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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 8, 2008 15:49:13 GMT -5
Scott, how do the decisions get made over what "spoilers" will be released or not? Such as confirming Oz' return explicitly, or the "vampires becoming vogue" spoiler?
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 7, 2008 20:05:08 GMT -5
Scott, you said earlier that it was intended for us to guess Drusilla instead of Willow in 8.17. That begs the question -- with so many more mysteries being built into Season 8 than previous seasons (i.e. Twilight's identity, Satsu kissing Buffy, Buffy's secret meeting, the identity of the mole/traitor), do you guys on the Season 8 team feel obligated to leave "clues" in the story to give the audience a chance to "solve" these mysteries? Or are textual hints, like the ones that set up the twist of Willow's reveal, never inherently trustworthy for us?
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 7, 2008 14:25:20 GMT -5
Hey, you asked for one, I gave you five. Now you're stipulating what the intent behind it had to be? Throw the "bloodlust" bit out for a second, because that was simply an opinion. The fact is that I said I remembered there was a definite sentiment hoping for near-total losses. All five posts I quoted demonstrated that sentiment. Whether based on bloodlust or "narrative integrity", the desire was still there for most of the girls to have been blown to bits. Your understanding of the distinction between "want"/"hope"/"desire", all emotive verbs and "predict", is simply made of fail. It's what I thought would happen. It's what I thought probably should have happened vis a vis not being a giant mislead, or, as it turned out, making the villain look like a strutting idiot for an issue with his absurdly over-the-top weapon. I never "wanted", "hoped" for, or any other verb you care to brutalize into position, all those characters to be wiped out. Much better, though, to spare them by not dropping a missile on them at all, then to spare them by dropping the silly army-spawning green-flame spewing Missile of Minimal Concussive Damage on them. I'd find that more scathing if the two thoughts there were in any way in contradiction. They aren't. The first statement presupposed that there would be nothing of use for him to do other than having gotten knocked ass over tea kettle trying to deliver an unnecessary warning. Since this didn't come up -- he ended up saving Rowena's life and probably a few others -- it isn't a factor. The entirely independent statement that I'm glad they didn't wipe out the whole bunch doesn't contradict that at all. "At least" seven, was Rowena's report. There's no real way to gauge that until they all meet up again, and they can't go looking for casualties if the green-flame spawned lizard army plans on squatting for a while. If Buffy being the princess is meant to remind us of 8.10, and the message in 8.10 meant to provide a clue as to how to save the day, and saving the day may well involve keeping Willow from going insane/evil, then the best odds for a prince are Xander and Oz, both of whom are or will be around, and are the two men Willow cares about most.
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 7, 2008 13:45:52 GMT -5
Very well done... 60% of your examples actually express the sentiment requested -- a *desire* for the massive casualties.
*golfclap*
3 outta 5 actually is kinda bad when you're hand picking the responses; Emmie's and my post both treated it as a question of narrative integrity, not anything a reasonable argument could call "bloodlust". And while angelmonster used the magic word "want", again, his point had more to do with the false-ness of using the missle at all.
The result is that for the first time, Twilight has done something that's at once very arch, and also very ineffectual, as a villain. Perhaps next he will dispatch mercenaries with machine guns that fire bullets that stop short of the target and deploy nano-computers that take over the target's body and make them slap themselves with a halibut. Basically, the high casualty predictions were simply giving him credit for being a slightly more ruthless and badass villain than the Dr. Evil-ish quality of the missile attack allows at the moment.
