again, then) My life happens very occasionally to suck beyond the telling of it. More than I can stand sometimes. And not just me. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're way too busy with their own. The beautiful ones, the popular ones, the guys that pick on you... everyone.
B: If you could hear what they're feeling-- the confusion, the loneliness... It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening. (long pause) You know I could have taken the gun by now.
J: I know.
B: (holds out her hand) Rather do it this way.
Slowly, he hands her the gun. Her hand is shaking a little as she takes it and unloads it.
J: I just wanted it to stop.
............ from Earshot
*******
"We shall be dead hereafter, it is the fate of such a thing.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty race from day to day,
And all our yesterdays have led the innocents the way to mindless apathy.
Out, out brief candle! Thought is but a fragile vessel,
A poor spectre who must flee the dark, knowing it will catch him-- he will be heard no more.
It is a sculpture, molded by an idiot, full of sound and fury, who knows nothing."
............ Angry!OnM, circa 1970 (senior year of high school), tilting at windmills with bad Shakespeare ripoff
*******
Giles: How are you?
Buffy: Lovin' the quiet. Nobody in here but me.
G: And Jonathan? How is he doing?
B: Pretty crappy. His parents are freaking, he's suspended, and toting a piece to school not exactly earning him a
place with the 'in' crowd. But I think he's dealing.
G: It's good of you to check up on him.
B: It's nice to be able to help someone in a non-slaying capacity. But he's starting to get that look, like he's gonna ask me to the prom.
G: Well, you know, it would probably help his self esteem if...
B: What am I, Saint Buffy? He's like three feet tall.
G: Good to see you've emerged from your psychic adventure more or less intact. Feel up to some training?
B: Sure. We can work out after school. You know, if you're not too busy having sex with my mother!
............ once more, from Earshot
*******
My understanding is that in some parts of the world, it is customary for doctors not to inform a patient that he or she has become afflicted with a terminal illness, on the grounds that to do so would deprive them of hope, and therefore act to hasten their end, or at least make them more psychologically miserable until such end time finally comes to bear.
This isn't a philosophy that I personally embrace-- I happen to think that it makes the patient into a sort of child, denies them the ability to take control of their life, which as is the case with all mortal things, includes the inevitability of death. But, I can understand it, because on the other hand, hope is a valuable thing to possess. Despite the many deaths and shades of darkness that occur both in the realverse and the Buffyverse, the persons or characters whose lives and light we have embraced and made a part of our own act to give us a reason to go on in the face of the essential pointlessness of existence.
Regarding pointlessness, let's take high school, for example. As you might gather from reading my warped take on The Bard above, my general opinion of this period of my life was that it was as slow and inevitably painful as your basic nuclear fallout. One pretty much had to take one's psyche into a deep concrete bunker somewhere and then just wait out the long half-life until graduation day, and this is essentially what I did. It wasn't that I didn't have hope, it's just that I knew hope can only take you so far. Sometimes other people can help you, but mostly you are on your own.
OK, yea and verily, 'tis existential much, I know, but many people feel that way a lot of the time, and I certainly include myself among them. Those who deny feeling like they are alone and living on the knife edge of fate so often proclaim in the very next breath that they 'trust in God' to prevail with some higher purpose that they stand outside the awareness of, and that this thought gives them hope. Whether this is reality or rationalization makes little difference-- guff happens, and the only way that you go on to rise above it all is to appreciate that there are inevitabilities, and that they must be accepted. After which, of course, you fight like hell anyway.
Ownership of this attitude is one of Buffy Summers' several saving graces, even though it is an outlook that does not come to her easily, and that she has to re-learn and have reinforced periodically. That ME keeps engaging in this repetitive lesson over the course of the last six-plus years shows their understanding that hope isn't a simple vaccine you get inoculated with as a child and after which you're set for life-- it's like food or sleep, it's something that needs to be regularly partaken of. The perspective has shifted, but the story is still the same.
This week's episode was a healthy step back up from the merely very good show of the previous week. (I'm trying right now to think of any other TV shows where 'merely very good' could be taken as some kind of a perjorative comment! ;-) While the pacing was still on the slow side, this time around it seemed to really suit the material presented and as a result the show never dragged for me. Considering the potential bleakness of the subject matter, this is no small feat, and congratulations are surely due to all the creative folk involved.
I suppose it is inevitable that once you delve as deeply into a mythology as many of us have here, that we will be able to start to predict at least some of the outcomes of some of the stories. About halfway through the episode, I began to think that Cassie was indeed going to die, no matter what Buffy did. I also knew that Buffy would behave heroically in her attempts to change the inevitability presented to her, and that if she failed she would be devastated. I also knew she would get up and do it again, amen, and so it came to be. That I felt very sure of this and was still moved and impressed by the way the story played out is again testimony to the talent, as previously mentioned. This episode was full of layers, perhaps even more so than the three before it, and not just in its more obvious references to previous episodes and seasons.
In terms of references to past episodes of the series, the most obvious allusion long-term Buffyphiles will see is the similarity to Reptile Boy, from season 2. A while back, I wrote about the apparent attempt that ME is making to continue extending the current mythology of the show into the logical future, while at the same time attempting to bring new viewers into the fold. Help is a perfect example of how to do this effectively.
New viewers will see what appears to be a 'simple' story, one they have seen before, or else think that they have. A young woman starts her new job, which is to counsel high school students with problems. One of them comes to her with a serious, but apparently straight-forward problem, namely carrying the feeling of impending death with her. The counselor takes her job seriously, and pursues the attempt to help the student with great zeal, if some with confusion as to just what to do. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the counselor has great exprience at solving problems and even in saving people's lives, but in a rather different context.
Buffy: 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' would be kicking this door in.
Xander: And Buffy the Guidance Counselor?
Buffy: (sighing): Waits.
In high school, when Buffy was a student, immediacy was everything, and the procedural issues were much like the moral ones, largely direct and monochromatic. See evil, slay evil, and do it now, worry about the details later. Now facing the same environment as an adult, her methodology needs to be refined a bit. While chronologically speaking, she may only be slightly older than the young people she has to counsel, she is quickly coming to the realization that she isn't one of them. She is now an adult and needs to act that way. So, on the one hand she might think she will speak to them in 'their' language, only to suddenly realize that there are limits to the degreee with which she can be 'hip' and or 'cool' and still command respect. And if you don't have respect, then none of them will listen to you.
Buffy goes bravely into her 'new' line of work with the thought that there will be demons to slay, something she understands and is very good at. The difference that the events of season 7 are introducing to her is that her prior Slayage perspective was always that of I'm saving my friends and family and of course, by extension, the world. This has worked up to now, but what Buffy sees by the end of Help is that the 'world' is no longer a metaphor, it is now her daily, ordinary reality. The people who need help aren't ones that she simply stumbles onto by blind fate in the dark of the Sunnydale night, they are people with problems who are coming to her, and hoping for answers.
This difference is beautifully illustrated by the 'bookends' of the opening and closing scenes. As the show begins, we see a shot of a funeral home interior, with caskets scattered about the room, one of them open and showing a deceased woman in repose. The employees of the home depart, the lights go off, and three of the other caskets open, with Buffy, Xander and then Dawn emerging, the latter with some assistance of the formers. The usual dry Buffyesque humor prevails-- Why do I get the kid's coffin? laments Dawn. I'm not the shortest one here!. When the dead woman awakes, vamped out as expected, the slayage is quick and effortless. All the camera shots are close up, we have the clear feeling of immediacy, and Buffy is in Slayer mode, totally professional and largely detached. Another day, another dusting. The only way I know how to do 'em-- one vampire at a time, she tells Xander.
Counterpoint this with the end shot of a somber Buffy, dressed in funereal black, showing up for work the next day (or soon after) at the high school. The camera positions itself outside the room, and looks in through the glass with a moderately long lens, placing distance between subject and viewer. We don't have to see Buffy's face, we know what she is feeling. And in the scene just before, where the Scoobies are reflecting on the sadness of the situation, we see just exactly why Dawn 'got the kid's coffin'-- the reality of her new 'adventure-filled' life is sinking in. Demon slayage may be way-cool, but one of the unpleasant side-effects is that she loses a friend, one she barely had time to get to know, and so has suffered a little death of her own. She gets to get out of the casket, Cassie does not. One day fate might reach out to her, and her sister may not be able to prevent that one either. It's a very sobering thought.
Now, back to Reptile Boy. I suspect that this reference is the more 'pointed' one of the show, and I am sure some will consider it a kind of retread, mostly for the benefit of newer viewers who may never have seen it. The mini-story about the gang of guys who want to be immensely wealthy and intend to sacrifice a young woman to achieve that end may not be new to the Buffyverse, but it is used quite differently here. First off, it is only a mini-story, not 'the' story. Reptile Boy opened with a shot of a young woman crashing throught a window, and running frantically away from something obviously frightening. She is chased, and eventually caught, by a gang of hooded beings that turn out to be college students, members of a fraternity. The remainder of the show is about how Buffy more-or-less stumbles onto the horrific activity taking place inthe fraternity, is captured herself, and barely manages to escape and save the day. This was still back during the time when Buffy was attempting to have a 'normal' life, and ended up at the fraternity because she was being 'defiant'. This rejection of her duty made her 'weak' and vulnerable, and while her capture ironically allowed her to save the lives of the other captured women, it was really pretty much accidental-- hardly a 'mature' way to go about your job.
