new item for season 7 wishlist

Something I've been missing lately in BtVS: Spike's fighting skills.

Yeah, we've seen him survive more torture than anyone-friggin-else on the whole show. We know he's tough.

But what happened to seeing him fight? We've haven't had a great Spike fight since the Ring of Amara thing in season 4... it seems mostly he throw one or two punches, saves Buffy or Xander's butt, and then the fight's over. The Tabula Rasa fight with the vamps was ok, and the Dead Things fight was kinda cool, and the Sleeper fight on the catwalk was ok, but Spike used to be really GOOD. He killed two slayers hand-to-hand, and Buffy was warned about how dangerous he was. And he survived nearly every fight with Buffy, who was also very very good--and though she could take him now, I'm sure, he had a good chance of killing Buffy before he got chipped. He nearly did in School Hard. He could win against Drusilla and he could hold his own against Angel.

And yet, it's seemed like, since season six, his fighting has actually gotten worse. Or, he spends so much time getting beaten up, it's hard to tell.

I'd like to see just a one-on-one fight between Spike and a demon, in which he goes all out, and beats the crap out of the other guy. I'd like to see some fancy moves and clever camera work. I'd like to see something that says "Spike's a bloody good fighter, remember?"

We sort of had that with the season 6 finale, in the cave in Africa. But those fights were also heavily cut, and done in the dark, with us not really getting to se a whole lot of fist & fangs. In FFL Spike talks about seeking out the Slayers for the challenge of the fight, the fun of it.

I want to see Spike have some really good fun beating something up.

LOTR: In Wonderland by OverCastDay

Cold symptoms still running strong, but voice is starting to come back.

Stayed up late last night both watching Buffy vids after makign my list (previous post) and getting nostalgic, and reading a really long fic.

What fic? Well, thank you, I'm glad you all asked. In Wonderland, by OverCastDay. It was an LotR fic, sort of about Legolas, sort of about an original character. By far the best and most interesting LotR fic I've read to date. Long, dark, dramatic, complex and tightly plotted. Reading the summary, I expected it to be a Mary Sue fic that I would drop after 3 paragraphs, but I was surprised to see it wasn't at all.

Is it possible to have a girl/woman-from-real!earth fic that a major canon characters falls in love with and it NOT be a Mary Sue? Yes. When it's a romance fic that's not about romance at all, but about one great big heapin' pile of angst and issues and intoxicating problems. When the OFC is about as far from a conventional Mary Sue as is possible. When there's a (can't believe I'm saying this) actually wonderfully thorough and believable (within canon) reason for her being there, and its done without ruining the canon character but actually explaining and ret-conning them. When the fic is not about saving Middle Earth, but about understanding the earth woman's story, and the mystery in that--and the fic is written so damn interesting you don't care.

I was up hours trying to finish this. I stayed up till FOUR FUCKING A.M. I was so hooked. This woman form earth is found by the Mirkwood elves, but they soon realize she's stuck with no memory, the mind of a child, and significantly less than stable mental capacity. Why is this woman there? Why does she speak their language perfectly? Why does she have no memory, and go into fits of mental breakdown when she tries? Why does she think like a small child? Why is it that the only things that she CAN remember is random verse about a white rabbit & Alice, or the Lord's prayer said at funeral services--which she can't explain and the elves think to be mumbles of encroaching madness?

It's very hard to explain what I found so enthralling about this story and try to get across at the same time that it's not a Mary Sue, or a self-insertion at all. Well... it's 88,000 words, and 400 reviews. So someone besides me must have liked it a lot.

YAY!

OMG! I get BBC America!

Why didn't I know this before? I get Monty Python! I et that show "Coupling" that wisteria_ and anniesj are always talkign about!

I get "Manchild"! I can watch the Giles sexcapades as he behaves like a spoiled middle-aged bachelor!

And it comes on after Inuyasha. :D :D :D

..............

In other tv thoughts....

I don't watch a lot of cartoons anymore. Lots of anime, but rarely cartoons. But one cartoon I always enjoy whenever its on and I'm around is "The PowerPuff Girls". Anyone who hasn't seen this by now probably wouldn't understand, but it really is the cleverest, funniest, and possibly most violent cartoon you can watch on the entire Cartoon Network. I love it.

And I just caught the end of the funniest episode I've seen in a while. It was entirely based on the Beatles music, and actually bears a striking resemblance to the Buffy episode "The Yoko Factor", only in reverse.

So the main 4 BigBads of PPG----I dont' remember all their names, just Mojo Jojo (an evil mad scientist monkey with a funny hat bent on, of course, Evil and world destruction) and Him (a flaming gay version of the devil..funny thing to see in a cartoon, really)-- decide to team up and form a "band" to commit crime in Townsville together. They call themselves, of course, "The Beat Alls". ::nudge nudge, wink wink::. Did I mention that every episode of PPG is is entirely chock full of "nudge nudge, wink wink" moments? It's what makes it so fun to watch. Anyway, so Mojo Jojo ends up being in the role of John Lennon. That's not his name or anything, but you can really tell.

They take overeverything in Townsville, and become such a menace... until the girl monkey, named "Moko" joins them. Soon she has them doing all weird things, and the band splits, and it's all a failure. Then, surprise! Moko is actually a zoo monkey whom the PPGs got to infiltrate the evil crime group and ... ta da! Break them up from the inside!

Exactly. Like. The Yohko Factor.

And what really made this episode funny was that the entire script was littered with quotes, so that everyother line of dialogue ended up being a line or name of a Beatles song.

Nearly every PPG episode is like this, only they're all completely different. The cartoon is just that witty. It's always full of stuff like this that no 10-year-old is going to pick up on, but any older sibling or parent is going to get a fit of giggles from.