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 7, 2008 13:07:18 GMT -5
You thought Buffy might have been a 6'5"-ish 200-odd lb man before this issue, but not after? Balancing out my disappointment of being proven wrong about that, tho, is my satisfaction of being one of a very small number of people who turned out to be completely right about what happened at the castle. ;D As far as I know, I was the only one to predict that their radar setup might have given them enough warning to get most of the girls to safety ahead of time (the radar angle hasn't been confirmed yet, but it seems the most likely explanation). I was one of only two or three people to suggest that the castle might not have been destroyed, that the mystical symbols on the missile, the greenness of the explosion, and the fact that we only saw a couple of flying chunks of stone were enough to raise a little bit of doubt about the castle's complete and utter destruction. And I think there were only a couple of other people besides me who thought that there was at least a chance that most of the girls might've survived (it actually surprised me how bloodthirsty a lot of the members here were, actually seeming to be hoping for near-total losses ). So to the Willow-not-Dru faction: go ahead and say "I told you so". You earned it. But I think I'm enjoying my own "I told you so" even more, because far more people disagreed about the castle/missile stuff than the Dru/Willow stuff. ( ) I'd love to read a post that "hoped" for near-total losses. I certainly expected them, though -- however much of a relief it is that a good portion of them survived (and provided the resultantly fantastic heroic moments for Xander and Dawn in turn), it's still a bit puzzling. Here's the math on why I say puzzling -- "big ass bomb" > "little bomb that inexplicably spawns snake-faced warrior guys that by definition kill more slowly and less consistently than simply a bigger bomb would have". As far as ultimate weapons and master plans go, the missile attack in 8.16 has the sort of quality that should put it on the Evil Overlord List as one of the things *not* to do. It has that absurdly over-intricate Bond villain flair -- all Twilight wants is sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to them! So, as a positive, it wasn't some total slaughter; as a negative, Twilight (or at least Warren, if the specifics were up to him as Emmie proposed) takes a bit of a credibility hit for the stereotypically silly attack. I'm going to disagree not because I'm convinced she *must* become immortal, but rather because... she looked like she's wearing a helluva lot more like 200 years of bitterness and loss and sadness than like 5 or fewer. And, really, consider her last line. "Time" is stronger than love. That resonates a lot more with the idea that she really has been waiting around for this. I've argued this before, but Joss is not bound, even by "Fray", to literally provide a hand sticking out of a portal. That was us, the audience, getting a visual representation of a clearly incomplete oral history by Ur'konn as experienced by Fray. Nothing about the scene commits to those panels being the absolute, literal facts of that battle.
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 6, 2008 23:55:11 GMT -5
Scott -- Season 8 by its nature unfolds much more slowly than the televised seasons. As such, fans have more time to react. Tough question: even if you can't say what, has fan reaction at any point this season caused you and Joss and the other creative people involved to *alter* any plans for Season 8?
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 6, 2008 23:02:26 GMT -5
Buffysmg, in 8.16, Buffy's first errand upon arriving in New York is to go meet secretly with someone, someone she felt like getting dressed up for.
I could see it as a Buffy/Oz romance and that being a major issue for Willow. Isn't it against Girlcode?
The only other guess I can think of to make the very singular "connection to someone (Buffy) loves" would be a Buffy/Xander romance, but right now, the Xander/Dawn subtext is barely "sub" at all.
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 6, 2008 12:06:32 GMT -5
Drusilla? Drusill-nah. I never should have fallen for the "madwoman" misdirect, as the 8.19 cover really did make it kind of obvious. And as soon as it was clear she was speaking "human" and not "vampire", it was a sure thing.
Wow, what an issue. Fray is every bit the great character she was in her own book. Harth is every bit as complex a villain. And WILLOW has been waiting around for centuries to prove a point.
Firstly, I love how Buffy adjusts, or doesn't, to Melaka's world -- gains her trust, learns her language, and is even moved to sympathy by what Melaka's been through. But what I never thought about is how learning of Melaka's time would affect Buffy mentally. In "Chosen", we saw Buffy emerge from great pessimism and doubt with a moment of sudden certainty -- "we're gonna win". Now, in "Time of Your Life", her period of great optimism and victory as head of a world-wide army of Slayers that's changed the fate of the line of Chosen, of heroes, of the world, ends in another moment of sudden clarity -- "we're gonna lose", if you will. Fray laid it all down. Buffy's age was the end of the Slayer line until Melaka and Harth. The ties to the past were broken. Twilight came, and night fell.
And all this settles in right before she hears Willow's name come from Gunther's lips.
Willow, on the other hand... wow. She's felt off, distant, cold in the present-day story, and also a bit self-loathing. That continues as she makes clear that it's her fault that Buffy got sent to the future. That means more than even she can understand, since apparently FDW had something to do with orchestrating this. And yet, she acts like she's been waiting around 200+ years to prove a point to Buffy, not to kill her. She's here to judge her, not to kill her, to reverse a phrase. Whatever it is that happens to the Slayers and the world in the present is clearly something that Willow holds Buffy accountable for, and wants her to appreciate that... perhaps before killing her?
In the meantime, the BHC is not a BPR apparently, and I'm actually glad because to wipe out the whole Scotland team right in front of Xander would have been too much. He is really, really stepping up and I love it. Love him snapping Rowena out of it and barking orders. That's twice now we've seen Rowena... pretty much fold in a sticky situation. I wonder if she's mostly there as a reminder of how many girls probably weren't ready to be Slayers. It even makes me wonder if the Slayer line on its own had a sort of intelligence underneath it, that it never activated someone that clearly didn't have the steele to succeed.