In Help, Buffy thinks, plans, takes logical action. She employs the assistance of her friends, family and even co-workers equally logically, as they are needed-- they don't 'crash the party' at the last minute. As foreshadowed in another earlier season (in the episode with the student 'job fair'), Buffy has become involved in a kind of police work, but with a certain feminist/humanist spin.
As such, the apparent big bad of the week is a far more trivial threat for her to handle-- a handful of lame greedy guys and a lame combustible demon, whom Buffy handles with minor difficulty and a bit of help from Spike. The greed demon fight itself is almost anti-climactic-- (Avilas? Saliva spelled backward?? Ain't worth spit, indeed! ;-) I thought the scene where Buffy (with her eyes closed/averted) deftly catches the arrow mere inches from Cassie's head to be far cooler and more startling. Also, this trick conjures up nifty tie-ins with Checkpoint (throwing the sword, again without looking at it) and the Angel ep where Faith fires a cross-bow at Angel and he catches the arrow inches away from his body in a similar Zen-like moment.
The fight with the demon and the greedheads, and even the arrow catching trick are not the payoffs, of course-- the payoff is having Cassie die of heart failure seconds afterward. Was this because she was shocked and frightened by the violent attempts on her life? Maybe that contributed, but we find out a short time later that her family has a history of heart problems, so it's actually a 'natural' death after all, not a mystical one-- now suggesting a link to the events of The Body.
(Warning-- Body -related digression time)
Months before Joyce Summers actually died (of 'natural' causes), she and Buffy were alone in her hospital room, and Joyce tentatively made Buffy aware that she suspected Dawn wasn't literally, biologically her daughter. After Buffy carefully confirms this, Joyce goes on to say the rather startling words that 'she's important. To the world. Precious...' Long term viewers knew right then that they were witnessing some manner of prophecy in action, and that what had also just transpired was not as simple as a mother and her daughter in a close emotional moment, but the passing of a maternal torch from Mother on to Daughter. Buffy is thus terrified that her mother is making her 'deathbed speech', and feels she isn't ready to accept this responsibility for caring for Dawn, but as always, she agrees to shoulder the burden. Her mother looks genuinely relieved, which does seem to calm the frightened Buffy at least a little. The two embrace, and Joyce's words give Buffy some pain-entwined hope as she states 'my sweet, brave Buffy. What would I do without you?'.
In any other typical 'serial episodic' TV show, everything would have changed immediately, but in its usual perverse/realistic way, it takes well over another year before Buffy can fully realize her promise to Joyce. Yes, she does her very best to look after the interests of her new 'child', but she isn't really quite in tune with the balancing act that is parenthood, and the true and effective epiphany doesn't come until the events of Grave, even though 'Joyce' gives her daughter some more hopeful encouragement in Normal
Again.
Now, when you think about it, Buffy is not only a 'mother' to Dawn, she has become a sort of surrogate mother to an entire school full of other children. The events of the last three episodes seem to have made this transition seem logical and natural, but actually it's a stunning change. Buffy now not only accepts this responsibility, she is actively pursuing it-- there wasn't a moment's hesitation when Principal Wood offered her this 'low paying' job (which financially speaking, motherhood traditionally is, right?). Yes, she is having a bit of performance anxiety, but it only concerns her, not cripples her. As she begins the day-to-day details of her new work, she gets to see the entire range of interactions, from the silly to the ordinary to the truly perilous/potentially tragic. I particularly loved that Dawn was one of the 'troubled' students to come visit the new counselor and that Buffy played along so skillfully. We are also four eps into the new season now, and Buffy hasn't faltered once in her promise to involve Dawn in the events of the 'real world', be they good or bad.
Getting back to the impressions left for the 'newbie' BtVS viewer, I suspect that they may have been just as shocked at the final turn of events as Dawn and the rest of the gang were. After all, what kind of an action-adventure show allows the hero to 'fail' this way? Isn't this a silly, lighthearted fantasy program? Humm, guess not. But yet there is hope, and the hero forges on, bloodied but not beaten. And who is this younger sister, who seems to be handling her understandable grief with such maturity and insight? I thought someone said she was supposed to be this annoying, whiny little twit? This show certainly isn't what I expected...
Yah, uh-huh.
No, it's true, and besides the non-whiny younger sibling, your ordinary monsterific escape fantasy doesn't have a character who is psychically aware of the exact day that she is going to die, and instead of wigging hysterically or retreating into a bunker for a little much deserved catatonia, reads Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five for a new perspective on time and inevitabilty. Yes, she is special, and I wonder if death will turn out to be purple for her also.
Cassie was a great character, well acted by Azura Skye who played her pretty much like a 'normal' teenager, a strange thing in and of itself for the Buffyverse. Naturally, she isn't normal, but it was a very nice twist to present her as if she were. I have to think that there would be quite a number of kids her age out there in the viewership who in fact are afflicted with terminal illnesses of a variety of sorts, and who, while they might not know the exact day and time, have little choice but to live with the constant awareness that any given day could literally be their last. Cassie's complete lack of self-pity-- not sadness, mind you-- that would only be reasonable and proper-- is very inspiring. I also discovered later on in the week that there actually is a website named www.cassienewton.com, put up by Rebecca Kirshner and some friends, which I thought was very cool-- it does help to make the character seem more real, somehow, and fortunately doesn't seem to be selling anything.
I'm not versed enough in The Classics to guess at the possible mythological meanings behind the choice of the name Cassandra, but I'm sure that others will address this topic anyway. I would like to make a special note of d'Herblay's suggestion that the 'Newton' part could refer to Isaac Newton's laws of motion-- the 'body at rest/body in motion' ones. Good one there-- I'm gonna go with that unless I hear otherwise from ME !
Cassie's fate seems to be such a sad one, but as so often happens in the Buffyverse, death sometimes acts as a gift, either directly or indirectly, and death is everywhere in this episode. The show begins with a scene in a funeral home, and a vampire, which Buffy calmly defeats, reinforcing her effectiveness as AdultSlayerBuffy in what obviously was a well-pre-planned dusting. AdultHumanBuffy starts the next school day with some uncertainties that she will be able to succeed in this new part of her life, but soon the potential death of a student gives her focus and purpose. Willow visits Tara's grave, and retains her self-control while doing so, showing that she has more strength than she gives herself credit for. Dawn loses a friend to death, but helps her sister understand that she didn't 'fail' in her attempts to save Cassie, that it wasn't her fault. And finally, in what may be some of the most far-reaching foreshodowing thus far, Cassie (whose prophecies always appear to come true) predicts that Spike will have someone, most likely Buffy, tell him something he wants desperately to hear, and that Buffy 'will make a difference'. These are both extremely positive sounding prophesies, and it may very well have been the intent of the PTB that she was fated to deliver them, with the surety of her prophesied death reinforcing their accuracy.
On the death-related-but-not-so-gifty side of the coin, Spike is sitting motionless in the dark of the school basement, trying to disconnect himself from himself. At the moment, he may be metaphorically the deadest man in Deadonia, but even though Buffy is largely continuing her detached, SlayerBuffy modus operandi with him, there were a few small cracks in the protective armor-- she stops him from hitting himself and the way she looks at him at that moment is not without some sympathy. Her statement that 'maybe it's better when I'm not here' didn't come off as cold to me, but just a realistic appraisal that her 'warmer' presence before him isn't automatically a benefit, as many viewers seem to feel.
The whole dynamic between the two of them at this point in time is way too complicated to resolve by any simple means. On the one hand, Buffy now knows for a certainty that at least some part of Spike is truly, deeply, irrevocably in love with her. One the other, she knows that she is not in love with him. Therefore, she understands that her presence before him is a kind of torture, but at the same time she needs the 'skills' he brings to her fight against evil. It's a no-win situation. If she falsely allows him to think that there is a chance she will love him, she is behaving in a way that goes against her nature. But, neither can she be heedless of his feelings without being pointlessly cruel, which again is against her basic nature. I don't expect this to be worked out anytime soon, although eventually I think she is going to forgive him for the assault, and that this is what Cassie's prediction was about-- not that she will tell him that she loves him.
A note to my gentle readers here-- please be aware that I'm not saying that she should or should not, only that historically, over the long haul, Buffy always forgives. It is not for me to say one way or the other whether this is the 'right' thing for her to do, really, but as an adherant to the Buffy-as-eventual-goddess line of thinking, it is generally accepted that 'to forgive is divine'. Take out of this what you will. Along these same lines, I think Buffy is eventually going to parallel this arc by forgiving Faith for also victimizing her, and that there may even be a direct story tie-in of some sort between Spike and Faith. This is also perfectly reasonable IMO, since by forgiving Spike, Buffy forgives the 'other', or the evil 'outside' of her existence, and in forgiving Faith she forgives the 'self', or the evil 'inside' of her existence.
