El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 23, 2008 1:31:47 GMT -5
LOL: "Even the writers have no idea". Well-put. There's a scene in one of the last Evil Cordy eps that year where Angel, talking about the Beast's master (knowing it's her, and trying to get under her skin), says, "I bet he doesn't even have a master plan; he's just making it up as he goes along". I've always felt that was a pretty good description of the writers that season: making it up as they went along. I just have this image in my head of a conversation very similar to this taking place in the writers' room early in that season: There's a lot of good things to like in S4, but I wish they'd spent a little more time worrying about how tight their overall story was (or rather, wasn't). As far as the poll question goes, I've always chosen to believe that Skip was lying, as a way of messing with their heads. Because otherwise, believing he was telling the truth and everything I'd watched for 3.5 years was nothing but a completely orchestrated lead-up to a really lame plot (Jasmine) would seriously harm my overall enjoyment of the show...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 22, 2008 22:26:10 GMT -5
I really have no opinion, positive or negative, about Kennedy--just in general, and whether she's a good match for Willow or not. But I think I get where a lot of the hate comes from. The Willow/Tara shippers are nearly as passionate as the Bangel and Spuffy crowds, so Kennedy becomes the female version of Riley (who also takes a lot of abuse he doesn't deserve)...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 22, 2008 14:07:25 GMT -5
Grr! I swore I wasn't gonna post anymore and be responsible for bumping this thread again, but... Frankly I'm not arguing with Mikey, I myself think Buffy is in fact bi-sexual, but we still haven't been given enough info to claim so. She experimented once and while we know she enjoyed it... we still don't know how much interest she has in further pursuing Satsu or any girl for that matter. If she makes this into a thing, or has sex with Satsu again clearly that'd be a solid indicator. If we're going by Mikey's criteria, as in your either Gay, Straight, or Bi, then sure she's Bi...but it's not always that simple. That's all I'm saying. Agreed. By Mikey's criteria, then Willow is bi-sexual, too, because she's been interested in guys in the past, and even had a serious relationship with one. Yet she now calls herself gay. Assuming she were a real person and not a fictional character, I think it'd be pretty rude to walk up to her and tell her, "Willow, you're not gay like you've been believing these last few years--you're actually bi. Sorry about that." Hey, who would know better what she 'is' than the woman herself? If she says she's gay, even after having a previous relationship (including the physical stuff) with a guy, then I believe her. Buffy had a night of bi-sexuality. Does that make her bi-sexual? What if she decides it was nice, but just not for her? What if she never looks at another girl and feels a sexual attraction for the rest of her life? If Faith returns at some point this season, and Buffy ends up sleeping with her, too (which would be, sidebar, incredibly awesome ), then I'm willing to concede that she's more bi-sexual than I'd thought. Right now: not enough information. But quite honestly, I think it's just stupid and pointless for there to be this need on the part of some people to stick a label on her of straight, bi, or gay, because who's to say that can't change as time goes on, as it did for Willow?
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 22, 2008 2:45:41 GMT -5
Yes, I was noticing the inconsistency of her height myself. She seems a lot larger on the Issue #16 covers than previous issues, and here we see her in pain. This does set up a time line on height, she does seem to be getting larger over the span of issues, so the theory that she is getting yet even larger seems believable. You mean the #14 covers, right? I hadn't even thought about those, but you're right--even the one by Jeanty, she looks way bigger. Well, we know she's gonna get to Tokyo somehow, and it doesn't look like she flew there on the cargo plane with Buffy and the slayers--why would they even bother cramming her on board and bringing her along in any case? So maybe whatever it is that causes her to end up there will have other effects on her, as well, including her size. If so, we might not have to wait till July to start to start getting some clues; maybe we'll have some in just a couple of weeks...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 22, 2008 2:25:01 GMT -5
Jasmine, from what I can tell was a Power that Be, and was controlling Skip from the beginning. She organized Cordy's half-demonization, "ascension", and return so that she could be "born". Again, please tell me if I'm misinterpreting events. Nope, I'm pretty sure you got that right. In fact, later in that same episode, Skip claims that everything that'd happened in the characters lives--at least over the last few years--was all orchestrated by Jasmine in order to bring her into being in our dimension. Not exactly one of my favorite plot-twists...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 22, 2008 1:37:03 GMT -5
She absolutely appears bigger, no doubt about that, but unfortunately we probably won't know for sure until we get to #16 whether she actually is getting bigger, or if it's just an inconsistency caused by having two different artists...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 22, 2008 1:34:15 GMT -5
Since Lindsey beat Gavin in a land-slide... I demand a recount.
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 21, 2008 15:17:21 GMT -5
If you are a fan of the Terminator series then you should definitely enjoy it. It has an insane budget (which I imagine will be reduced for Season 2), so the special effects are top notch. The thing is, tho, it really doesn't have that big of a budget--the producers have confirmed that themselves. You hear the name "Terminator" and immediately think of mega-budget blockbusters, but if you go back and watch all the episodes, you might notice that there really aren't nearly the amount of special effects that you'd think. That's probably one of the things that helped it get a S2--it's actually pretty affordable.
