selenak

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You know, it occured to me that within the last decade or so, I mostly fell for shows (and books, and movies) where the main characters were just as interesting and complex as the sidekicks and/or villains. Not exclusively; for example, I had a brief fling with Earth: Final Conflict where neither Boone nor Liam did anything for me but Sandoval, Da'an, Zo'or and Lily always did. (Then the writing went to hell for every character, but that's another tale of woe.) But mostly. Which means I developed a certain allergy to a phenomenon quite common in a lot of fandoms, called hero-bashing.

Here are the basics: if the hero (male or female) does anything right, it's taken for granted and evidence he/she is a bland character; if he/she does anything wrong, it's not because of flaws that make him/her a three-dimensional character, no, it's an unforgivable act. If a sidekick complains, it's adorable; if a hero(ine) does it, it's whining. If a hero(ine) has communication problems and closes herself/himself off, it's cold/bitchy/heartless/any of the above; if a second lead/sidekick/whoever-but-not-the-title-character does it, it speaks of depth and only adds to the allure of the character. (If you're thinking of, say, Buffy Summers and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce respectively here, you're not wrong.) Let a hero behave jealously, and the ranting about his/her self-centredness goes on for eons; let a sidekick do the same, and it's just a phase or cute or three-dimensional. (Witness the different reaction in Potterdom to Ron being jealous of Harry in GoF, and Harry being jealous of Ron in OotP.) And so on, and so forth.

Which is why I'm pretty quick to jump to the defense of quite a lot of those folks in the central positions. Not in every case, though. And there is a difference between criticism and bashing. Which leads me to Babylon 5, a rather unusual case in that it's so much of an ensemble show you can't really asign a single hero/central character/lead position. For example, JMS, B5's creator, has been known to say that the heart of the show is the Londo-and-G'kar storyarc, and if Babylon 5 were the story of any of the invidiual characters, which it's not, it would be Londo's. And Londo is decidedly not the hero of the show. The closest you get to hero in the traditional Trek-influenced sense of Captain/Commander/Leader of the Good Fight position is first Jeffrey Sinclair and then John Sheridan. The later, imo, has a well-thought out personal arc and character development for two seasons (2 and 3) which then ends. His subsequent status within the narrative has its highly problematical aspects, which are explained very well by

hobsonphile here.

(She also includes some highly entertaining speculations on Londo/G'kar. Don't look at me like that. JMS did it, too.)
(And yes, I had fun with the conclusion of a certain story of mine.)

But enough of John Sheridan. On to a John I did fall for, John Crichton of Farscape.

searose positions that after season 4, John/Aeryn makes less sense than John/Scorpius (in a platonic sense, btw), and explains why here.

And just to finish the recommendation of challenging posts:

acadine questions the rationale of slash being more "free" of gender stereotypes than het and argues for equality quite forcefully here. Choice quote:

If you are relying on the default in any of your writing, and that includes fanon, the pat 2D characterization stereotypes that pervade (slash) fandom, and the deeper slash archetypes, of which rivalslash is but one, you are a shitty writer. Period. End of story. This is as true for het as it is for slash, and I honestly don't think that anyone who blames this sort of stereotypical characterization on "societal gender roles" can be a good writer. There's no honesty in that, no truth - Ivy's take on het, and the fandom's take on het - is basically an excuse.
And what I think about good writing, any writing worth doing, is this: it needs no excuses.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kernezelda

Hello!

Let me apologize for totally going off the subject of your entry, but I woke up this morning with this question.

Am I alone in thinking that Spike, at the end of S6 BTVS, was actually heading off to restore his evil vampire self? My impression was that he was disgusted with himself, not only for his actions, but for the emotions that were overwhelming him.

He's a hundred year old vampire, reduced to a lovesick rapist of a girl who wants none of him. I thought he was going to try to go back to what he was before. When he reached the end of the 'trial' and had his soul restored, I found that a total shock, as I'd been expecting an Angelus-like reversion to the Spike of old, who would have liked nothing better than to kill Buffy.

