old/new face

oh god...elfgirl just said that 'Selfless' was the best S7 ep so far since BY... the urge to spoil myself and read all these reviews is getting to be astronomical... I must be strong! It's only tonight-- only tonight! ::gnashes teeth:: I can wait. I can wait.

On other things... what do you do when you meet this person who looks EXACTLY like someone you used to know (so much so that you called them by the wrong name face to face, and when they disagreed you were still tempted to argue them about it), and you used to have a cruch on the that person, and you feel awkward because you still think he's cute (even though its not him-- and this makes sense when you remember that he's a year younger and that means he's still in H.S. and couldn't possibly be in your college class) and you can't stop staring even though you know you're being rude?

There was this guy (Charlie) I had a thing for when I used to go to Aikido class. He was half Japanese, half Chinese and he was HOT. High cheekbones, pretty eyes, and a great smile.

Now, there's this guy in my fiction writing class (Ken), who looks just like him. Except, he talks with a heavy Asian accent. Which, weirdly, turned me off a bit, even though he's still hot. I guess because Charlie spoke perfect California-born English, like I do, and so its weird to look at this other person who has his face, but doesn't have his speech at all.

B/A board -- why's and why-not's

well, I visited the ducks babble board twice today.

I used to go there for fun, to amuse msyelf by laughing at the B/A fans and how much they cling to stuff that's four or five years old.

I found now it mostly offends me, though. Not what they say about Spike (cause he's only a character, and nothing opinion-based anyone says about a tv character on the interet can possibly bother me that much), but what they perceive Spike or S/B fans to be. Its like a lot (not all) assume that anyone who still likes Spike likes rapists and abusers. The second part makes me twitch because Spike wasn't the abuser in that relationship at all, and teh first part because he stoped, and he didn't rape anyone. More tahn one person brought up the "women he's raped in the past" like it was an accusation-- which is flat wrong, becuase we don't kow that Spike ever raped anyone at all-- nothing canon ever mentions rape in his history. There are psychotic killers that think rape is wrong, and for all we know, Spike just like to rip throats out and gut people and drink their blood, and detested the thought of rape. And based on Angelus' history with Drusilla and all his talk about artful kills & mentla torture-- he'd seem more like the kind of psycho who rapes, rather than the kind of psycho who just rips people up (like Spike).

On top of that, the double-standard about blaming Spike for the things he did when he was soulless, well that annoys me too, but I can anlyze that feeling and realize that it probably only bothers me because what they're talking about is what I fear to see in the actual show. I want the series to be more mature than that, but I do worry sometimes that ME will choose to still hold Spike as evil anyway.

And the paragonal treatment of Buffy upsets me also--probably the most, actually, because there were so many things that Buffy did last year that put me off, did to her friends & family as much as to Spike. This 'Buffy can do no wrong' outlook upsets me on a number of levels, a major one being that knowing Buffy has human imperfections allows me to sympathize with her, and without that I'd not have been able to enjoy watching her last year at all. The things she did-- that's not how a good hero behaves, and I think that was the point. She got more heroic by the end of the season, and I liked that better, and she stopped treating people badly, and that was better too. If they beleive that Buffy acted like a perfect 100% moral person last year, then I think they misunderstood the message.

And since its starting to upset me, I think I'll not go for a while. Like, three months maybe. Unless there's a love confession from Buffy, in which case I admit I probably would go check out their gurgling screams of shipper agony.

buffy 7.5 'Selfless'

Well, CW is overcrowded and I can't get in, so...

Buffy 7.5:

WOW. That was... wow. It was All!About!Anya, and I loved it. I loved the flashbacks to pre-medieival times, and their scratched up quality, and the funky way the subtitles from the villagers read: "Let's attack him with various fruits and vegtables!" And I loved that Aud was the same way as Anya now-- "Please take your furs and literal interpretations to the other side of the river." And the rabbits.

Emma C. was top-notch, acting wise. Wow. I loved how she reacted to the deaths, her conversations, her goading of Buffy, and her spot-on insights into Xander.

