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timepiececlockQuote: "Dancing is a vertical representation of horizontal desires."
Updating late at night. Again.
Just caught the end of DBZ on the Toonami midnight run and realized I'd miscalculated when the new eps would start, and thus had missed Vegita's big death scene. -_-() sigh... I'll catch it next time around... they play them like five or ten times befoer they get new ones. And I think he's going to get wished back by the dragonballs next episode anyway, so he won't be gone long.
Onto the meat of this post... I stayed up after everyone had gone to bed to watch my recorded version of Once More With Feeling, in lieu of seeing Grave earlier in the evening. I just had this sudden desire to see it again before th premier, especially with my mind filled with NA and Entropy and SR and Tara and Africa...
And I realized, while I watched it, that I was struck by how incredibly romantic it was.
In Smashed and all the episodes after, scenes between Spike and Buffy shouted "sex!" and "hurt!". But this episode, every scene between them, every look at camera trick and snippet of dialogue or verse... it fairly screamed "ROMANCE!" The way they were in his song, how he sang and what he sang... and Buffy's reaction to what he sang...
...How she tried to hurt him in self-defense when he brought her the dancing toy-demon as peace gesture, and how he reacted bitterly and defensively in kind...
...How even when he felt burned he was still drawn always, always back to helping her.
...how she sang and danced her pain and then he cut in, caught, her, looked into her eyes and gave her a reason for living that none of the others in her life could...
... how he touched her hair and she just stared at him...
... how she followed him out back, and he tried to obey what he thought were her wishes by giving her a way out...
... how the music rose and they kissed _each_other_, together, not one kissed one or the other way around.
... how the music crescendoed and the curtain of the musical closed on their real FIRST KISS.
My God, what were they writing if not pure romance?
Could it have been anything else? In a musical that ends in a passionate first kiss? THe actors certainly behaved as though it was. JM played a man in love and SMG played a woman falling in love.
And that episode was written by JOSS. The MASTER of Buffyverse. The show has to be leading eventually toward a real Buffy/Spike romance, or no romance at all. Regardless of whatever came after, their first kiss wasn't about sex, or loss. It was about wanting the other person for a long time until that desire was pouring so strongly from both of them that it culminated in a classic romantic movie kiss.
Oh god I can't wait until this season. These characters are so deeply in love, Joss himself showed us them falling in love, and though I know its still a painful journey to come, I'm completely, totally, and undeniably sure that it will end in something great, whatever that may be.
Updating late at night. Again.
Just caught the end of DBZ on the Toonami midnight run and realized I'd miscalculated when the new eps would start, and thus had missed Vegita's big death scene. -_-() sigh... I'll catch it next time around... they play them like five or ten times befoer they get new ones. And I think he's going to get wished back by the dragonballs next episode anyway, so he won't be gone long.
Onto the meat of this post... I stayed up after everyone had gone to bed to watch my recorded version of Once More With Feeling, in lieu of seeing Grave earlier in the evening. I just had this sudden desire to see it again before th premier, especially with my mind filled with NA and Entropy and SR and Tara and Africa...
And I realized, while I watched it, that I was struck by how incredibly romantic it was.
In Smashed and all the episodes after, scenes between Spike and Buffy shouted "sex!" and "hurt!". But this episode, every scene between them, every look at camera trick and snippet of dialogue or verse... it fairly screamed "ROMANCE!" The way they were in his song, how he sang and what he sang... and Buffy's reaction to what he sang...
...How she tried to hurt him in self-defense when he brought her the dancing toy-demon as peace gesture, and how he reacted bitterly and defensively in kind...
...How even when he felt burned he was still drawn always, always back to helping her.
...how she sang and danced her pain and then he cut in, caught, her, looked into her eyes and gave her a reason for living that none of the others in her life could...
... how he touched her hair and she just stared at him...
... how she followed him out back, and he tried to obey what he thought were her wishes by giving her a way out...
... how the music rose and they kissed _each_other_, together, not one kissed one or the other way around.
... how the music crescendoed and the curtain of the musical closed on their real FIRST KISS.