Now, to your current entry. Um, ditto? Sheridan reached his zenith when he threw himself into the abyss at Za'ha'dum, and nothing subsequent matched that grand gesture, which still takes my breath away.
One of the speeches made in B5 that remains with me today is Jeffrey Sinclair's, early on in S1, when he talks about Marilyn Monroe, etc. Who will remember us?
G'Kar and Londo were the most moving characters in the series. While Sheridan and Delenn were clearly destined for a glorious future, G'Kar and Londo forged their futures with blood and war and wisdom and enlightenment and sacrifice.

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

1) Spike: this was actually hotly debated in the fandom, but the writers have been consistent about it from the interview Jane Espenson gave two days after the season 6 finale aired onwards: Spike did want a soul, but they didn't want the fans to guess, so they worded it as ambigiously as possible in order to make the fans think he wanted the chip removed. However, if you pay attention to Spike's rants from Seeing Red onwards, they're all about how he'll show Buffy etc. And remember, the chip is at this point not functioning in regards to Buffy. He can hurt her (or, theoretically, if he'd defeat her) kill her already and knows he could from Smashed onwards. So his rants would make no sense if they were about getting the chip out.

2) Exactly. Londo and G'kar were completely unpredictable as far as narrative rules were concerned whereas you knew how Sheridan and Delenn would end up. And yes, they were so immensly moving.

From:

persephone-kore.livejournal.com

Hmm. Perhaps we've been reading different sections of the fandom, but from what I've seen, the reaction to the two jealousy incidents in HP was largely exactly the opposite of what you described as annoying.

An awful lot of people took GoF to mean that Ron was currently evil, destined to be a traitor, and/or destined to be Led Astray and fooled by jealousy (which he had thrown aside upon being alarmed for Harry's safety past the point of sticking to bad temper; apparently this means it's unresolved and festering and can't possibly suggest that he might put envy aside for the sake of friendship again later....). Now, a number of the people who argued against this viewpoint and on Ron's behalf were rather triumphant about Harry's showing jealousy in OotP, but of the ones I've paid attention to (which admittedly does not tend to include those who don't seem to like ANYBODY), this was generally along the lines of, "Hah! WE'VE been saying all along that jealousy doesn't mean you have to 'turn evil' -- now THEY'RE stuck either agreeing to that or deciding Harry's in as much trouble as Ron. Not that they'll acknowledge that." (Well, OK, most of them were more articulate than that. ;))

I don't know. Maybe I'm ignoring the people who Just Don't Like Harry too effectively, because they annoy the heck out of me, whereas the people who Can't Stand Ron argue with people I think are interesting and therefore come to my attention more often, but I get the impression that while it's possible to like Ron better than Harry, it's much less common to like Ron and despise Harry than vice versa. (To confuse matters, I also get the feeling that most people who write Harry as dark or evil actually DO like him, but prefer to write him 'fallen.')

I'm annoyed myself by the willingness to treat heroes as boring if they're good, horrendous if they slip up, and over-controlling and hypocritical if they try to get other people to behave (even people they're responsible for and supposed to be leading) and THEN slip up -- I think I've ranted somewhat about it before. *g* But I think I extend that past 'central protagonist' and get annoyed about it for supporting-character good guys too, and maybe I haven't been watching the right stuff or the right sections of fandom to run into the elevated-sidekick stuff.

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

People were expecting RON to go evil? Clearly I read too much Sugar Quill posts. I totally missed that. I mean, I knew poor Neville had been suspected, but that Ron was is news.

Elevated sidekick/bashed hero stuff: try reading Highlander fanfiction, which was my first online fandom. It's true for certain branches of Blake's 7 fanfiction and BtVS & AtS fanfiction as well. I hear it's especially dominant in Hercules fanfiction, but since I haven't read any, I couldn't say.

From:

persephone-kore.livejournal.com

Heh... No, the Sugar Quill isn't the place to find that, but the idea seems to inspire some enthusiasm in other places. I think most of the grounds were that envy of Harry's fame, greed for money, and/or jealousy over a romance between Harry and Hermione would lead him astray, possibly helped along by a side dish of weak will as indicated by susceptibility to the Imperius Curse. (An alternative would be betraying them involuntarily while under its influence, but compared to some theories, that's positively charitable.)