A little puzzled by the nature of the attack on the BHC -- why have a small explosion that spawns freaky ghost-ish snake warrior things when, well, big explosion? Sharks with frickin' laser beams.
I'm definitely thinking there's Xander/Dawn subtext officially a-brewin'. "Ride me". 'Nuff said. And I totally called that scene.
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 5, 2008 19:47:17 GMT -5
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 5, 2008 13:39:28 GMT -5
I have pwnd the secret OAXABADL conspiracy like and and
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 4, 2008 23:41:28 GMT -5
She's the one that thought vampires were lonely and misunderstood, right? That's the spokeswoman for the universal validity of opinions? :smart:
See, nobody's really conceding that, is my point. How many posts on this thread are just blanket sweeping "no" and "impossible", and usually pretexted by some personal vision of the subtext which, where ambiguous, they decide to read *against* the intent of the writers?
I think that's what rankles me -- whether you think the subtext is there or not, to simply throw up a wall of blanket denial, that such a thing is *inconceivable*, when clearly the writers *have conceived it*, is ridiculous. And that's been a battle for years over Buffy/Xander. Now, with Xander/Dawn, there is some ambiguous text (I'd love to do a poll on how many people's first reaction to the line about Dawn's centaur state was Xander telling her she was hot), but it's still absolutely bright line impossible.
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 4, 2008 16:13:19 GMT -5
My "exegetical principle", as it was called by Maggie, the Dark Horse poster, is that the text is canon, and where the text is ambiguous, the interpretation of Joss or his writers is. Good example being when Joss basically closed the door on the untrue argument that Xander said "kick his ass" out of jealousy -- Joss' explanation becomes the canon fact, he thought Buffy needed to focus or she'd get killed.
So it follows that if the text is "ambiguous" about Buffy and Xander's relationship, the arbiters of that ambiguity are the people who created it. I personally, don't think there's nearly the textual support for them having this perfectly refined sibling-like dynamic as there is for them being at least sexually aware of each other.
In the case of Xander and Dawn, there was no ambiguity for a long time -- they were siblings, and perhaps more to that, he struck me (particularly during the early Season 7 plan for Buffy/Xander) as a surrogate father (like in "Lessons"). This, however, began being deconstructed quickly, such as in "Him", where both he and Willow showed that they were sexually aware of Dawn. From then on, it's been no more or less ambiguous than Buffy and Xander.
And if they've made it ambiguous, isn't the 'ship plausible by definition? What I'm seeing is a lot of categorical "NO. IMPOSSIBLE. BLUE JEANS. AND IRONY" coming out against Xander/Summers. As if to say, it's absolutely clear if you don't like it, and no better than ambiguous if you do.
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 4, 2008 15:35:48 GMT -5
I think the conspiracy bit applies to the part where you said this KoC: Which doesn't imply in any construction of the english language some networked conspiracy. Just that the folk who hold that view are not Xander fans. I haven't yet seen the fan of the character as something other than comic relief who squicks out over him as a potential romance for a Summers woman. I see a lot of posts on the subject that treat it as a fait accompli, though, that they are siblings, and in discrediting that theory, the work of the writers and actors is relevant. As is the fact that the first several episodes of Season 7 were written to start a romance before it was called off. There you are then. It doesn't persuade, but at least you've offered it. As for Xander/Dawn, I picked up on Season 8 subtext pretty much from the second he was swimming aroun her clothes in 8.10, and it hasn't gone away. The point I'm making there is that you can't say that their relationship hasn't been played as man-woman for a while now, enough so that a relationship wouldn't jump out of nowhere.
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 4, 2008 9:49:35 GMT -5
Mock and call it a conspiracy if you like, but where are the really straightforward rational arguments against? The sibling argument has always been a fraud in the Buffy/Xander case, as proven repeatedly by quotes from writers and the portrayal by the actors. It can be put forward about Xander/Dawn, but in Season 8, they clearly haven't been written with a distinctly familial overtone. So if it's not haterade, where's the argument beyond "just because"?
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 3, 2008 8:56:50 GMT -5
I really do think that, on some level, it's an anti-Xander thing. If you actually look at the characters' personalities, he is an all-but perfect match for either of the Summers women -- the elder more than the younger, but both all the same.
With Buffy, it's always the completely made-up idea that he's like her brother -- which we know is objectively false because the writers have told us so on many occasions, right up to and including a plan for them to have a relationship being put into action and then stopped in Season 7.
