gnatpack | Entries tagged with btvs

reposting my original tumblr post I made while I had covid here to beef up my buffy tag

Buffy: You're an older sibling with a martyr complex
Dawn: You're a younger sibling going thru an existential crisis
Joyce: You have mommy issues
Giles: You have daddy issues
Xander: You have opinions about toxic masculinity
Willow: You're gay
Anya: Your favorite Hellenic deity is Artemis
Tara: You have trust issues
Oz: You're a furry
Cordelia: You wish the show treated women better
Angel: You have bad taste in men
Spike: You're into leather
Drusilla: You had an Emily Autumn phase
Faith: You support women's wrongs
Kendra: You wish the series was more diverse
Glory: You like more than a little bit of chaos
Warren: You've had a restraining order filed against you

For the past week I've been haunted by the episode where Buffy is accidentally turned invisible by bargain bin Weezer. It's not the main plot that sticks out to me, though I love the scene where Xander walks in on Spike totally not doing anything sexual. There's a scene in the beginning when the social worker comes to visit where, for one brief moment, I thought there was a fake dating episode that I'd totally forgotten about.

Except there wasn't. A travesty.

what could have been

A recap: During the social worker's visit Spike walks into the room and Buffy panics because visits from you platinum princess punk fucktoy aren't going to received well by a social worker with middle class sensibilities. After some failed attempts at explaining his presence, Buffy unceremoniously shoos him away, solidifying a terrible house visit. Later when she's invisible, Buffy solves this problem by tormenting the social worker to the point of a breakdown so that her appraisal is canned.

My version: No invisibility stuff happens. Fake Weezer isn't in the show. Instead, Buffy and Dawn scramble to explain Spike's present before landing on the title of fiance. Why is he dressed like that? Well, he's an actor of course. He lives in the house and helps pay bills while his relationship with Buffy shows Dawn what a good nuclear family structure should look like.They're able to talk the social worker into delaying the meeting by feigning some sort of contagious illness that has her all too happy to quickly leave the house and reschedule. The problem, now, is that Buffy and Spike need to continue their charade during her next visit.

"Oh, that's Sp--"
"Spencer!" Buffy cut in, earning herself an annoyed look from Dawn.
The woman clicked the pen in her hand and looked down at her clipboard.
"And his relationship to you?"
Buffy and Dawn exchanged glances. On a good day that question was hard enough to answer.
"He's my..."
"Fiance!"

Cue Spike and Buffy having an existential about what their relationship is with a painfully suburban background that Spike is more than a little into. Plus Spike makeover montage that reveals he's actually hot when he dresses like William. Maybe also some callbacks to Willow's "why don't you and Spike get married" spell because they're trying to recreate that dynamic while not magicked.

but will I actually write this?

The million dollar question to which my answer is... that's a good question. In general I don't really write fics any more because I don't like the way people treat fic writers. At the same time, the fic is bouncing around in my head anyways and writing fake suburban spuffy would be fun. It's a conundrum.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Tiny Wooden Box by The Dead South

I think this is it. This is the episode that breaks me. Neither Spike's darling presence nor Buffy's stylish new haircut is enough to keep me around. Seeing as I plan to stop watching the show before Tara's death anyways, I might as well save myself some time and quit while I'm not any further behind.

Synopsis

Buffy and Spike are keep having sex. She likes having sex with Spike. Clearly this is a problem and something is wrong with her, so she asks Tara to look into the resurrection spell which brought her back.

Meanwhile, the three nerds who look like knockoff Weezer have invented some neuro-bullshit to make a woman their sex slave. When the group go out to pick a victim, Warren runs into the woman who left him for making a murderous and obsessive sex robot. He uses the machine on her to take her back to their hideout, but its effect wears off before they physically do anything. Two members of the trio are horrified when she suggests that impairing someone's brain because they otherwise wouldn't consent to sex is rape; the third, Warren, kills her when she tries to leave.

Knockoff Weezer decides to solve the problem by using magic to make Buffy think she accidentally kills a woman during a demon attack. She wants to turn herself in, but Spike physically stops her. In response Buffy beats him until his face swells. Once inside the police station, however, Buffy hears the dead woman's name and realizes Warren must have some connection to the death. At home she meets with Tara, who tells her that there's nothing wrong with her.

The episode ends with Buffy sobbing in Tara's lap at the thought that she may be responsible for her on actions.

Response

The show has a problem with violence when it comes to Spike. Time and time again he is hit or threatened with violence, if not death outright, by human characters who are supposed to be the heroes. Because he's a vampire these things are okay; he's a bad person, deserving of whatever the good do to him. If I was feeling generous I would say that this is an example of the capabilities of humans to behave monstrously, but the show leans on the concept of inherent good and evil too much for me to feel confident crediting it with nuance.