I don't think I've read any Highlander that isn't an X-Men crossover, so I'm not even quite sure who IS the hero or sidekick. Buffy... hmm. Yeah, I think I've seen some of that in BtVS, though I've read too little to have been able to tell for myself whether it was a pattern or just a few people who happened not to like Buffy herself.

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

Highlander: if I tell you that Methos only appears in 18 episodes of a six-season-show, I think you get the picture.*g*

Buffy: I don't mind people not liking Buffy. (Though obviously I do like her.) Everyone has characters who just don't do it, or irritate, or cause dislike. But what I'm talking about goes way beyond dislike. I knew there was a Buffy bashing archive before, but [Unknown site tag] did some research for a meta fanfic and found out there is even an archive devoted to Buffy rape fics, stories in which Buffy is "punished" by being raped, beaten up etc. This is deeply disturbing. And even if you write that off as a fringe thing, quite a lot of fanfics, if their summaries are anything to go by, center around the need to humiliate or punish Buffy, and quite a lot of posts weren't criticism on the line of "I thought her action in episode X was wrong because..." but rather on the line of "Die, bitch!".

From:

persephone-kore.livejournal.com

...That is definitely creepy -- that archive I mean. I'm (perhaps oddly...) more comfortable with authors who say they enjoy breaking down the characters they actually like.

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

...something else altogether.*g* Besides, it's often done for character exploration. Which isn't true for bashing stories, and certainly not true for the earlier mentioned disturbing stuff.

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

> to mean that Ron was currently evil, destined to be a traitor, and/or destined to be Led Astray and fooled by jealousy

And here I was thinking that Ron was destined to be Dumbledore! (j/k... this is a pet theory of a person on a forum that I frequent.)

From:

persephone-kore.livejournal.com

*snickers* Yeah, I saw that one. :) Watched it develop in some bemusement, actually. It's rather neat.

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

Just a short note because this is something that annoys me no end, but I don't have the time for a fully thought-through post:

I'm always apalled at mpreg fics - they are, to me, the embodiment of slash writers falling for traditional gender stereotypes: a relationship is only worthwhile if there's a child, someone has to take the 'soft', nurturing, 'female' role, and to hell with characterisation... Arrrrgh. Awful genre. But even outside of the squicky realm of mpreg, in most slash traditional male/female roles are mapped onto the characters. Very, very annoying.

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

Mpreg is evil, no doubt about it.*g* As is Methos in crying damsel in distress fashion, paired up with Bully!Duncan. Don't tell me this happened to your guys Sirius and Remus as well? (Assuming that's the only slash you read.)

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

I have no doubt it happens to my guys as well, but I tend only to read stuff that I feel from the first sentence (or maybe paragraph) to be *good*. I think I've developed a kind of sixth sense for the quality of fan fiction. ;-)

From:

cadesama.livejournal.com

Generally speaking, I also am quite the main character cheerleader. If I don't love the main character, hero or not, I am unlikely to be able to identify with a book/movie/series and will probably not care in the slightest about it. This is part of the reason that I am no fan of Lord of the Rings.

However, Buffy is the odd exception to this. When I first got addicted, I liked Buffy herself, but I didn't love her. By third season, I out and out disliked her, as I felt that she had become "love's dog" - not forgiving Angel through compassion, but through uncontrolled passionate love. I could not regard this as a virtue, and the fact that the show itself seemed to want me to regard it as a virtue made me resent Buffy.

You see, I think this is largely responsible for the difference of opinions for Heroes and Sidekicks - or specifically between Buffy and Wesley. What you say above is true, both Buffy and Wes become seemingly heartless and cold, closed off emotionally in S6/S7 Buffy and S3/S4 Angel. But you may notice that one of these character is the title character and the other is not. This is an important distinction that looks like the distinction between sidekick and hero, but it is actually about the character's place in the way the story is told. The writing, pacing, music, hell, even lighting differ for how the story is told for a title character. For we are supposed to sympathize with the title character, s/he is the force that propels the show, the core.