With Dawn, it seems to be the same, but more about her, as though people honesty can't process that she was already pretty mature in Season 7 and it's getting close to two years after "Chosen" in Season 8. How much more heavy-handedly can Joss tell us that Dawn is a Big Girl than by turning her into a giant (!) and telling us tales of her being naughty at college?
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Post by KingofCretins on Aug 2, 2008 3:55:58 GMT -5
Wasn't there a plan on Xander moving to LA at some point? I remember reading something like that, but that it wasn't going to work out for some reason.
I agree, though, the Buffy "core" -- really five characters, including Dawn, belong in the "Buffy" side of things. Whereas, I could have have seen Anya, like Emmie said, or even, get this, Tara in LA. The broken up with Willow, Season 6 Tara with all that independence would have been a nice touch, especially since "Angel" really started to lack that humanizing touch in Season 4.
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Post by KingofCretins on Jul 31, 2008 15:39:28 GMT -5
39 out of 44 correct Some people think my writing transcripts gives me an unfair advantage I spotted that same point about that question
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Post by KingofCretins on Jul 29, 2008 11:32:08 GMT -5
Using Xander in that role in the dream was perfect in several ways. First, he's the ultimate everyman, so he symbolizes every potential "average" guy Buffy would ever consider entering into a relationship with. Second, before we were let in on the fact that it was a dream, it allowed him to comment on the previous Dawn/Xander scene and further Dawn's story a bit (thus saving space in a format where space is at a premium). Third, it gave a nice WTF? moment when she invited him in and then kissed him, making us wonder what in the world we'd missed in the time between S7 and 8. And fourth, it provided the obvious mislead for "Who kissed Buffy?", by just planting that seed. Even after the cinammon lip-gloss thing in #4, there were still people several issues later thinking Xander had been the one to kiss her ("Maybe one of the other girls borrowed Satsu's lip-gloss, and kissed Xander, and then Xander kissed Buffy" ). Count me among the many who thought it possible (although I had started to lean toward it being Rowena who had borrowed the lipgloss, since she looked the most crushed in 8.04 not to have been picked, like she had a crush on Buffy. I blame Joss, Scott, and Georges -- more should have been done in scripting and drawing the book to make it absolutely clear Satsu was in the room when Willow laid out the kiss deal. Last we'd seen her for certain she was outside fighting zombies. It's not good enough that we have one person in the room who we can all point to and say "well, I guess that must have been her". It doesn't give a fair chance to solve the mystery. I was also right there for those panels hoping that Joss really had decided to not only drop us straight into a Buffy/Xander relationship, but to drop us into one with layers and complication, since she was inviting him to bed rather uncertainly. What a great way to establish from the outset that things are a little different since Sunnydale? But alas. I do still have hopes for Buffy/Xander, since it's definitely the best relationship either of them could ever hope to find. I'm good with Xander/Faith, too, it's one of my more agreeable 'ships. You're right about "being Wood" -- in fact, Xander himself would have made more sense in that role in Season 7 than Wood did (I like DB Woodside's work in Season 7, but the character was ultimately superfluous). I don't think anything has "happened" there, that wouldn't match the dynamics at all. The "something has already happened and we missed it" energy has been coming more from Buffy and Xander, if it's there to be found -- not just what she says in the kiss, but just the open references to sex appeal and all. That said, while Buffy and Xander have had the most relationship subtext so far, there has been some between Xander and Dawn. I noticed it first in 8.10 with Xander nuzzling her giant lingerie. And, yeah, before he goes on to explain it, the bit about how 'awesome' she looks does seem pretty pointedly flirtatious. Xander and Dawn as a couple would be believable. I really have trouble figuring how he could not be with a Summers girl -- he's like genetically coded to be a perfect match for either of them.
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Post by KingofCretins on Jul 29, 2008 11:08:33 GMT -5
21 through 25 are five issues in the quasi-arc about vampires being public. 26 through 30 are the five issue arc by Jane featuring Oz. 31 through 35 are the Meltzer arc, and 36 through 40 are the Joss arc. Only five issue arcs from here on out.
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Post by KingofCretins on Jul 27, 2008 15:16:06 GMT -5
It seems really odd that this, of all plot developments, comes up just as HBO is ready to roll out it's new vampire series, "True Blood" (based on a set of novels), which is primarily about a world in which... vampires are common knowledge to the world.
I don't know whether or not to think Joss is being intentionally derivitive so that he can present his own version of that premise first and better, or if he just never gave it any thought.
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