Buffy has reached a point where she finally has to process the way she treats Spike and what this says about her as a person if she doesn't have the excuse of coming back wrong. It's at least a change in pace from denying her interest in Spike immediately after having sex with him, but overall it's just like... why are we doing this? My own Spike-based biases aside, this whole Spike un-romance arc is weird coming from the show that brought us immortal adult Angel dating teen Buffy after stalking her all the way to Sunnydale. For all his faults Spike at least consciously wants to be better than he is, while Angel basically only has a conscience because magic forced him to.

I think in some ways Spike being able to hurt Buffy is kind of wasted on her post-life crisis. Spike has a chip that makes him unable to hurt humans. Buffy has superhuman powers. What could have been an existential debate about whether or not a Slayer is a type of monster is wasted on 2000s-era chastity. Because let's face it, Buffy isn't allowed to enjoy sex. When she does it turns a man evil, becomes a life-threatening supernatural curse, or is a symptom of her own selfishness.

Conclusion

The sixth and seventh seasons of Buffy were made by Paramount instead of Warner Brothers, and it really shows in how much nothing happens in season 6. While Willow eventually makes a compelling big bad at the end of the season (even then, at the expense of burying their gays), bargain Weezer is jarringly cartoonish for villains following a fight with a literal deity. Rather than true antagonists, they're an obnoxious subplot that every so often wanders into Buffy's line of sight. They're first act villains who should have been overshadowed by the main act by now, and the fact that they're still around is enough to put me off watching more.

Eventually I'm going to do another rewatch which I'll properly document from start to finish, versus this where I got the idea to start around the time that I also stopped wanting to watch any more. With everything going on this summer it'll probably be closer to the fall. That way it's been roughly a year since I started. In the meantime my plan is to keep working on my Buffy reimagining neocities site

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Potential Breakup Song by Aly and AJ

In line with my last post, I should probably make a blanket statement that in the long run a.... not small portion of my posts will probably be about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There's a sort of existential dilemma happening about whether or not I'm a fan, but I'm definitely enthusiastic about the show. Sometimes my enthusiasm is just enthusiastically not liking decisions made in it.

Whatever I am, I wound up making a dreamwidth account instead of a neocities blog because I realized I'd probably have more BuffyBlogging posts than real things about myself. And making one neocities site about the show is already enough. So here are some quick facts about my relationship with the show, presented in whatever order I think them:

Every time I watch the show I stop before Tara dies and know the rest from reading spoilers
Giles/Angel makes so much sense and would have hurt so much better
That's the only time Angel is allowed to exist. Dead to me. Stay away from her. It's on sight
Spike/Buffy doesn't have to be endgame but it would have been a cool dynamic to genuinely explore (two people in love with the only person capable of killing them is romantic idc)
In general I just think Spike is deeply romantic in a fucked up kind of way that I'm really normal about
(that was a lie, no I'm not)
Why wasn't Anya/Willow a thing like that makes so much more sense than "I hate men but love Xander"
Once More With Feeling was actually what got me into the show because I saw the individual songs on YouTube in the Olden Days
Discounting Spike, who I like for less than noble reasons, Giles is probably my favorite because he's very polite but also straight up kills people when Buffy is too nice to do it herself
Joyce's death makes me sob. Hard.
Glory is my favorite villain but damn do I feel like all of her scenes are dripping with misogyny
Faith and Cordelia both deserved so much better than the writing they got

Seeing as I am sort of the lone Buffy watcher in my life, if you read this and it seems like we're on the same wavelength don't be afraid to say hi!

Current Mood: nerdy

So I'm working on making a neocities site. I'm using "working" here in the sort of vague, sweeping sense that means this is something I was doing before finals and plan to return to once things calm down again. This isn't a project that will be quick, both because of the kind of project it is and because I'm being stubborn and coding the entire thing from scratch. It's not as if i don't already have a lot on my plate, right? I'm only writing an entire radio show in my spare time as it is...

Anyways.

This is an undertaking of wholly self-indulgent proportions. Nobody asked me to do this. No one else cares if I make this. It's happening because I want it to, and that's all I need.

but what is "it"?

Yes, well I guess this is the part where I say it out loud: I'm doing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewrite.

Whether or not I'm a fan of the show depends largely on how you define being a fan. I can't make it through an episode without complaining about the stink of Joss Whedon that permeates the plot; in this sense there's a certain type of fan that would wouldn't consider me part of their community. At the same time I do like the characters and certain parts of the plot. It's just a show that I wish was better than it is.