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 21, 2008 15:10:29 GMT -5
I was disappointed by Warren's return anyway. It didn't make sense after the First could take his form in Season 7. Even Joss Whedon admits he made a mistake. A rookie mistake in my opinion. Yeah, but at least you can excuse it by saying "Well, maybe he was dead for a few seconds and then Amy brought him back to life", similar to Buffy drowning and then being revived at the end of S1. In Buffy's case, it was long enough to cause the mojo that controls the Slayer line to call the next Slayer, so in Warren's case it could've been long enough to allow the First to take his form. What I really don't like about it (aside from the fact that I never liked Warren and had no urge to ever see him return) is that it takes some of the emotional weight away from "The Killer in Me". It just doesn't quite resonate for Willow thinking she killed a man the way it does when she actually killed a man. S7 really didn't have much in the way of strong, character-based stories to begin with, and TKiM was really the only one Willow got all season, so to cheapen that makes S7 feel even weaker than it already was...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 21, 2008 14:45:56 GMT -5
The one use of magic in S8 so far that really bugged me is in #4 when Warren is carving Willow up like a Sunday roast, and then poof!--she's fine. Felt like a really lame cop-out. Not that I wanted Willow to be forever horribly disfigured, but instead maybe have something stop Warren before he can really begin. Or better yet, don't bring Warren back into the story in the first place!! I believe Joss said in an interview recently that the flashback panel showing naked-Willow with that snake-woman-creature in #10 would have some significance later on, so maybe she learned more from her, and became even more powerful because of it...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 21, 2008 12:39:56 GMT -5
In Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, King himself becomes an important character in the final two books, and Joss has already made an appearance in S8 in one of Buffy's "dream-cubes" in issue #3 (at least I think it was #3). which cube? give me an location. The very bottom of the page, the one "whole" cube right in the middle--down and to the right from the Faith-cube, and down and to the left from Ethan as he falls thru the scene.
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 21, 2008 2:44:09 GMT -5
Touche' But you have to admit that if we're being Joss'ed again it's not a bad call. It's a serious misdirect. Healing? *chuckles* Remember Willow sitting down to heal after Gnarl with the aid of magic? Just tossing in another idea. That's what this place is about, right? Val Tis the right place. Please toss in your ideas, and juggle them if you can. I've been trying to juggle everyone's in my head... and it's mind-boggling how fertile everyone's imagination is. But thank you for tossing in. Anything new? Hey, it sounded like a joke when I threw Joss's name out there, but I wasn't completely kidding. In Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, King himself becomes an important character in the final two books, and Joss has already made an appearance in S8 in one of Buffy's "dream-cubes" in issue #3 (at least I think it was #3). Who would know more about Buffy than him, and, to use the thread title, who would be better able to "manipulate" her world and the characters within it than Joss himself? Obviously that's not gonna turn out to be who it is (99.8% positive), but it'd be an interesting turn that probably not many people would see coming...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 21, 2008 2:06:25 GMT -5
Voted again. 460.
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 21, 2008 1:51:02 GMT -5
The two worst things about S4 are Evil Cordy and Connor. Evil Cordy, well, I'm not sure whether playing "evil" is just out of Charisma's range, or if the writers simply gave her crappy material to work with (or both), but that character was almost unwatchable. Way too over-the-toply arch. And the writers just did a hatchet-job on poor Connor, letting him spend the whole season being led around by the "happy" portion of his anatomy just because he'd finally gotten some and thought he was "touching God" (to use his mom's phrase ). How could a kid who was smart enough to get into Stanford be that gullible? But the two of them alone weren't enough to completely spoil the season. Nearly all of the episodes, if you take them out of context of the overall season and just judge them on their own, are good-to-great. The writers never lost focus on the characters (as happened too often in S7 of "Buffy"), and so I have no trouble understanding the people who say "S4 is awesome!", unlike the people who love S7 of "Buffy", which I still can't figure out where that comes from. The real problem with S4 of "Angel" comes when you try to fit all those individual pieces (episodes) into a single whole (seasonal arc) that's consistent and cohesive, beginning to end. So much of the first half of the season is dominated by the rain of fire, and the Beast, and the sun being blotted out, and bringing forth Angelus, and yet none of this really ties into the Jasmine storyline all that well. The justification is, "Oh, that was all misdirection on Evil Cordy's part to keep the gang occupied while she got pregnant", but that's just what it is: justification. In hindsight, it just feels like filler. As tho the writers sat down and said, "Okay, we've got this storyline coming up at the end of the year of Cordy giving birth to this higher-whatsit; how much cool stuff can we pack into the season before then?" And sure, it was cool. But the reasons for it just don't make a lot of sense. If it all really was intended as nothing but a distraction on EC's part, well, overkill-much? Not unlike trying to kill a fly with a rocket launcher. Some people bash S5 for the standalone-ness of it, but after S4, I'd kinda lost faith in the writers' ability to tell a long, involved, complicated arc that made sense all the way thru. And when you start to examine the Lindsey arc of S5, and how his plan seems to completely change from episode to episode (Jeff Bell admits in the NFA commentary that yes, they were making it up as they went along), I don't think my fears were all that unfounded...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 21, 2008 1:19:11 GMT -5