Some more 'little death': Xander is functional, but still largely uninspired and marginalized. He is being a compassionate friend to Willow, and the scene where he does his hammer/nail/power/control analogy was rather nice-- slow paced, but correctly so. He also helps Buffy when they go to confront Cassie's potentially abusive, alchoholic father, but mostly just by being there by her side-- his 'comfortador' persona again. The 'death' that is around Xander in this ep is somewhat like Spike's, just far less severe in its symptoms-- he's sort of psychologically adrift, and is living through others, ignoring his own needs. I mentioned last week that something has got to happen between him and Anya, that he isn't a complete person without her in his life. Anya didn't appear in Help, but the previews for next week's show would seem to indicate that the next ep will be an Anya-centric one, so perhaps this will at least initiate some serious action in this direction even if it doesn't ultimately resolve things. What I am additionally wondering is if Anya will come to realize that she isn't a complete being without Xander in her life-- her 'death issues' are much the same as his, just on the opposite (demonic) pole so to speak. Will these crazy kids ever get back together? This being the Jossverse, anything can happen, but I do recall a year or so ago when Xander and Anya had just made some very (emotionally) satisfying love, and Anya mentions that someday they might have children together. Xander slightly freaks, and makes the comment, 'Yes, someday, when we're older, and much less stupid.' Clever offhand Xanderian quip, or accurate Jossian prophesy?
Well, I think that pretty much covers the main themes I saw being developed this time around. I'll close out with some of the little things, both funny and serious, that I picked up on through the course of several viewings:
* Spike seems to be more able to defy the pain of the chip when he hurts a human being, bringing back the old discussions of whether or not the chip really functions, or whether he just expects it to. Or, of course, whether or not his MPD is preventing the chip from working properly.
* A continuing trend I've noticed-- Buffy seems to be very hard to physically hurt or injure so far this year. More support for the Buffy-creates-her-own-reality theorem? Catching the arrow without looking works along these lines too. Confident Buffy = Extremely hard-to-kill Buffy?
* The metanarrative about the internet, teenagers and poetry was a nice touch. The real cassienewton.com website takes this a step farther.
* The show's writers paying some needed attention to the common misunderstandings about the way youths react to death and/or the assumtion that they deliberately seek it out.
* The father being an alcoholic but not abusive-- a more sympathethic portrayal that the typical 'what does Joss have against fathers' routine we've seen over the years? Are we seeing this situation through Buffy's newer, 'older' eyes? There was the mention of Buffy's parents being divorced, and how it affected her when the class-cutting student brought up his parents reputed 'problems'.
* Buffy having to restrain herself when fighting humans. This has really rarely come up before, but it must be another new challenge for her-- she would have to be very careful she doesn't kill or seriously injure any normal humans that she gets involved in fighting.
* The oft-visited connection between evil and the aquisition of capital/power, depicted as an enslavement and/or destruction of the 'disposable (working) class', often using women as a metaphorical stand-in for the 'proles'. Thus, yet another older ep connection, in this case primarily to *Anne*. Also, while it's generally been treated with humor, Anya's capitalist instincts seem to be associated more with her demonic side than with her human side.
* Speaking of power, and who has it, this week Willow was back helming the computer, not Dawn. Is Dawn going to give up so easily? I hope not.
* Speaking of Dawn, I enjoyed the very funny bit where she does her best NYPD Blue impression.
* Wondering who gets to clean up the crispy demon bits in the library the next morning? Hope Buffy gets on really good terms with the school's head janitor-- failing to do so led to a very tragic end for Matthew Broderick's character in the movie Election.
* On her first day on the job, Buffy is sitting at her deck, sharpening new pencils. The girl just can't help making stake-like objects from whatever's around her, now can she?
* Finally, for all the fastidious fashion folk, I liked Buffy's outfits. So there.
*******
Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace / Until it's Tuesday again!
( See? I get better with age! ;-)
*******
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*** Spoilers for Ep 7.4 above, also fr. promo for 7.5. Allusion to future character appearance *** -- OnM, 09:40:58 10/20/02 Sun
See, 'SPL-3.5' is quicker! :-) Which BTW, is what this should have been labeled. Forgot to change it before I copied it from the WP. Mea culpa!
Little more rambly and less focussed this week than I usually try for, but such was the effect the ep had on me. After a while you gotta go with what ya got.
Time for lunch now, be back later!
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Note on Newton ( ***Spoilers*** SPL-3 for Help) -- luna, 09:47:39 10/20/02 Sun
There's currently a novel about Isaac Newton called Dark Matter. Newton was an alchemist as well as a regular scientist--in those days the line was a lot less defined. I'm in the middle of reading it now so can't tell you if there's more of a connection, but will if anything turns up. It's a good read, anyway.
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alchemy and chemistry was pretty much the same thing at the time -- vh, 06:18:27 10/21/02 Mon
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Gravity, 'from beneath it devours' and Buffy's leap (Spoilers for Help and mild spoiler spec) -- Rahael, 07:27:01 10/21/02 Mon
I wondered whether the Newton connection is Gravity. The idea of this unseen power that we all feel (now I'm talking metaphorically rather than scientifically).
I am reminded of Buffy falling down to her death in the Gift. When Cassie dies, does she fall to the ground? (I haven't seen the ep).
Buffy falls down to earth, and then she rises from her Grave in Bargaining. I'm also thinking of her first death, in PG, which many people have likened to Cassie's own fate. Fated. Buffy has to descend underground then. Is Gravity a clue as to where else she might be descending this season? I.E, even below the basement? Will she get pulled further down?
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And, if you consider the planets and how they orbit the sun... -- OnM, 21:33:32 10/21/02 Mon
... you will see that this is a case where gravity and motion are essentially in balance, and the result is a cycle that repeats, rather than a linearity that decays.
Now, who is the sun, and who is gravity?
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Re: A Simple Twist of Fate - Thoughts on *Help* ( ***Spoilers*** SPL-3 ) -- Dedalus, 09:55:22 10/20/02 Sun
Spectacular stuff, OnM.
Enjoyed it very much.
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Cassandra -- CW, 11:09:56 10/20/02 Sun
Cassandra was the daughter of Priam of Troy and sister of Hector and Paris. The god Apollo had given her the gift of prophecy, but because she refused his advances, he made it so that no one would believe her. (I think the poem on the main page of the cassienew.com site refers to Apollo) She told the Trojans exactly what would happen during the Trojan War. She even explained that the Trojan Horse was a trap. But, of course no one believed her. When the Greeks sacked the town, the 'lesser' Ajax drug her from the temple of Athena where she had take refuge and raped her. Athena's rage over this desecration of her temple led to the scattering of the homeward-bound Greek fleet, and the adventures of the Odyssey.
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More on Cassandra... -- Rob, 13:04:37 10/20/02 Sun
This part is probably more significant re: ME's choosing of the name.
Cassandra, after the Trojan War, was taken as a warbride by the Greek warlord Agamemnon. Upon arriving home, Cassandra foresaw her own death at the hands of Agamemnon's evil head wife, Clytaemnestra. And she knew that there was nothing she could do to avoid it, knowing it was a foregone conclusion, even so much as, she did not resist entering the room where she knew moments later, she would be killed.
Coincidentally, I just studied this myth in the Greek philosophy class I'm taking right now. I, of course, was inspired by this board.
Rob
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Re: More on Cassandra... -- ponygirl, 10:59:27 10/21/02 Mon
I always liked the story of Cassandra because it seemed to illustrate the problem of fate in general. Of course Cassandra's curse is that no one believes her, but any prophecy has a certain amount of futility in it. If it is indeed accurate then it is unavoidable, being forewarned only allows a person to prepare themselves to accept their fate. Trying to avoid destiny usually only hastens its arrival. Free will remains, but only to allow us to choose between resistance or surrender.
It's interesting that while AtS constantly mentions prophecies many of them are proved to be false or open to vastly different interpretations. BtVS on the other hand doesn't usually get into the prophecy thing as much but when they appear the prophecies are unavoidable, if not unmutable.
Oh, and great review OnM!
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Point, line, square, cube, hypercube... -- OnM, 22:09:59 10/21/02 Mon
*** It's interesting that while AtS constantly mentions prophecies many of them are proved to be false or open to vastly different interpretations. BtVS on the other hand doesn't usually get into the prophecy thing as much but when they appear the prophecies are unavoidable, if not unmutable. ***
The whole issue of the 'mutability' of prophesy has been a constant theme throughout the whole run of both of these series.
For me, just how much is fate and how much is free will depends on the frame of reference, or the viewpoint of the observer (which BTW is a big deal in the relativity area of the sciences).
On the surface, the prophecy in Help seems to be straightforward-- Cassie will die, and she does. Buffy tries to intevene, but 'fails'.
But does she? What if the actual prophecy is not the 'obvious' one, the only one perceivable in our limited frame of reference? Suppose the true prophecy was that Buffy will fail to save the world at the coming of the eventual Big Big Bad? And that actually, by delaying Cassies's death by even those few brief minutes, something shifted slightly in the overall scheme of things, and now Buffy will eventually succeed and avert the next apocalypse yet again at the end of this season.
It's like a cube and a hypercube. Limited to only three physical dimensions, we can only see one of the cubes that is a part of the whole four-dimensional hypercube. If you realize that, had Buffy not intervened, Cassie would have been killed by the greedguys, and so she would never have given Spike hope by her message to him, or Buffy hope with the 'you will make a difference' prophesy.
This also rings true with the whole 'small things make a difference' theme that ME brings up metaphorically again and again (and stated explicitly in a previous Angel episode).
Thus, Cassie's death saves the world, but only because Buffy attempts to save her.