But if we don't sympathize, then it just gets wearing and anvilly. I get already, and no, I don't care. Leaving aside that character-wise Buffy's transformation was in the opposite direction of Wes', since I think it's safe to assert that Wes wasn't particularly strong or assertive before he became negative so and Buffy was in a positive manner, I think that since Wes was given no more screen time than Angel, and not much more than Fred/Gunn, we were allowed to decide for ourselves whether or not we sympathize. The journey was established in snippets at the beginning or end of an episode, no speechifying, no mournful music.

All in all, it looked a lot more like character development for Wes and character assassination for Buffy.

The Harry-Ron thing, isn't altogether a different kettle of fish, Harry's anger and jealousy was very much "on-screen", whereas Ron's wasn't. However, the bad reaction in my eyes to Harry's anger comes from a general misreading of the character in every previous book. Still, Harry's anger being on-screen all the time didn't enamor to him fans.

From:

mmaresca.livejournal.com

Well, one thing about that is it's always Harry's POV. So Ron's anger and jealousy, from Harry's perspective, is totally misplaced and wrong. While Harry feels perfectly justified in his own anger.

From:

persephone-kore.livejournal.com

Well... actually, while I don't remember Harry ever feeling unjustified in his anger in OotP, as you say, I think it might be worth noting that he does regard his own jealousy as objectionable.

From:

cadesama.livejournal.com

Excellent point!

Altogether, I don't think any comparison of fan reaction to Harry and Ron's reespective jealousy is clean cut. There was a lot of negative reaction to Ron's, enough that - as you noted above - many people began arguing for Ron The Betrayer and writing him as such. Then again, Harry is outright jealous of Ron for about half a page in OotP and immediately feels ashamed of himself. This has garnered tears and shouts of "Where has our sweet little Harry gone?"

I'd say he never existed, but the impact of perspective is pretty hefty here. Through Harry's perspective people felt hurt by Ron in GoF, and in OotP we were sucked into many very negative emotions for the entire length of the book. Shaping opinions of character based on an unreliable narrator like Harry . . . leads to many many flamewars, I predict!

From:

persephone-kore.livejournal.com

Hm. I'd say the "Where has our sweet little Harry gone?" bit probably comes from the book as a whole, not just the jealousy thing -- he's angry through a lot of it, and has legitimate reasons to be angry, and now instead of squashing it so much he takes it out, as far too many of us do *g*, on whoever's available. Which means that sometimes he takes it out on people who really don't deserve it.

Curiously, I felt that the intensity of negative emotion in OotP tended to separate me as a reader from Harry's viewpoint more than in the first four.

But you're right about the flamewars... and a number of arguments that go on just under the edge... ;)

From:

cadesama.livejournal.com

Oh, yes, definitely. It is the entire book and the anger that pervades it. But I *have* seen the jealousy thing as a point in arguments about why OotP rubbed someone wrong, or why they don't like Harry in it.

Personally, I adore OotP!Harry. He's the same Harry I've always adored, just more vocal. The second time I read it, all of this very much disconnected me from Harry. The first though . . . whoa. I was there with him the whole; it was quite intense *veg*. Which made me relate to him more than ever before and has put a bad taste in my mouth for HP fan fiction ever since.

I always acknowledged that HP fanfiction never got him right, but now it's so absolutely jarring - people either sticking to their old characterizations or going over the top with the new - that I can't stand to read it.

Actually, I'd kill to find a good flamewar on this stuff. Fun reading material!

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

Flamewar: not quite, but go to Sugar Quill, to the "Seen and Unforeseen" board, and try the "People Harry didn't get angry with: A short list" thread.

With you on the OotP!Harry adoration. I always liked Harry, but never before this book has he been the most interesting and compelling character of the novel to me.

From:

cadesama.livejournal.com

Oh no. I wanted a flamewar to read and laugh at, not, uh, jump-into-feet-first-and-guns-blazing. I haven't read it yet, 'cause I've never been in a flamewar and fear that I wouldn't be able to restrain myself. Just reading the title to that thread makes me want to start one entitles "People who didn't deserve Harry's anger: A short list."