My God, what were they writing if not pure romance?
Could it have been anything else? In a musical that ends in a passionate first kiss? THe actors certainly behaved as though it was. JM played a man in love and SMG played a woman falling in love.
And that episode was written by JOSS. The MASTER of Buffyverse. The show has to be leading eventually toward a real Buffy/Spike romance, or no romance at all. Regardless of whatever came after, their first kiss wasn't about sex, or loss. It was about wanting the other person for a long time until that desire was pouring so strongly from both of them that it culminated in a classic romantic movie kiss.
Oh god I can't wait until this season. These characters are so deeply in love, Joss himself showed us them falling in love, and though I know its still a painful journey to come, I'm completely, totally, and undeniably sure that it will end in something great, whatever that may be.
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Re: DBZ & OMwF-- REPLY #2
Date: 2002-09-18 11:26 pm (UTC)I'd love to see a Vegita/Spike video! How about Stroke 9's "Kick Some Ass"? It's funny. Except... Vegita isn't really a "sensitive artist" deep down. Vegita's actually the same rude badass deep down as he is on the outside. But there are definite similarities.
Both of them first side with the hero for selfish reasons, both were 'forced' to hang around (spike= chip, vegita=stranded on earth, wanting to fight goku) and help out by default of presence, both had determined from the first fight that their highest purpose in life was to defeat the hero, above all things. Both took a long time wavering between good and evil, and were brought over to the side of good because of the influence of the respective 'gangs' of the hero being around them, and because of emotional ties to the heros' group. In the Z gang, Vegita is the strongest next Goku (for a while it was Gohan, but that was only one season), and in the Scooby Gang, Spike is the next strongest behind Buffy.
On major difference though might be that in Vegita's relaionship to Goku, instead of beign exaclty like Spike he's more like a combination of Faith & Spike. Vegita is Goku's character foil-- nearly equal in strength, determination, and skill-- what Goku could have been if he'd been raised a Saiyan; he's Goku reflected through a glass darkly. His purpose in the story is to represent the "what if" possibility, and thus bring attention to Goku's internal strengths that keep him from becoming dark like Vegita. In that way his relationship to Goku is a lot like Faith's relationship to Buffy. Faith is Buffy's character foil. But interestingly, if Faith didn't exist in the series, then Spike would be Buffy's character foil, her perfect opposite. He's the vampire version of the Slayer, and he also has the same flamboyance and reputation for not following the rules among his peers that Buffy has within her own community (Watchers).
So if you're still following me here, Vegita, when compared to Goku, is like both Faith & Spike combined. But Vegita on his own definitely like Spike. And isn't Yamcha more than a little Xander-ish, when you think about it?
One thing that is different though-- the Z characters didn't fully trust Vegita for a long time, but they gave him a huge benefit of the doubt regarding his loyalties that the Scoobies never gave Spike (and Vegita's destroyed entire wolrds, not just killed 200,000 people, but billions--yet he was better treated). They completely understood that they could trust Vegita's self-preservation & desire to secure Goku as an opponent (these were the reasons that Vegia joined up), and thus trusted him accordingly. The Scoobies, however, never fully trusted Spike's love of Buffy (the reason Spike joined up), a lack which weirdly was visible even more after she came back than in the final episodes before she died. Also weirdly, they seemed to have no problem trusting his loyalty to Dawn. Which doesn't make sense to me, because Spike's loyalty to Dawn was originally borne from Spike's loyalty to Buffy.
I think that in itself is an example of the idea that people like that rise to the expectations other set for them-- the Z gang expected Vegita to join them and become one of them, and he did. The Scooby Gang & Buffy expected Spike to betray them and be less than human, and in soem ways he proved even stronger by rising above those expectations, but in Buffy's regard in the end he reacted partially as she'd made him to be-- a monster. Then he forced himself to change so that he'd be able to rise above their petty expectations--- which says a lot about Spike's inner strength and potential and some not so good things about the SG's 'superiority'.
Anyway, I like that Vegita chooses to be good, just like Spike does in the end (when he goes for the soul).