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Re: Cassandra -- frisby, 17:13:33 10/20/02 Sun
According to the philosopher Francis Bacon, in his "Wisdom of the Ancients" (the first one on Cassandra), the main lesson to be learned from the fable or myth is to always be aware of "where one is at" with regard to speaking the truth (especially with regard to the future). From where "we" presently are, we can only guess that Buffy will eventually tell Spike she loves him and will make all the difference for Dawn, but from the context of the end of the entire series, that very important prophecy may hearken otherwise. Also, just parenthetic, Nietzsche says the entire spectrum of the Greek woman lies between Cassandra at one extreme and Antigone at the other.
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WOW! Very nicely composed essay! -- ZachsMind, 14:31:20 10/20/02 Sun
I can think of nothing to add, or any points to argue. Very well done. I'm impressed and honored to have read it. Thank you OnM.
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Re: A Simple Twist of Fate -Spoilers S7.1-4. -- Age, 19:33:53 10/20/02 Sun
As wonderful as always; I look forward each week to reading your essays.
You show clearly the contrast that was being made between Buffy the Slayer with her immediate see evil, slay evil; and the more complex adult role of listening to students. This contrast is expressed in the intercutting of the scenes of the students Buffy counsels, delaying quick resolution and suggesting complexity, as opposed to the quick, simple stake through the heart of the one vampire. This complexity and delayed resolution is then played out as Buffy follows a trail of possible clues, only to find out that in the end she can't stake what was going to kill Cassie(Willow even suggested at one point that Buffy was trying so hard to help that she was looking for the supernatural when it may just be natural.)
From the beginning of the series, the movement has been away from childhood myth(of things that go bump in the night by giving myth back its metaphorical content) and we see, as your bookends idea suggests, the movement away from the supernatural to the natural as Buffy takes on an adult role and is affected by her involvement with Cassie. Buffy's job is another form of the empowerment theme this season, giving the students the opportunity to sit back and open up to emotions that left unchecked would become the demons the Slayer would be forced to simply kill. She is giving the students the power to reconnect with aspects of themselves they couldn't do alone(in Cassie's case to reconnect with the living as symbolized by her new friendship with Dawn, and not just be a sacrifice to her own death as symbolized by, well, being a sacrifice that everyone will think committed suicide because of her death vibes.) Just as Buffy gave Willow some of her power last week to heal, Buffy is giving the students a different kind of power to begin healing too.
The parallel between the vampire at the beginning of the ep and Cassie, both alone, both in some sense undead, is ultimately that Buffy can save neither one. She can, to be blunt, put them both out of their misery: the vamp is not at peace and, beyond human help, can only be staked; while Cassie's misery, her feeling of being alone, is reduced by Buffy's human involvement, much as it is for the other students. Cassie's death at such a young age is sad, as is the older vamped woman's. I wonder, if we take her vamping metaphorically, what difference a counsellor like Buffy would have made in her life had she had one available at a younger age.
The change to a more adult perspective seems to be a main part of the season: we and the Scoobies seem to already have a heads up about the hellmouth opening, suggesting a more adult knowledge of events. The reaction of the Scoobies to this knowledge seems more adult as well: Xander mentions the prophecy, Willow wonders if she'll be up to it, Buffy's somewhat concerned, but they seem to be taking what could be a major catastrophe in their stride. Of course, this may change now that the finality of prophecy has been hit home this ep, but I can't help thinking that there was a deliberate balancing between Xander's repetition of the 'from beneath you, it devours' slogan with Cassie's reassurance that Buffy will make a difference. Yah, the hellmouth is going to open, but when it does they'll be ready for it. Perhaps, but at least they are communicating better with one another.
Anyway, wonderful essay as always. Look forward to reading next week's.
Age.
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Shock horror! Someone complains about OnM's wonderful post! -- Tchaikovsky, 12:56:29 10/21/02 Mon
As always, OnM, this was a fantastic synopsis, and your weekly posts are usually the highlight of the week here.
But this time I wasn't entirely happy. As a self-styled audiophile, I'm sure the title 'Simple Twist of Fate' wasn't a co-incidence, instead an allusion to Dylan. Being a bit of a Dylan freak, I was excited to know how you would connect with the song with the chromatically descending bass-line, other than the title's relevance to Cassie's death. But not a mention of him was made- unfortunately.
So, in solace, here are some slightly silly points, which someone else might want to expand upon.
"She looked at him and he felt a spark,
Tingle to his bones".
There's that word again. Spark. And it's the male character who feels it. In this case, what? Love? Melancholy? Soulfulness?
"Hunts her done at the waterfront docks
Where the sailors all come in"
Vaguely reminds me of Buffy and Angel in Innocence/Surprise.
"I still believe she was my twin"
Makes me think back to 7.4 and the suggestion of Cassie and Buffy being linked. Or maybe Cassie and Tara? A heart failure, as the interesting thread goes above.
Maybe more important is the tone of the track. It's rather melancholy and sad. It does remind me slightly of Buffy at the end of last week's episode. If things had been different- if things had been easier, she might have saved Cassie. And she might know how to save Spike. But it all seems too hard. Everything's a little bit strange, (cf 'the parrot that talks'). There's still a sense of disloaction, even if it's not as oppressive as it was last year.
Just a couple of thoughts. In the words of Earl Allison:
Take it and run.
PS The main point, OnM, as always, is that your review is fabulous.
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'Bout time... the Evil Clone keeps waking me up with his periodic shrieking... -- OnM, 20:59:23 10/21/02 Mon
... even though I keep telling him he doesn't have to read the responses to my stuff. Gotta get some stronger drugs...
In fact, I had originally planned to use some exerpts from the Dylan song, which you have correctly sussed as being the meta-reference for the overall essay.
This happened because I often start the thought-outline for an essay with the title, and then just see where it goes. Since the last two reviews used musical references-- ('Into the Fire / I am the Spark' for Beneath You and 'She's Frequently Kind / And She's Suddenly Cruel' for Same Time, Same Place, I thought I'd just keep doing that for as long as it seemed right, and the very first words that came to mind for Help were Dylan's.
However, after doing that it then seemed like too much to also drop direct lines from the song into the essay, since I wanted to have the feeling of the song sort of hover over the text rather than directly mesh with it, kind of like Cassie's fate hovered around her without ever having a literal physical presence (until the end, of course).
So, I did the side-step into the surviving high-school/existential!hope riff instead.
Will there be a musical ref this week? I have no idea. I always consider the sage advice of the great Leo Kottke, who from a time of many decades past, mentioned how it was always his personal gift to be able to take a sweet, simple melody and drive it right into the ground.
;-)
Thanks! And please feel free to expound musically anytime, it certainly helps float my boat.
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Re: Shock horror! Someone complains about OnM's wonderful post! -- Rattletrap, 14:31:59 10/22/02 Tue
Good choice, this is one of my favorite Dylan songs ever; from one of the best albums I've ever had the privelige of listening to. Sorry it didn't make it into the final review, but I like the mental place it took me anyway. :-)
'trap
First post -- just sharing (perhaps in all the wrong places) personal schema -- Deb, 14:01:03 10/20/02 Sun
Halo all -- first post here (or anywhere for that matter in quite some time). I'm a Jungian as most all here can tell, but I'm not here to deconstruct and reconstruct the universal (just what exactly does that mean? The Hero's Quest is certainly not, or has not been, a female experience even if Campbell said so.) archetypes of Buffy as a text. (although I do do that often. I deconstruct and reconstruct everything that catches my attention. All around me are these pretty, little -- or larger than life -- colorful, shiny baubles that beg to . . . have meaning.)
The thesis of this mess is that some of those pretty little baubles -- like Buffy -- "hurt so good" that one cannot think and analyze the text until after all the emotions aroused are fully experienced. This is the foundation of relationship: intrapersonal communication. Without it, we are phantoms encased within stone; we are only our own Shadows taunting ourselves for our inability to participate in life through relationship: our inability to "live" because we have no adequate words, nor unjaded desire, for "living in the light." (Final Commendatore scene from Mozart's "Don Giovanni" Great stuff there.) Now, back on topic.
I started watching Buffy during the 4th season. My 62-year-old mentor professor told me to watch it. I wondered is he had suffered from a stroke. Hadn't he seen the movie of the same name? One movie was tolerable, but a serial? So, while I was parenting, studying, grading papers, writing, talking, cleaning, paying bills, making lesson plans, etc. Buffy was playing in the background. By the middle of the fifth season, I put life on hold for an hour and started seriously watching. By the beginning of season six, I locked myself in my bedroom, turned off the phone, turned out all the lights in the house and sent my 13-year-old to a friend's home to engage in serious discussion of Japanese anime. Then, while watching Buffy, I experienced such a beautiful grief, which lasted all season, a paradoxial emotional that I had not experienced since 1987.
1987 -- It was the worst year of my life and it was, at the same time, the most awesome, beautiful, meaningful year of my life. I experienced the most engulfing feelings of rapture when I coded due to "profound anaphalactic shock"; followed by a feeling of "relationship" and "love" with all beings (and so much more that there are no words for nor "time"); followed by unbelievable pain and disconnectedness when I was yanked back into my body; followed by three years of grief, depression, and fewer and fewer moments of bliss when I merged, while swinging, with the wind swirling amongst the cottonwood trees at the park . . . I did not know how to live anymore in this world. I was a ghost wandering around the street, shopping mall, grocery, or at family gatherings. (We're all ghosts at Wal-Mart though.) Forget the churches, God doesn't live there. I grew up with my baby daughter (she had been five weeks old that day in August). I decided not to go back to work, and we had a wonderful time doing everything together. I'd put on the Moody Blues and BS "Thunder Road" in the car, and her head would bounce and leg would kick as she took in all the scenery. She is still one of the most beautiful and one of the most wise of people on the planet, who still listens to The Moody Blues.