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

Exactly why I was a bit confused about the "who does he think he is, the ungrateful louse!" posts. Because Harry realises at once that this is petty, and feels ashamed of it. Still feels it, though, and has to work through it - which makes him human.

From:

persephone-kore.livejournal.com

Yes, that's a very bizarre reaction. I really liked the bit where he was so glad his voice had stopped sounding hearty.... Um. Anyway. :)

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

Buffy: it was the reverse for me, though I never disliked her. She just wasn't my favourite character during the early seasons. But I came to love her - and adopt her as my favourite character - in the later ones. Younger cheerful Buffy was endearing, yes, but older Buffy, who was emotionally scarred and messed-up and still kept trying, who had learned the hard way things weren't black and white as younger Buffy had thought, who judged herself more harshly than anyone else ever did, who braved degrading and/or confusing jobs and the loss of the college life she had enjoyed just as the nightly fight which in comparison had become much easier for her - this Buffy? I love.

B/A in season 3: I don't think the writers wanted to portray this as a positive relationship. Joss & Co. knew they wanted to do the Angel spin-off since "Becoming", and season 3 was, among many other things, one long demonstration why Angel had to go. Culminating in repeated death imagery - Angel's dream of Buffy burning after marrying him, and the orgasmic feeding scene (tm) in Graduation Day II. All this being said, I didn't regard Buffy's character weakened by this - I might have done if, say, she had suggested to Angel to run away together.

Harry: Ah, I see this has already been answered, and anyway, I agree with you.

From:

cadesama.livejournal.com

I have to make an exception to what I said: I love fifth season Buffy. I love the progression from the girl who killed the man she loved to the girl who dies for the sister she loves. The reversal in S7 from this, which I found to be the highest virtue Buffy has ever shown, is highly offensive to me. Especially since she doesn't seem to actually live up to her General Buffy attitude which actions. Season 6 Buffy . . . I can sympathize with. I like her, sometimes. I hate the Spuffy arc. I truly feel that it should have been a simple incident, instead of an arc. Maybe a wake up call, maybe something foreshadowing darker things for Buffy, but not the begining of a "relationship." Actually, I feel about it much the way I feel about S3, I like individual episodes but hate the arc.

Season 3: I think the biggest mistakes in the third season occurred because they were setting up for the Angel spin off. W/X's primary effect - given that the opportunity for character development for Willow, Oz, and Xander was wasted - was to estrange Cordy. Buffy and Angel's interaction, as you've pointed out, existed to show why he couldn't stay. And while I could understand why Buffy would forgive Angel in Amends as she does, I couldn't respect her for it.

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

The reversal in S7 from this, which I found to be the highest virtue Buffy has ever shown, is highly offensive to me. Especially since she doesn't seem to actually live up to her General Buffy attitude which actions.

I think you're missing the point. She tries to be the General because she believes it's necessary to win, but at the same time, her heart tells her it's wrong. Lies my parents told me is where we see Giles inadvertendly demonstrates this to her; hence Buffy sitting next to Dawn, stroking her hair, before closing the door on Giles.

The continuing challenge for Buffy is always to find a balance between Slayer and person, and it's an ongoing struggle. She's always at her best when she manages to rewrite and change the rules - which she does from the end of Touched onwards - not when she tries to follow them - which she does from Showtime to Empty Places.

From:

cadesama.livejournal.com

Okay, I haven't seen Showtime, it's among the two or three episodes that I haven't seen of S7, but I can agree that Buffy is a miserable failure at attempting to follow reasonable rules of conflict, including the sacrifice of soldiers. But the main problem I have with the entire season lays in the fact that she never follows her own rules. Buffy's greatest asset has always been her friends, her emotional connection with the world. In S7 this connection is reduced by the writers to Dawn and Spike - which is pretty much disgusting to me.