Instead of a fix-it fic this is more like an AU where I was put in charge of the story. Whether or not this is fixing the story largely depends on if you think the changes are improvements or making things worse. For example, I'm making s1 Willow a closested lesbian with an unrequited crush on Buffy who ruins her first relationship with a woman by cheating on (high-school-aged) Tara with Cordelia. This may or may not be a "fix" to anything, but I think it's more fun.

except this isn't a fic, either

There are... multiple reasons I'm making a neocities site thing instead of just writing a pic and putting it up on AO3. In 2022 I retired from fic writing (read: deleted every fic I've ever written) because I got tired of people demanding updates for fics that were years in the making. So part of this format is motivated by how much I just do not enjoy the way people treat fic writers like content machines. Using an alternate format gives me something fun and open-ended that no one ever really expects me to truly "finish".

Instead, my plan is to create a sort of wiki type thing based on the format creators use when pitching a television show. In a way I guess it's a sort of epistolary story where people read the details and then put them together rather than just handing you the finished project. It feels like an easier way to organize information than trying to piece it all together into a coherent fic with actual prose. This way also feels like less pressure... idk.

But! There will still be plot synopsis to read as if it's a real story. They just won't be as detailed as documenting every individual line of dialogue.

This is feeling rambly now so uh tldr: I'm making a neocities page to post a fic outline instead of bothering to write out the whole thing. And if you wanna find out when things really start happening you can check out the profile here

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: Something to Sing About from the Buffy Soundtrack

Every Thursday I watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've seen the show before, but I was in high school so I'm basically watching it like-new with shadows of memory. Rather than watch the series from start to finish I'm just watching until the episode before Tara dies. At this point I'm largely here for the Spike/Buffy arc, not because I want them to get married or anything but because... well, Spike's there. And I'm really normal about him.

The Synopsis

In this episode Buffy decides she needs a job. Things are expensive. Bills are piling up. So she gets a job at a not-actually-literal soul-sucking fast food chain. The manager and her fellow coworkers are eerie, dispassionate people, which leads Buffy to feel like something suspicious may be going on. The frequent disappearance of employees also raises alarms, and her suspicions are seemingly confirmed when she discovers a severed finger in the mysterious meat blend used in the restaurant's burgers.

The burgers turn out to be totally fine and not at all made of people, but there is some sort of worm monster eating the employees. Unfortunately Buffy has already told all of the patrons that the burgers contain human meat, leading to her being fired. But wait! Willow to the rescue! She finds out their mystery meat isn't actually meat at all, which provides Buffy with the power she needs to blackmail management..... into getting the job she hated back.

Food 4 Thots

Season 6 really feels like they started picking trashed ideas from earlier in the series out of the bin to pad episodes. Pretty much the only redeeming thing about this episode is that the geek squad wasn't there, which is at least more than the previous one had going for it. There are times in the show where it feels like they're hamming it up a bit; instead of her work environment truly being creepy the writing kind of just screams "this is a creepy place" at you. Which is maybe the point because they want viewers to be misled the way Buffy was. But you could skip it and miss basically nothing except for establishing that Buffy now has a job.

Spike shows up at her job to be supportive, which is weird and unwanted.... largely because the writers said it should be? Every time he's on screen it's like they're trying to tell fans "stop it, stop liking him". Anyways. Unlike Buffy's friends, who think it's great that she's giving in to America's protestant work ethic, Spike says babygirl why are you making yourself miserable. A Slayer forced to work minimum wage is like a caged lion at the circus and Spike is the only one out of her friends who sees this. They love to have him make great points but then don't want to give him a real redemption, either.

As an aside: in my personal opinion it's actually incredibly romantic that the man Buffy is fucking, who is the only person she can be emotionally vulnerable with, offers to help her financially if that's why she's working a job that's making her miserable. Sure, he'd probably rob a bank or something. But he really does just want her to be happy.

This episode was also part of the "Willow's magic addiction" arc, which sees her struggle with Amy using magic on her without her consent. I understand what they're going with and think it's an interesting conflict for Willow to have, but at the same time it feels like there wasn't tons of visible escalation for a problem that has supposedly been growing for a while. This could be another one of those intentional writer decisions where the justification is that it seems sudden because the show is about Buffy, and since she didn't notice it viewers don't either. But if that's the case its execution makes it look rushed rather than intentional writing.

The end of the episode also baffles me. Buffy has found them out! We know from similar real-life cases that restaurants can get in a lot of trouble for falsely advertising products as meat when they aren't. Knowing this, Buffy could at least ask for enough money to ensure some stability while she tries to come up with a plan. Instead, however, she uses this advantage to... make them let her work for minimum wage again. Sure, the change in managers might have improved the workplace a little, but at least ask for a starting bonus!

Overall

If I had to rate this episode it would probably be a 3/10. Not only was it hammy and largely skippable, but the Buffy and Spike having sex wasn't enough to recover my lost interest. There are 5 more episodes left before I stop watching, but we'll see if I actually last that long. Ever since Once More With Feeling this season has felt like it's dragging. Doublemeat Palace might just be the straw that broke the camel's back, but I'm going to really try to watch one or two more to see if this season can be salvaged.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Dead Meat by Johnny Polygon