After my marriage flew away in 1988, I had only one adult confidant whose very presence was the silent, unconditional nonjudgemental acceptance I needed at times. He was the only person I could have a real argument with and know that I was respected for my view and my passion, and my weird. . . gifts. (There are more than five senses: many more) He was a man of many faults, and we had not been friends before my experience. I detested him before. I loved him after. I hid this relationship, because, as I told myself, I didn't want my life tainted. Actually I told myself I did not want to taint his life. "Before enlightenment, chop wood. After enlightenment, chop wood."
Anyway...... I ran 600 miles away because I was afraid.
Watching Buffy last season and this season, so far, is like like watching my life back then. While it is killing me softly (at times Mr. Pointy is poking about) it is also filling the holes of my soul. Souls are strange. When they leave, they take new form. When they are forced back into a mold, body, they just don't quite fit as well anymore, so one must compromise with one's soul to meet the demands of the spirit while being imprisoned within flesh.
The first compromises are simple.(Hah! So they seem.) "You must breath, eat, sleep, wear clothes in public, (which requires that you do laundry unless you don't care if everyone sees what your 7-week-old daughter has eaten for the last two weeks), pee, come out of the shower before all the hot water is gone even if there are still many sobs to sob, eventually answer the door or the phone, realize that there are negative consequences to intercourse and it is not just a marathon method of feeling alive for as long as possible, and, finally, you need to get your mail at least every three or four days or the mail carrier gets really ticked . . . Opening the mail can wait a few weeks until you come to realize that people here are really hung up on money . . .and it's so dirty." When these tasks and lessons are mastered, everything else is just a downhill slide.
Buffy exhibited the shock and terror of being someplace where there is nothing but love and then being rudely pulled back to a place that one truly believes, for a while at least, is Hell. (The question of the true identity of this place does pop up time to time when you are confronted with the reality of whom you have elected to run the place.)
Buffy has a calling. One that she believes she is aware of, but it is quickly becoming outdated. (Theme of Technology and Social Change -- you fill in the rest.) Now she is a school counselor (one who would be sued many times over if this were the real world) I came back to raise a daughter. Along the way I fell into academia, and I'm not so sure that I am an academic. I seem to feel first, think second, act third, rest fourth, play fifth. Play needs to be moved up on the priority list. I really miss playing.
Thanks for...................
One observation: In the church, Buffy and Spike, his back to her, telling her that all the voices inside are telling him (important pause, he turns to look at Buffy) "go to hell." Love it! I'm going to stop here or else I will start talking about the lighting, mise en scene, thoughts of St. Francis, two lines from "Jesus Christ Superstar," etc.
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Re: First post -- just sharing (perhaps in all the wrong places) personal schema -- skpe, 14:26:19 10/20/02 Sun
Welcome to the board a very lyrical post. You ought to write some fan-fic I bet you would be very good at it.
(A minor spoiler for 7.2 OM scale 1 or 2)
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Re: First post -- just sharing (perhaps in all the wrong places) personal schema -- Deb, 15:07:02 10/20/02 Sun
Thanks for the welcome. I was a journalist who worked way to managing editor of medical journal,(People, do not believe every finding of every medical study you hear about. Many are biased beyond professionalism, or methodology is made to fit findings.) but it got boring. Went back to grad school. Taught journalism, and film appreciation wrote four novels that are still sitting around in second draft condition. I would love to write something for "Tales of the Slayer." I'm reading volume 1, and my mind is churning and burning. But, alas, I have three mid-terms and four writing projects this week. Again, thanks for the welcome. "I'll be back!"
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Thanks for sharing -- very interesting post -- alcibiades, 14:46:01 10/20/02 Sun
One observation: In the church, Buffy and Spike, his back to her, telling her that all the voices inside are telling him (important pause, he turns to look at Buffy) "go to hell." Love it! I'm going to stop here or else I will start talking about the lighting, mise en scene, thoughts of St. Francis, two lines from "Jesus Christ Superstar,"
Please do elaborate -- would love to hear more thoughts about this on the lighting, mise en scene, thoughts of St. Francis, etc. And especially what Spike means by "go to hell". And why he turns to her to say it.
What I think is interesting in the staging of that scene is that he starts out behind her, way behind her -- the way he was all last year -- always at her back, both in the fighting and explicitly in many of the sex scenes -- and how through his fragmented exposition of what happened to her -- he half circles her and then moves beyond her -- so that finally she, like the audience, is at his back, behind him.
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Re: Thanks for sharing -- very interesting post -- Deb, 15:21:35 10/20/02 Sun
I would love to go into detail right now, but I'm a bit overwhelmed today with life. One short observation. When Spike turns, he says "to hell" not "go to hell" as I first stated. I will get to this tomorrow after I finish what I need to finish. This whole episode, especially Spike's dialogue, is fascinating for its subversive meanings. One more point: Who is it that is always saying something to the effect that one cannot return and just pick up where things left off, and then gets walked out on. Great ep. Perhaps you can post some more of your observations? What you pointed out was right on, but I think someone would need to be familiar with theater to notice. Could be wrong. Have been wrong. Will be wrong again.
Tomorrow.
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Re: personal schema -- frisby, 16:58:56 10/20/02 Sun
Thanks for sharing Deb. Interesting. I think each season has improved on all that came before, so six was indeed the best (not counting seven) even with the darker than usual story arcs. I've also been focusing my thought on what occurs at the end of 7.1 where we learn this season is about power and returning to the beginning, as well as 7.3 where Buffy learns about Will-iam (or the ensouled Spike/William), and where he says "to hell" -- whatever that might mean. I think like others that the "first evil" or the devil in Christian mythology might be the big bad for the season, the one who back in season three told Buffy "I am that which even the darkness fears." And the source of Buffy's power (she who fights the forces of darkness) is itself to be found in darkness. Perhaps the forces of light and darkness must combine to defeat evil (that which both fear). Christian mythology brings everything under the rubric of god and jesus and heaven and hell, and, overall, it's all a matter of understanding hell. I think Angel was once taught that hell is right here and not elsewhere. Perhaps by going to hell "we" actually go to reality (or what we know as magic-less and demon-less and vampire-less) thus fulfilling the prediction from Joss's comic book Fray (the big event of the early 21st century whereby there never was any magic or vampires). Interesting how we can see and better understand our own lives (the time between our birth and death) through the catharis the drama of buffy provides. Personally I'd like to see the love between buffy and spike be the spark kindles the final fire necessary to defeat the first evil!
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Re: personal schema -- Deb, 22:15:42 10/20/02 Sun
Interesting . . . your last statement allows me to cut to the very heart of what every argument I could present could not say; "From beneath you it devours," is jouissance. Let's face it. Everyone is the Buffyverse is shattered or, as Kenneth Burke would say, "rotten with perfection" or the drive for the unattainable, and truly undesireable separation from all "others" who obviously are flawed and "beneath" them. The only thing that could devour, shatter, destroy, and cleanse bad blood is the joy and pleasure in what Gayatry Spivak describes as "the freedom from absolutes": the freedom from judging others and being judged by others.
Donna Haraway, in "A Cyborg Manifesto" speaks of the cyborg (Spike) and the goddess (Buffy) who are bound in the "spiral dance." This dance, performed correctly, can heal the postmodern nightmare that exists presently in Buffyverse, but one needs to stop thinking in terms of opposites and place good and evil, dull and sharp, dark and light, and all other "opposites" on a spiral -- a never ending slinky -- that allows for degrees of both simultaneously. So what is the Ultimate Evil? Fear. If Buffy can find the courage to overcome what "others" think of her, and if Spike/William can forgive himself, jourissance will devour the fear. I, like yourself, would like to see this via the love of the goddess and the cyborg.
Later.
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Re: personal schema (Cyborg Manifesto) -- frisby, 06:25:39 10/21/02 Mon
I've not heard of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" but will try to find it and check it out. Very interesting: spike and buffy in the spiral dance that heals postmodernism (and the belief in "opposite values" -- as Nietzsche calls it in BGE #2). Courage over fear! (what Zarathustra calls the great adventure known as 'humanity'). Thanks for your post.
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Does this help? -- Rufus, 06:50:52 10/21/02 Mon
Cyborg Manifesto
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Does this help? Er, no...Can't get past the first sentence... -- Who...who..who let the dogs out, 07:27:54 10/21/02 Mon
"This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism."
OMG, was a less ironic statement ever penned?
Can I just LOL...while vomiting metaphysically.
I just can't bear to read something that starts this way.
JC, despite the rules, ya know, the creativity mind suck you sign onto when you sign into the academy, academic writing doesn't have to be this abysmal!!!
OTOH, (polite face) I'm sure it is very interesting -- er, deep and all that.