So in Lies My Parents Told Me Buffy has absolutely no realization about how dangerous Spike is, how the only reason she she says she needs him is because she loves him (or whatever) and then goes on to shun Giles' leaderships, I consider that not to be a step in the right direction. She couldn't go up to Giles and simply say, "You were right, I do care about Spike. I don't want him here for the battle, I want him here for me. But guess what? I've always made that work before." So, yeah, I don't think there was a major revelation there.

Stroking Dawn's hair. Nice, pretty, sort of resolves what she said about sacrificing Dawn - doesn't resolve the fact that she still treats the SiTs like soldiers in training and doesn't even know most of their names, doesn't resolve how careless she is with the lives of others. In my opinion, that never gets resolved. Buffy fights like she always fights and expects everyone else to fight like her. And then she fixes the problem of this by making everyone her! Eugh. Please.

Here you come up against my opinion that just because the show textually had Buffy win or be proven "right" doesn't mean I agree. Giles exists for a reason - writing him out of training the girls made no sense. Casting Buffy as a General in the first place made no sense. Casting Faith as a General makes no sense. Hell, having the entire season take place in Sunnydale makes no sense. Argh, sorry about this, but I just don't like the season at all so I'm pretty much useless in debates about it. Probably should have just not jumped in.

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

1) Accepting Giles’ leadership? He hasn’t provided any since several seasons. Accepting his counsel is another matter, but the one he offers in Lies my parents told me is paradoxical, to put it mildly. It’s
a) Be a general and be prepared to sacrifice anyone and not to rely on anyone
b) My judgement is better than yours, therefore I will go behind your back.
Moreover, Giles’ argument for killing Spike as a preemptive measure isn’t exactly sound, either. It rests on the rationale that due to the trigger, the FE could use Spike at any time. But the FE has also shown it can possess Willow (in Bring on the Night), no matter how briefly, and Willow as a tool would be a hundred times more dangerous than Spike. Why not kill Willow as well, while you’re at it?

2) doesn't resolve the fact that she still treats the SiTs like soldiers in training and doesn't even know most of their names
This is in fact addressed by the show itself, repeatedly and explicitly, as are Buffy’s motivations for it (or didn’t you watch Touched)? Incidentally, it is Giles who starts the whole they’re soldiers/you’re a general gig in Bring on the Night, but while the reasoning is clear, it is also shown as ultimately the wrong solution. Hence “they’re not soldiers, they’re girls”, and ensuing events in the last three eps.

3) doesn't resolve how careless she is with the lives of others
Not true. And she isn’t. She is distant, forces herself to be, but she isn’t careless. Take the most notable example of Buffy risking the lives of others in season 7, the one with the most dire consequences – the first attempt to fight Caleb & Co. at the vineyard. Now, obviously the fatal flaw here is that Buffy is so angry with Giles (and with reason – no matter how you put it, what he did was a betrayal and in a way, Helpless revisited) that she didn’t listen to his suggestion they should do research on Caleb first. But what she did instead was in fact done with more caution than most of her earlier plans which had led to success. First, she only took those Potentials who had been trained to fight with her; the others, the newer arrivals who hadn’t had much training yet, she left with Giles and Willow, which made complete sense. Willow was the one person who had proven she could protect them for a considerable time (as she did in Showtime), should Caleb do what Angelus had done and use the fight with Buffy as a distraction to go after those she ad left behind; and Giles was the one these newer arrivals were familiar with since he had found them. Second, those Potentials she did take with her she divided into two groups, each group with an active Slayer, and left one of them outside as back-up, should the other group run into trouble. Moreover, this strategy worked; they were winning against the Bringers. The one factor which changed everything was that Caleb was able to take out both Slayers and Spike. And the only people who had been as strong in earlier years were Adam and Glory. As far as Buffy knew at this point, Caleb was not a supernatural creature but a human maniac who had used a knife and hot iron, not supernatural strength, to harm one Potential, and could well be holding and torturing another, judging by his message.
Did she make a mistake? Yes, absolutely. Is she therefore culpable of the deaths of some Potentials and the loss of Xander’s eye? Yes, and she blames herself for it, too. But by the same standard, she is also culpable of the deaths of the students like Larry in Graduation Day, or of Harmony being turned into a vampire during the same fight. In fact, every single person Buffy took with her to the vineyard had been much better prepared by her to fight than the Sunnydale High students had been then; she had taken greater, not lesser, care with their lives. Not training them at all wouldn’t have been an options – the Bringers were after these girls no matter what, and this way, they weren’t sitting ducks anymore.