I liked her song (though not her poverty!Barbie dress), and that coupled with Aud of the past (loved her hair)-- it's clear now that all Anya's ever wanted was a happy domestic life, adn taht she liked beign good, and feeling useful to the world.

I was surprised by the way Halfrek died-- WOW. That's some mean vengeance right there. I guess there will be no resolution to the William/Cecily link. But that's alright. We've got fanfic. But still, the emotional Anya turmoiln was pretty potent, adn will stick with her for a long time.

I liked Anya's conversation with Xander in the end, and Xander's words to her. I liked how Anya comment how she had spent her whole existence clinging to someone else-- Olaf, D'Hoffran, Xander-- being what THEY wanted, and now she didn't know who SHE was.

Well, Willow seems to be control freak again. I dunno... maybe it wouldn't be so threatening to see her make crucial decisions if there wasn't this hanging fear that she might suddenly need to take over and "fix" things to her liking.

I...appreciated Xander's confrontation with Buffy over Spike vs. Anya. To say, I appreciated its existence. We & the SG have needed a good hashing-out of hard truths for a long time now. I felt like this whole episode was cathartic in that way-- just like the musical (which it flashed back to, and Btw I still loved Anya's wedding dress), this was an episode when people let their true colors show.

Didn't like the whole 'loved angel more than anything else' speech, but I mostly passed over it because it was past tense, and it sounded so... lame. I don't understand why ME would put that in-- yeah, we get it already that you want us to think he was Buffy's only true love. We've been getting that for a couple of years now, even when Angel's long over her and Buffy's a different person now. Almost like Buffy had great love, and she'll never get it again. Which is crap-- because everyone has the ability to love greatly, and to love more than once. So the only reason she can't have it again is because she's not going to live long enough, because if she was a normal girl I don't for one minute buy that she couldn't love like that again. And that's why I have hope-- because deep down Buffy is human, and that means she has the same capacity to fall in love as any other human girl. And since you can't choose who or when you fall in love, the idea that she wouldn't be able to love anyone like she did when she was 16-- that's just stupid. like, phenominally unrealistic. And Joss & ME people have always said they've gone for 'realism'. I can't help but think they're setting us (audience) up. Why restate it yet AGAIN otherwise? It seems lame, and ME doesn't usually do plot-specific lame without purpose. Besides--- to me Buffy sounded like she wasn't living that 'more than anything' love any more. Which means she's over him, but has not yet had anything to rival it. I hope that's coming soon, though-- in the form of New!Spike.

Speaking of Spike, I'm glad that Buffy brought up "he was helping" as well as "he's harmless," and without hesitation. And I was heartbroken over the nice!Buffy versus what we can assume is the real!Buffy. But even as it was gut-wrenchingly sad, it served a good purpose from the Spuffy POV-- it illustrated that the Buffy now may act happy, but she's hard and jaded inside. Spike's NOT in love with pain-- he's in love with the good, sweet Buffy of years past, the kind of caring person Buffy wants to be, and tries to convince her friends she still is. It was sad, because that's the person Buffy COULD be, and yet we can see she's not (right now anyway). But that whole scene was only put there to garner sympathy for Spike. And if ME wants us to sympathize with Spike, that can only be good.

And Dru's comments on Dru were wodnerful... reminded me of how wonderful the S/D relationship was, from a story-writing-perspective.

And I'm really not seeing how Buffy is much better this year-- she's re-involved herself in the world around her, yes, and yet she's still a locked door emotionally to anyone but Dawn. She's still cold, like last year.

Yep, death certainly screwed up Buffy bad. Even in season 5 she was a lot more open & feeling than she is now.

But back to Anya. How much to I love Anya's character? Tons and tons. And I loved the way her story was handled here-- this whole episode finally had some of the 'maturity' we keep hearing about.

And you know, this episode was as creepy as it was funny (Anya+villagers). Knowing that Anya had done something so awful... seeing her covered with blood, seeing the girl hiding in the closet whimpering "I take it back, I take it back". We didn't see a lot of gore like with Gnarl, and yet this was much more disturbing to me.