chr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> In alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer Arbitrar Of Quality <tsmtsm@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> So where did the phrase "From beneath you, it devours" come from,
anyway?
> Buffy got it in a Slayer dream, but Spike, Andrew and Jonathan all heard
> the same thing (though sometimes in Spanish). Is it the First's
> recruiting slogan? Just something that anyone with intuition can feel?
All the cool TV stars nowadays have to have a catchphrase.
> > overshadowed by a bigger one coming up. I go back and forth on
> > whether or not this is a required step on the way to "Selfless,"
> > telling Anya that she'll have to take responsibility for (and by
> > extension, be) herself before the episode in which she has to learn
> > it.
>
> The shooting script I've seen includes a bit where Xander warns Anya
that
> if she keeps it up, Buffy will have to kill her:
>
> XANDER
> Think about the career choice you're
> making here, Anya. You're getting
> people killed.
>
> This clearly affects Anya, but she steels herself:
>
> ANYA
> Not my problem.
>
> XANDER
> Well it's gonna be. Forget right and
> wrong - what you're doing is demonic.
>
> ANYA
> Uh, yeah. We're not called Vengeance
> People ...
>
> XANDER
> And Buffy's the Slayer. You're a
> Demon. You kill people - how long
> you think it's gonna be before
> she has to do her job?
>
> ANYA
> Buffy wouldn't slay ... me.
>
> XANDER
> Not if you stop now.
>
> I'm glad that they took this exchange out. It wouldn't have worked with
> the final version of Selfless, where Xander is shocked when Buffy
decides
> to kill Anya.
I second the gladness. There's a time to foreshadow bluntly and a
time to, um, not do so.o
> Paralysis does take a lot of the fun out of Willow. Though if I have
> to watch anyone lie motionless and mumble without moving her jaw, it
might
> as well be her.
Dawn?
> Part of the beloved Buffyverse tradition of villains that prey on the
> heroes' insecurities (and related to the tradition of villains who see
the
> heroes' peronal problems better than they do). They First will do
> something similar throughout much of this season, I believe.
I have a little bit to say and ponder about that aspect of the First,
as you can see in the next BTVS thread.
> Morbid, angsty teens can be really annoying, but Cassie manages to avoid
> that problem because she keeps the angsting off-screen. Sure, we hear a
> bit of her gloomy poetry recited, and her classmates see her as some
> weirdo suicidal poet girl. But most of the time when we actually see
her
> interacting with other characters she's pretty calm, laid back,
friendly,
> and has a sense of humor. And when she pours her heart out outside her
> dad's house, it's not stereotypical overwrought, hormonal teen angst but
> actually pretty mature for a teenage girl about to die. Come to think
of
> it, that speech is not morbid at all, it's about loving life. (But not
in
> an annoyingly uplifting way.) So yeah, I like her.
She's not a "typical" angsty teen, probably specifically for the
reason that she's a one-off guest character whom the writers want us
to like. It seems like she's had time to assimilate the idea of dying
- do we ever find out how long she's known?
> After watching Help again I started to get all proud of myself for
> spotting the similarity between Buffy at the end and Angel's "then all
> that matters is what we do" philosophy on the other show. Then I reread
> the 2006 thread and thought that the idea grew from memories of Scythe's
> post and its followups. Oh, well. It's still interesting to look at it
> from the AtS point of view. Instead of focusing on Buffy's fate as the
> one girl who can save the world, the conclusion of Help focuses on
Buffy's
> conscious choice to keep trying even in the face of knowing she can't
win.
> I mean, not just "can't win" in the sense that a particular foe looks
> invincible, but in the larger sense that many problems are insoluble and
> there can never be a final victory. It's not about victory, it's about
> how you choose to live your life. It would fit right in on AtS, but
it's
> unusual on BtVS. I can only think of a few episodes that take a similar
> approach. There's a bit from Gingerbread, mentioned in the 2006 thread:
> Angel tells Buffy that they'll never win, but "We do it because there's
> things worth fighting for." And then there's The Wish, where Buffy
fights
> on simply because it's her lot in life, even though she's devoid of
hope.
> "World is what it is. We fight. We die." That could be seen as kind of
a
> dark reflection of Angel's approach: still fighting without hope of an
> ultimate victory, but rooted in deadened feelings and submission to fate
> rather than personal choice. Are there other BtVS episodes with a
> similarly AtS-like approach?
In this particular case, it's a bit of a mix, since on one level, this
particular story has no final victory. On another, though, I do think
a lot of the purpose of asking quesitons like this in S7 is to lay the
background for Buffy to change the rules at the end. Maybe people
like Buffy use the ATS approach to last long enough until a BTVS
solution can happen? It's true that the two shows have different
philosophies in that regard (and allegory-fy different periods of
life), but I've never been able to go too deeply into how compatible
they are or aren't.
> > Like
> > "Lessons" it's one of the year's few real high-school based episodes.
>
> With all the Potentials hanging around later in the season, a lot of
> school-based episodes might have resulted in teenager overload.
You know, there's another way the series could have made sure to avoid
teenager overload...
-AOQ
|