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Re: Does this help? Er, no...but since you brought it up......... -- Deb, 11:08:43 10/21/02 Mon
And the first time you picked up Shakespeare your first reaction was, "Sweet!!!" Academic writing is boring, and when you first read it, well when I first started reading it, I had to read it over and over and over and then get someone to explain it all to me. Once you learn how to read it, and know enough to see the biases, you learn alot about all those silly little questions you ask yourself before you go to sleep at night. Along the way, in humanities at least and social sciences at times, you learn about storytelling, and you see that someone who lived 2,000 years earlier had those same nagging questions and someone 2,000 years in the future will have them too.
This is one thing that is so great about Buffy; I haven't been able to find those similar stories in the past. . . yet. Speaking as a woman who is a single-parent and has to do it all ... a lot . . . and never can do anything well, but must settle for "just enough" . . . I'd like to know that story. Because, instead of feeling marginalized within this society because I have no man to protect me, as if I ever needed one, so I can devote all my energy to parenting so that the next generation of adults will be perfect in every way . . . I can sit back and sigh. I can feel free to be imperfect and hope that someday I can find a companion who can just quietly accept me and realize that he is beautifully imperfect also. All I ask for is that fine silver thread of decency and humanity with a love that survives the romantic, rose-colored hogwash (sorry, Midwesterner here, and this was a compromise.) Is this too much to ask? (This, and the other goodies that come with "relationship" of course. Bet your parents never told you that romance and sex can't survive together for longer than, oh, six weeks did they?)
Then, then I can get back to just being me and not being a pathetic super-hero clone responsible for all the problems of the world: or at least feeling like I am at times. I can stop slaying vampires (some of them turn into dragons you know, and if they still smoke.....eew) all day.........and night.
So excuse me, but it is mid-terms and I have to go and beg a soul-less prof. to let me take it. He feels I am not serious enough about my studies because I missed one class period because my daughter had an urgent medical concern. I still have not mastered being in three or more places at a time . . . .can't I do anything right? (He might be pissed also because I asked him in class why he was giving multiple guess tests to graduate students, I don't know. I think I saw his forehead do this thing...and he smiled at me in a sinister manner while his eyes turned gold. Well, well, it was a legitimate question.)
So, your lack of literacy is your problem, not anyone elses......Have a nice day.
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Re: Does this help? -- frisby, 09:10:27 10/21/02 Mon
Wow! That is service. Thank you. I'll read it tonight.
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Re: personal schema (Cyborg Manifesto) -- Deb, 06:55:36 10/21/02 Mon
Also check out: "Projecting the Shadow" by Janice Hocker Rushing and Thomas S. Frentz is you've the time and inclination. ;)
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Reaction to season six -- Rufus, 04:10:19 10/21/02 Mon
I wonder if the reaction to season six has a lot to do with the fact that most of the viewers have experienced a part of their life that was "hell" for them.
Forget the churches, God doesn't live there.
You just reminded me of a line from this past weeks Firefly...."You don't fix faith...it fixes you"...that line was from Shepherd in response to another character wanting to rewrite the "Good Book" because it made no sense. Who cares where God lives....reminding me of a line from Stigmata...."God is inside you and all around you, not buildings of wood and stone" (that is from memory and not exact). What attracts me to Buffy so much is not the promise of a religious event as much as the promise of a living event. None of the characters are perfect and all have suffered and all have made mistakes, and all are the end result of how they have lived to this moment. Only Buffy has been brought back from the dead. So, as all the themes in Buffy are universal we could put many labels on them.....people will see the show in a way that they are most comfortable with. For a show that isn't religious I find it at the same time perhaps the most spiritual on television.
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Re: Reaction to season six -- Deb, 07:19:03 10/21/02 Mon
Oh! I love that quote from "Stigmata." Supposedly that is a quote from the "secret" Dead Sea Scrolls that Peter wrote quoting Jesus, or something like that. And thanks for the link above. I've caught "Firefly" once so far, so haven't an opinion about anything except that it feels quite different than any other sc-fi space serial.
Such an awkward thing to say, but it feels comfortable knowing that others see their lives in season 6 also. I'm not sure why people are concerned about it being so "dark." Dark humour can be used so effectively if people pay attention. Plus, and this is strange to say, but true: Buffy is not entertainment. It's like visiting the collective consciousness cafe to get a jolt of karmic java.
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Fact alert or We all have our academic hangups -- alcibiades, 07:46:01 10/21/02 Mon
the "secret" Dead Sea Scrolls that Peter wrote quoting Jesus, or something like that.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are not gospels and no one claims they were written by Christians, but rather, as best as we know it today, and still some scholars dispute, Essenes.
Some people speculate that Jesus may have visited the Essenes -- or an Essene retreat -- some time in his career.
They are not proto Christians -- they are an ascetic cult of Judaism -- using cult here in the technical, academic sense to mean non-mainstream religious offshoot.
If anything Jesus may have been influenced by ascetic elements from the Essene cult.
You may be talking about a proto-Gospel some scholars suspect exists, of course, since that exists only in the realm of speculation it's hard to know how anyone could borrow a line from it -- or the Gnostic Gospels. But the Gnostics are not at all the same thing as the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. Both groups had elements of dualism in their belief -- this is stronger in Gnosticism, and both had a strong us versus them mentality but they are really very different religiously speaking.
4.2 Emotional Fizzles in the Ground State in 3 Parts/Angel (long) -- alcibiades, 14:52:28 10/20/02 Sun
Ground state is about the fizzling out of family and alternatives.
After our introduction to the child Gwen and her remote family who does not touch her in the teaser, the episode opens in Cordelia's rooms with Angel and Fred looking for clues about Cordelia's disappearance. Angel can smell Cordelia (though curiously not Groo) but he finds no clues and indeed nothing to latch onto until Fred directs his attention to the box of possessions that were on Cordelia's desk when she left. There, at last, Angel focuses his attention on two photographs -- the first is Angel and Cordelia, the model of family Angel has kept in his mind, and the second one which includes Wesley reminds him that Wesley is still around, Wesley is another alternative. Fred asks wtte of "what do you do if the things you were relying on aren't there."
And Angel says while looking at the framed picture of himself, Cordelia and Wesley, "you go find them."
Cut to Angel arriving at a scene of demon carnage -- curiously instead of stepping into the fray, he stands back, asking Wesley if he needs help. Since Wesley is in the middle of cutting the demon's head off as Angel asks, he replies "No. Thanks." Then Angel states he never had a chance to thank Wesley. Okay -- that's odd, he did have a chance to say thank you, he just didn't take it when he emerged from the ocean, even after Wesley fed him with his own blood. And the obvious explanation that Angel wasn't up to it doesn't wash since we see just how much energy he did expend when he dealt with Connor -- so, at the very least, Angel had enough energy to mouth thank you to Wesley -- he just didn't.
Here Angel elaborates that "it must have been hard for you ... no map ... all that water." But still Angel has not precisely said thank you. He does say that he thought about the way things went and the way they could have gone and from Angel's POV, "we're okay, again."
At this revelation, Wesley says nothing, but looks at Angel half hard, half pained.
And Angel cannot make eye contact with Wesley as Wesley looks at him -- after he finishes saying "we're okay again," Angel drops his eyes and looks down.
I see Angel's comment that he never had a chance to thank Wesley as still kind of noncommittal. There's a real ambivalence there still in how he feels about Wesley expressed in his hedging around saying thank you without quite saying it. He's acknowledging Wesley's effort but can't quite bring himself to say thank you openly.
Being the sensitive, big brainy type, Wesley sees through Angel's wordy facade -- he thinks he knows why Angel came and whence the awkwardness. He knows -- and he's mostly correct not entirely, since Wesley did play a part in Angel's vision of family under the sea, although he came into focus much later than the others and sat at the furthest place from Angel -- that what Angel really wants is Wesley's help in finding Cordy, not Wesley at all.
But Angel cannot bring himself to ask Wesley for his help squarely. So Wesley hands him the file he has assembled during Cordelia's absence and explains its complications.
Let's remind ourselves of a disjunction between Angel's words to Connor in Deep Down and his deeds to Wesley.
In Deep Down, Angel tells Connor, "Understand, there is a difference between wishing vengenance on someone and taking it." This, of course, is a lesson that Connor needs to learn. OTOH, is not taking vengeance instead of wishing it precisely the same thing that Angel did to Wesley last season?
On the ocean floor, Angel has had time to think about his deeds, but he is not precisely apologetic for his act of vengeance -- attempting to murder Wesley after he kidnapped Connor -- rather he believes that he and Wesley are now quit -- but only because Wesley has now saved his life and his mental capacity -- with his brain and his blood.
Moreover, there is the extreme irony of the fact that Connor's deed in taking vengeance on his father unconsciously mirrored Angel's actions perfectly, just as Connor's physical gestures mirrored Angel's in Benediction. Both Angel and Connor acted a benevolent role before their victim to gain his trust and both turned vicious once the victim relaxed enough to trust the other - in Angel's case Wesley, and in Connor's case Angel.
Angel sees all this clearly when it comes to Connor and himself -- when he is the victim.
I don't think he is seeing it as clearly when he is the agressor and Wesley is the victim.
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Re: 4.2 Emotional Fizzles in the Ground State in 3 Parts/Wesley (long) -- alcibiades, 14:54:22 10/20/02 Sun
***
So why does Wesley look pained when Angel says "we're okay, again"?
It's a question -- does he wish Angel would say I forgive you -- does he wish Angel would say thank you, I realize you didn't have to save me?