From:

selenak.livejournal.com

The more serious underlying problem was Buffy's attempt to emotionally isolate herself rather than risk ties and loss, plus her inferiority/superiority complex (funny how people always forget the inferiority part of Holden's diagnosis, when Buffy's increasing self-loathing has been a crucial factor for several seasons by then). Again, the show addressed this very clearly. Moreover, when Faith, later, lost her share of Potentials, the show was careful to let Buffy herself point out to both the SiTs and Faith that this wasn't some belated justification for Buffy or about Faith having been wrong. Buffy does not automatically assume leadership upon returning to the Casa Summers; she's one of the group, helping with patching up everyone, and the scythe not so coincidentally continually changes hands in the last two episodes (from Buffy to Faith to between them to Giles to Willow to everyone of the Potentials/Slayers). Solving the basic problem of Slayer isolation by the empowerment spell wasn't about making everyone into BUFFY; it was about ensuring that nobody would ever again be in the situation Buffy and every Slayer before her had found themselves in, the situation which in turn formed them. It was the reverse of isolation - it was the creation of a community, the best symbol of reaching out and sharing the show ever came up with. It was, to quote Giles, bloody brilliant.

I just don't like the season at all
Which is your right. I loved it, which doesn't mean you should. It's a subjective thing, I suppose; clearly, we saw different things in the season. (Or seasons: as I said before, I love the later seasons - 4-7 - in particular, even though I started watching at the beginning.) However, clearly we have reached an impasse on this particular subject, so let's call it a draw and leave it and talk about when we'll get pictures of the Episode III shooting instead.*g*

From:

cadesama.livejournal.com

I admit that we are at an impasse because we see things very differently, as well as the fact that I haven't seen a few keys episodes or thought about them in any way other than "Why did I hate that so much?"

Still, there are a couple of things I want to address. No matter how good her plan of attack versus Caleb was in Dirty Girls (which I didn't actually remember to well, I was too horrified by the fact that they believed poking Xander's eye out consistuted a character arc for him), she does little more than use that plan of attack again in Empty Places and End of Days. Which is to say that her battle plans, due to her general experience, are single person battle plans. I say that she is careless with the lives of others because she doesn't seem to play on their personal strengths - and I don't mean who is trained better than whom. The show in general doesn't seem to think that much is necessary for a leadership role, and that upsets me. When I said that they made everyone Buffy, I really meant that they focused not on the individual strengths or weaknesses of the characters, but on a collective weakness of not-being-the-slayer - which I thought many seasons past had proved not to be a weakness.

For Giles, Spike, and all of that: Bring On the Night is one of the episodes I hadn't seen, but the fact that I had no idea Willow could be possessed and you say that it could happen at any time tells me that it was not something that was resolved or dealt with like Spike's trigger. Giles is right about the trigger, and if it is also true for Willow . . . why didn't that come up in that episode? Why no comparison? Are the characters to dumb to notice the resemblance. Bleh, much as I would like to respond to "Why not kill Willow as well, while you’re at it?" with a resounding "Hells yeah!" I suppose they were playing them both as necessary character.

Giles' contradictory advice: it's not contradictory, characterwise as he has always played General for Buffy. He tells her that since she must handle this situation and it is a General like situation. He tells her how to be a General. She respond by wearing the emotional mantle but giving none of the orders and suffering few of the consequences. She may *say* that the SiTs are girls, and they show may say so, but I never saw her treat them like girls.

Anyway, said my piece. We're never going to agree - dislike even the premise of the season, so, eh, that gives me a negative viewpoint on all of it. I'm sorry that I got all argumentative about it in the first place, I don't mean to get all nasty on you for committing the *sin* of enjoying something. Time to finishing updating my site!