I'm gonna go with "Other", only because "De-Giant-izing" is the only other option I think is really plausible. Seems like "Pregnant" is the most popular theory so far, but tho I've never been a woman or pregnant, I don't think it's normal to be holding your stomach and yelling in pain when you're not even showing yet. Maybe if she'd been impregnated by her boyfriend we could say, "Oh, it's because it's some weird mystical pregnancy because he's a thricewise." But we still don't know if she actually slept with him. The only one we know for sure she slept with is his roommate, who--again, as far as we know--is just a normal guy. Whatever it is, I'm just hoping it's finally the payoff for the whole "Giant" thing, because it really stopped being amusing several months back, and I'm just anxious for her to get re-smallened so she can maybe start getting some normal human-type storylines...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 20, 2008 22:00:51 GMT -5
It's not like Dawn was, either. Twice in 3 years is far from "every episode". that was sarcasm...LOL i think it's the funniest Dawn Line "GET OUT GET OUT GET OUUTTTT". LOL Sorry. I'm just a pretty big Dawn fan, and I sometimes get a little annoyed with (and thus overly-sensitive to) the large amount of Dawn-hate out there. Some of the criticism is warranted, absolutely (especially during S5), but she also takes a lot of shots that aren't real fair...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 20, 2008 21:52:35 GMT -5
Issue #20, with the whole "Buffy-Animated" thing, I'm sure it's not just gonna be some bizarre flashback-to-high-school story that comes completely out of nowhere. If they're putting it in S8, then it'll undoubtedly have some relevance to S8. And even if it only has very limited relevance, what's not to say that it can't be really cool, anyway? I mean, you could take "The Wish" out of S3 without losing much of that season's overall story, but it was still an awesome episode that's totally worth having in there. And I love the gang back in their high school days, so I think this issue could be great.
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 20, 2008 12:19:13 GMT -5
Earshot. It holds a special place in my heart because it was the first episode I saw, but it's also a great episode. So many funny moments, and so many emotional moments too. Hey, that was my first episode, too! In spite of the fact that there's a lot of backstory going on that you can't really follow, with Angel and Faith and all that, I still think it makes a great episode to start with and get hooked by, because it really showcases every aspect of what makes the show great: great drama, hilarious comedy, and good action. That said, I still voted for "Bad Girls".
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 20, 2008 1:46:32 GMT -5
Okay, so after having a little while to absorb and think about this, a few things: We know from the blurb for issue #15 that "the slayers suffer a massive hit." Everyone's immediate reaction seemed to be, "OMG, Satsu's totally gonna die!" But I didn't really think so. "Massive hit" sounds much more like something bad happening on a large scale; the death of someone like Satsu, I'd think they'd go with adjectives like "tragic", or "devastating", or something to that effect. My guess for the massive hit was either the slayers (many or all) being de-powered, or a large-but-anonymous group of them being killed somehow. But now I'm wondering, what if it's both? What if a large group of them gets killed, and Satsu just happens to be among that group? Could the final panel of #15 be Buffy kissing Satsu as Satsu dies in her arms? Man, I just depressed the hell out of myself. This worries me. I really hope the second-half of S8 isn't going to become a political treatise from Joss on the evils of the Patriot Act, or something along those lines. That was my initial fear after reading the very first issue, but then I was very heartened to discover that it wasn't the entire US government looking upon Buffy and the slayers as a terrorist group, but rather just one army general and a few other isolated members of the military, and their reasons had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the typical Buffy-verse mystical-type reasons of magic & whatnot. I know Joss has very strong political views on a lot of subjects, but one of the many things I so admire about him as a storyteller is that, with maybe just a couple of exceptions, he mostly keeps those opinions out of his work--or buries them as subtext so that they're much less in-your-face. This makes it so everyone can enjoy his fiction, not just the 50% of the people who agree with him. Fiction ought to be a way to escape from the "real world" and all its problems for an hour or so. So I sure hope that quote from Allie isn't what it sounds like at first glance. One of the things General Voll said just before he kicked it was that Buffy was now at war with the human race, so it'd be nice if it turns out to be just that: the human race, and not just one or two governments, and all the political overtones that would inevitably go with that idea... Also, Allie did refer to "slayers". Plural. I somehow don't think he's just talking about Buffy and Faith, so however the Japanese vamp cult's plan turns out in the next couple of issues, it sounds as tho there'll at least be some slayers who still have their powers by issue #21...
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El Diablo Robotico
Ensouled Vampire
Robo Pimp-Daddy
"Surely you have heard about our great victory over the Devil's Robot."[Mo0:3]
Posts: 1,199
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Post by El Diablo Robotico on Apr 19, 2008 22:29:22 GMT -5
Dawn just seemed so ungrateful all the time. Yea, it's not like Rona was screaming "Get Out! Get Out! GET OUUTTTTT!!!!!" Every episode. It's not like Dawn was, either. Twice in 3 years is far from "every episode". And Dawn also wasn't publicly questioning Buffy's leadership--and if she even knew what the hell she was doing--in front of all the other girls every other episode, unlike a certain potential who shall remain nameless...
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