I think what he really wishes is for one of the AI team to come to him other than when they need him. Wesley is sick of being needed only for his abilities in helping to rescue the others, he wants to be needed because he is valuable in himself. He certainly believes that Fred, Angel and Cordy, the 3 members of the AI team he has helped rescue since his throat was cut, are worthy in and of themselves.
Unfortunately for Wesley, no one is projecting this feeling at him. His bare, painful statement to Justine in Deep Down is that people get what they deserve. So despite the fact Wesley wants validation as a person from his "family members" at AI, that he doesn't want to be just a brain that can help, on some level Wesley honestly believes since he is not getting any other attention, he doesn't deserve it.
He's sees himself as unworthy. That's a whole ton of self-hatred to bear as a burden.
And the troubling aspect, at least for those who care about Wesley, is that while thinking he's avoiding this complication in his relationship with Lilah, Wesley is now setting up precisely the same dynamic. Only, instead of basing the relationship on needing each other's help in rescuing each other or in solving crimes, or in fighting on the side of good in coming apocalyptic battles, Wesley is setting up a relationship based on loneliness and sexual need.
Last year, if Lilah had told Wesley her "evil plan fantasy" about becoming Connor's Mrs. Robinson, Wesley would have kicked her in the head without a moment's hesitation and run out, virtue fluttering. Now, he's not getting off on knowing her evil plan, the way Lilah suggests, but his response is to satiate Lilah sexually to shut her up about it so he doesn't have to think about the ugliness of this new world he inhabits and so she keeps on coming to him for sexual satisfaction -- because now they both need each other -- not for his brain cells and her ambition but for sex.
And this relationship has changed both of them. Wesley is darker and Lilah actually looks embarrased when Angel calls her on sleeping with Wesley. Her embarrassment is an admission -- I believe -- that she too is being influenced by Wesley. She is no longer as dark as she believes herself to be or as she is pretending to be. Not sure which yet.
But last weeks blond streaks in Lilah's hair and her white nail polish sure suggest some externalization if not unconscious internalization of influence from Wesley. We don't know yet if this is only skin deep or deeper.
And of course, the fact that Lilah tips her hand to Wesley about her plans for Connor means not only is she delighting in riling Wesley emotionally about Connor, but that she is giving away her plans to a man she knows will work against her on this front ahead of time. Just how unconscious is that?
Does she want to be stopped?
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Is it need or want? -- Scroll, 10:15:11 10/21/02 Mon
I haven't seen The House Always Wins yet, and I'm trying to stay unspoiled. However I wonder if Lilah's appeal is that she really doesn't need Wesley. Sure, she wants him, they both get off on manipulating each other sexually--but it's not like Lilah really needs Wesley. Unless they become emotionally intimate (and all signs seem to indicate that they might), Lilah doesn't need Wesley for anything except great sex. And honestly, she can get that anywhere. Same with Wesley. He doesn't really need Lilah. He could join an S&M club if he was deserate for pain (though I do realise it's more complicated than that).
Which is why I think you're right on the button about Wesley wanting his friends to want him for himself, and not for what he can do for them. He doesn't want to be another brain to them, but someone of value the way Angel seems to think Cordy and Connor have value. Enough to go beyond the pale for them. Wesley has never had that, even though he's done it countless times for others.
Great posts by the way, I'm just sorry I don't have more time for a more detailed response.
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Re: 4.2 Emotional Fizzles in the Ground State in 3 Parts/ATS and BTVS crossovers(long) -- alcibiades, 14:55:50 10/20/02 Sun
Finally, at the end of Ground State, all of Angel's leads are played out and he is left believing that from now on and forevermore, he is BENEATH Cordelia. There seems to be a lot of Crossovers between the final episodes on ATS and BTVS and the first two shows of the year.
Buffy rises from a grave as Angel sinks into the oceanic depths. Spike acquires a soul, Cordelia acquires Jossian beatitute. Both of the partners of the main characters have radically changed their spiritual status.
Now we know that Angel has been raised physically, just as Spike has raised himself spiritually. But both men still believe they are beneath the women they love.
OTOH, Cordelia's raising appears to have left her -- imprisoned? --. She's bored and physically/spiritually isolated and having no affect on the world and doesn't want to be there -- not really normal for a higher being in a heavenly dimension if we think of Buffy's reaction to leaving heaven last year.
Spike's raising apparently has left him insane -- fractured, also isolated, he's now living on the hellmouth, just as Cordelia is living in heaven -- presumably -- otoh, there are lots and lots of heavenly dimensions -- who knows what is going on in hers.
Spike, otoh, may be the one in touch with some sort of heavenly being -- or a hellish one. He apparently is hearing prophetic voices, maybe even future voices -- like Cassie did.
In Lessons, we learn that Spike tried to cut out either his heart or his soul. In Beneath You, Spike cannot bear to be touched by Buffy because the way Buffy touched him last year, only as flesh, not as incarnate spirit -- the way we normally relate to other people's flesh, finally shocked his flesh into becoming the receptacle for spirit. But now he feels more profoundly what all that empty touching amounted to last year.
In Ground State we see that though people cannot normally bare to be touched by Gwen, Angel acts only as a conductor, only as flesh, as her sparks move through him safely to dissipate, until finally, with one final flash, she shocks his dead heart into life -- what this means, the change that this augurs, we do not yet know. Although it has to be something major.
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Whoops/Spoilers above for BTVS 7.4 and ATS 4.2 -- alcibiades, 14:59:33 10/20/02 Sun
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You've found the cohesive thread.... -- lulabel, 22:41:07 10/20/02 Sun
I like your analysis very much because you've managed to tease out the theme here. I was puzzling over this episode because of all that nonsense with Electro-girl. I couldn't figure out why they wasted valuable time with that childhood scene at the beginning - usually everything is there for a reason. But now I see it as setting the motif of failed/fizzled personal connections.
Like you I still don't see the point of the beating heart. She started up both Gunn's and Angel's hearts - is there some connection? Or are we just supposed to see this means she has the capacity for goodness, despite her emotional impoverished childhood.
And Now For Something Completely Different -- The Devil, 17:21:59 10/20/02 Sun
Last night in chat we had a very interesting discussion that we all felt needed to be preserved and perhaps even shared. We got together and talked openly about something very important that I think has been on all our minds. A topic so vital that it could only correctly be handled by our ever so warped chat participants. Yeah that's right, we talked about those little blue, walking, talking meatbags - the Smurfs.
Surely you remember the Smurfs (they taste best grilled). And we all know Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Brainy Smurf, Cook Smurf, etc., but what about all those lesser known smurfs that never got all the glory. So we put our minds together and just let the idiocy flow, creating a list of smurfs. Below is a partial compilation of the names that we created. Please beware as the list may offend, scare, or possibly even cause fluids to come out your nose. You've been warned.
licks-to-lick-things smurf
action hero smurf
single mom smurf
eco smurf
jamie foxx smurf
spike smurf
buffy smurf
giles smurf
smuffy
smurfy smurf
quentin smurf
garbage smurf
computer nerd smurf
chat smurf
serial sniper smurf
optimus smurf
always-wears-a-pink-dress smurf
LAPD smurf
taliban smurf
dead smurf
obsessed with jarjar smurf
rock star smurf
video porn smurf
juicy fruit smurf
hazing smurf
crazed mailman smurf
error 404 smurf
4-apples-tall smurf
the highly inappropriate smurf line
smurf gods
wizard smurf
libertarian smurf
bill o reilley smurf
the existential smurf
informer smurf
homer smurf
ATPo smurf
the logical positivist smurf
sleeper agent smurf
nuclear physicist smurf
george bush smurf
the smurf-that-wasn't-there
kissinger smurf
the dinosaur smurf
green-three-armed-mutant smurf
transvestite smurf
two-packs-a-day smurf
potential space smurf
prophecy smurf
the chosen smurf
genetically engineered smurf
smurf 314
taco bell smurf
chicken cow smurf
three eyed one horned flying purple people eating smurf
vamp smurf
the smurfinator
smurfalicious
darth smurf
alien smurf
smurfalupagus
rosensmurf
crouching smurf, hidden smurf
luke smurfwalker
romeo and juliet smurf
hamsmurf
hooked on phonics smurf
anthrax smurf
the brave little toasted smurf
disco smurf
bunny smurf
mentally unstable smurf
angsty smurf
bipolar smurf
ballet smurf
homeland security smurf
smurf-aghetti
smurf a'la'orange
pikasmurf
campbell smurf
hero journey smurf
ignorant slut smurf
brin smurf
freudian smurf
jungian smurf
nietzsche smurf
zen smurf
pot smoking smurf
yellow crayon smurf
belligerent ex-boyfriend smurf
transcendental meditation smurf
dreadlock smurf
ubersmurf
gangsta smurf
embezzling ceo smurf
binary smurf
neo smurf
metasmurf
insider trader smurf
expositionguy smurf
librarian smurf
frag smurf
it's a thing smurf
I get that smurf
homeless smurf
vent smurf
cheese smurf
anorexic smurf
watcher smurf council
smurfybot
fun for boy and girl smurf
smurfonella
log smurf
smurfarella
pop-up smurf
color smurf
sweathog smurf
1-800-collect smurf
white collar criminal smurf
twitchy smurf
disgruntled banker smurf
insane postal worker smurf
catholic guilt smurf
redundant smurf
redundant smurf
soup nazi smurf
utilitarian smurf
george carlin smurf
learning disability smurf
clubbed foot smurf
chipped tooth smurf
beer belly smurf
boob job smurf
heart attack smurf
pace maker smurf
cholesterol smurf
robosmurf
funny syphillis smurf
fighter pilot smurf
billowy coat king of pain smurf
captain cardboard smurf
hindu guru smurf
swami smurf
yoko smurf
peroxide smurf
pizza delivery smurf
red smurf
frozen smurf
tinfoil hat smurf
temporarily insane smurf
baba smurf
milkman smurf
tv dinner smurf
yoda smurf
kung fu grip smurf
rock em sock em smurf
surfing smurf
poke smurf
minimum wage smurf
fry cook smurf
weebles and wobbles but won't fall down smurf
iron chef smurf
weather channel smurf
jello smurf
epsn smurf
jello shots smurf
grim smurf
smurf reaper
cookie stealing smurf
angry pimp smurf
gimp smurf
smurfy krueger
bitch slapping smurf
got drunk and woke up with no memory of the night before next to an unknown someone smurf
gutter smurf
toothless boxer smurf
this is your brain on smurf
sexy lingerie smurf
short bus smurf
short round smurf
sit and spin smurf
rollerboy smurf
nethersmurf
the never ending smurf
overweight american smurf
fried smurf
GI smurf
the anti-smurf
transformer smurf
smurf the magic dragon
X-smurf
alf enthusiast smurf
slayer smurf
dry cleaning smurf
grinds bones to make his bread smurf
cab driving smurf
bad waiter smurf
coughed on my burger smurf
principal smurf
feurer smurf
talentless smurf
mutant fish smurf
trained monkey smurf
con artist smurf
lost one sock in the wash smurf
didn't have correct change so couldn't ride the bus smurf
accidently fed the mogwai after midnight smurf
melted from water smurf
teen smurf
councilor smurf
higher being smurf
clap on clap off smurf
I've fallen and I can't get up smurf
toe goblin smurf
britney smurf
watcher smurf
shotgun wedding smurf
vengance demon smurf
smurfopolis
glue sniffing smurf
cow tipping smurf
dairy gnome smurf
underpants gnome smurf
smurfsbane
snarf smurf
smut smurf
damned smurf
rotisserie smurf
smurf on the barbie
insomniac smurf
I am Jack's smurf
once more with smurfing
caffienated smurf
withdrawal smurf
hippy protestor smurf
jurassic smurf
pirate of the carribean smurf
tricerasmurf
delirious chat talking smurf
scavenger smurf
carrion eating smurf
viscera smurf
sexy spell smurf
paper bag wearing smurf (picture of spike on the inside optional)
snuck in a shark smurf
double-bagger smurf
telemarketer calling while you're eating dinner smurf
doesn't know how to program the vcr smurf
new car smell smurf
sprayed by a skunk smurf
oatmeal shampoo smurf
ice cream and pickles smurf
collects unicorns smurf
whats-a-ma-smurf
smurf on rye
oompa loompa smurf
tap dancing demon smurf
cyberspace smurf
chicken cake smurf
yet to be potty trained smurf
evangelical smurf
trenchcoat and fedora smurf
stream of consciousness smurf
indiana smurf
shadow smurf
wiggy smurf
twiggy smurf
single dad smurf
shot by jamie foxx smurf
the first smurf
had a dream with jessica alba and then got shot smurf
ankle biter smurf
tootsipop smurf
I was implicated in the break-up of Tom and Nicole smurf
anna nicole smurf
look at me I'm dancing crazy smurf
soft shoe smurf
detective smurf
executive producer smurf
double 0 smurf
disembodied smurf
astral projection smurf
tapeworm smurf
sleeping with the enemy smurf
keeps a slave girl in the closet smurf
sleeping with the fishes smurf
deacon smurf
tarot smurf
oedipus smurf
social anxiety disorder smurf
smurf-in-a-little-bit costume
alcoholic smurf
one bad mothersmurf
I did not have intercourse with that woman smurf
the smurf, the whole smurf, and nothing but the smurf
tuna can smurf
instasmurf
senior partner smurf
snoring smurf
constipated smurf
drives really slow in the fast lane smurf
buys used cows smurf
instant soup smurf
just add water smurf
acid reflux disease smurf
alligator wrestling smurf
ask your doctor if you need this undisclosed medicine smurf
may cause diarrhea, vomitting, and cancer smurf
diet smurf
battering ram smurf
only fifteen calories smurf
don't try this at home smurf
as seen on tv smurf
the smurf with a soul
vampire chipmunk smurf
hair sweeping smurf
wonders what ever happened to MKF smurf
smurf claus
godzilla smurf
seizure smurf
epilepsy smurf
spider smurf
suction cup smurf
I see dead people smurf
not evil just misunderstood smurf
smurf with a thousand faces
mighty morphin power smurf
casper smurf
roadkill smurf
you kill em we grill em smurf
likes to eat tacos smurf
the ambiguously gay smurf
steel toed smurf
suicidal smurf
vietnam veteran smurf
hop head smurf
flapper smurf
wedgie smurf
I love you so much I almost forgot to brood smurf
low rats smurf
the great smurftini
anti-ballistic smurf
I can't believe it's not smurf
steve irwin smurf
ventrilismurf
urkel smurf
conan the smurf
xena smurf warrior
rumplesmurfkin
count smurfula
frankensmurf
dances with smurfs
sexually repressed smurf
abstinence smurf
chipped smurf
dweeby smurf
claustrophobic smurf
smurf in a box
jumpin jack smurf
overly endowed smurf
the elephant smurf
someone keeps moving my chair smurf
demented smurf
whistling in the dark smurf
grain of salt smurf
evil twin smurf
hunting wabbits smurf
fish head smurf
always moves the football out of the way smurf
the 142nd fastest gun in the west smurf
reservoir smurf
feedback smurf
hazardous material smurf
layaway smurf
likes to burn things smurf
got the house in the divorce smurf
second-hand smurf
already been chewed smurf
silly putty smurf
sugar and spice and everything useless unless you're baking smurf
overtly sexual smurf
transmogrified smurf
rabid smurf
lilly livered smurf
pancreatic cancer smurf
don't touch that smurf
inagaddadasmurf
weird al smurfovic
vampire hunter smurf
doublemeat smurf
inca mummy smurf
dopplesmurf
desperate for a shag smurf
helps the helpless smurf
weresmurf
StaPuft marshmallow smurf
black magic smurf
dr. smurflove
moby smurf
yanky doodle smurf
hair caught in the hairdryer smurf
didn't get the mustard out smurf
not wearing any underwear smurf
I'll never tell smurf
kisses rocks smurf
teenage mutant ninja smurf
rocket launcher smurf
take two of these and call me in the morning smurf
spent far too long writing down smurf names for no discernable reason smurf
And I think you will all agree now that if you weren't there for this you missed one amazing chat session. Ah smurf, it's not just for breakfast anymore.
[>
Re: And Now For Something Completely Different -- Sophie, still looking for her halberd, 17:30:33 10/20/02 Sun
I spent three hours in the chat room last night and I don't remember this!
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You left too soon -- The Devil, 17:32:51 10/20/02 Sun
It went on for hours not too long after you left.
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It was past my bedtime. -- Sophie, 17:36:09 10/20/02 Sun
Honorificus put you up to this, I bet.
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Nope, she missed it too. -- The Devil, 17:37:04 10/20/02 Sun
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Come to think of it, I don't remember you being in chat last night. -- Sophie, 17:38:57 10/20/02 Sun
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He was there. He just likes to hide behind his non de plume, which I'm not at liberty to reveal. -- Off-kilter, who admits to considering smurficide that night, 01:27:31 10/21/02 Mon
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Going off to start non de plume cheatsheet -- Sophie, 06:38:58 10/21/02 Mon
[>
An observation... -- ZachsMind, 17:39:33 10/20/02 Sun
One would think in an ATPoBtVS chatroom people would talk about, oh gee I dunno, Buffy? But Smurfs? That's so 20th century. *smirk*
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Chat is a strange and exotic location. -- HonorH, 20:58:24 10/20/02 Sun
Come to think of it, I've never seen you there, Zach. Are you frightened?
Not nearly frightened enough!
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Still got a smurfing chest-wound swingin'. <- -- Harry Parachute, 01:31:15 10/21/02 Mon
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Was that you I sliced in half? -- Sophie, trying to remember that dark night, 06:42:32 10/21/02 Mon
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No. I was the Supergnat with the maul. -- Harry Parasmurf, 07:30:11 10/21/02 Mon
[> [>
I'm sure it was very philosophical and on-topic -- ponygirl wishing she could get into chat, 13:13:59 10/21/02 Mon
After all there is no better illustration of an all-controlling patriarchal society than the Smurfs. An entire society dedicated to the preservation of the status quo, under the dictatorship of an all-knowing father, shaken to its core by the introduction of a strong female character. Her power is consumed by the father (the transformation of dark-haired Smurfette into blonde Smurfette) and she is allowed a place in the community as long as she conforms to a non-threatening sexualized and subservient role. There's much to discuss! And I haven't even mentioned the anti-Semitism yet!
ponygirl who has definitely given this too much thought
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