June 2002 posts

Previous June 2002 

July 2002


My first post: Spike's Soul (some S6 spoilers) -- Sang, 02:19:12 06/29/02 Sat

Hi, this is my first post. (I am a struggling physicist.) And English is not my native language, so please easy on my typos and funny grammers.

Many people talked about Spike's soul. Maybe someone else wrote the same thing before. Still I want to share my opinion on this matter here.

The concept of soul is very confusing in BTVS. Maybe the soul is related to the chance of redemption. Being an immortal means, that you don't have a afterlife, thus you will not be judged by what you do in this life. There is no heaven nor hell for you, or worse, this the hell since you already died as a human will stay here forever. And, oh yes, your food is human blood. I guess that will sum up about vampires.

Having a soul doesn't define that he/she is evil or good. However, it will give you a chance for redemption, and fear for the final judgment. It may give a vampire a chance that one can leave this hell and can join in heaven, but also give a despair since the chance is so thin because of what he/she already did.

How about slayer? The slayer is a savior for people, but is a monster for demons. At early stage of the show, her job is 'kill at sight' thing. Slayer doesn't need to judge whether their preys are good or evil by their action.

Classifying beings as soul/no soul is quite convenient for her job. Kill souless being and spare one with soul. Souless being cannot be redeemed they will stay evil forever, and in some sense, they are already dead, thus Slayer is not a killer, there is no guilt.

Is it? Actually Buffy continuously asked it to herself and try to deny that she is a killer. She divided herself in two personalities, one is cruel and violent slayer and another is caring good girl. Even if she was used and betrayed by guys (with soul), she always blamed herself. When she was unfairly treated, she was trying to keep everything in herself (because she sould be a nice, good person.)

But when she was confronted with monster, she put out her anger to them, brutally smashes their skull, scorns them with cruel humor just before she kills them. In some sense, she is a monster to demons.

Now there comes Spike. He was a perfect prey for Slayer, as an evil killer without soul. Then he became a (relatively) harmless, thanks to the government experiment. She mocked and pounded him, and didn't feel guilty about it, since he is just a thing she can kill.

At the early stage of their relation, she became very cruel and violent whenever she felt something toward Spike. She always became defensive about her feeling. Then after resurrection, she lowered her guard because he was the only one who didn't expect her being someone (protector, mother, friend, chosen one) but just wanted to be with her. Because of that, she could feel Spike's love.

So, does Spike have a soul? If it means being a human, he definitely has one. In Petrouchka (Stravinsky's ballet suit), Petrouchka is a puppet animated by magic, he suffers torment of love every night in magician's show. Then one day the magician found out his puppet grows his own soul and starts to feel real pain. Like Petrouchka, Spike is also changed because of the torment of love he felt.

One thing he doesn't have is the pass for the afterlife, a guarantee for the redemption. Officially he is still souless.

Then why should Spike look for his soul? He can love Buffy, he feels remorse, compassion and guilt. I think it is not for Spike, it is for Buffy.

If Spike can be good and she can love him as he is, i.e. without soul, what about hundreds souless beings Buffy killed? Do you remember how much she horrified when she thought she killed one innocent woman?

She continuously reminded (rather violently) Spike that he cannot be good, cannot be changed without soul. If it is not true, that will doom the Slayer, shake the foundation of whole slayer thing.

This relation with Spike will destroy her and she knew it. If she can accept Spike as someone she can love, she should accept the fact that she already killed someone who can be good, someone she can even love.

The only way Spike can save her and their relation, is restoring his soul. Not because he can be good because of soul, but being good without soul will destroy Buffy. Is it fair or moral? Maybe not. But this is the only way to save Slayer from her total destruction.

In a twisted way, Spike inadvertently did the best favor he could do for Buffy at the end. He did an evil thing to Buffy when he was still souless and will return with soul. Now we will never know that a vampire can be good without soul. It maybe an easy exit from the biggest bad Buffy ever faced, but I just cannot imagine any other choice.
[> Very lucid and well thought out. Thank you for posting! -- Off-kilter, still learning English as my first language, 02:40:07 06/29/02 Sat

I'm very glad that you decided to unlurk with some very astute observations. I hope we hear from you again.

I agree that we will never know if a vampire can be good without a soul and hold a moment of silence for the death of a good storyline.
*
*
*
*
*
*
RIP my hoped for outcome! I'll miss you.
[> [> Actually maybe not RIP -- shadowkat, 07:20:53 06/29/02 Sat

"I agree that we will never know if a vampire can be good without a soul and hold a moment of silence for the death of a good storyline."

Hmmm, something just occured to me in reading his/her post.
Has anyone wondered besides cjl, me and Rufus - how interesting it is that Spike of all people went after a soul?

Think about this. Spike! This is the guy who called Angel "soul boy" and nancy-boy and weak for the soul.
He saw Angel without a soul and with one. He knows what a soul entails. So why? Doesn't the mere fact he went after one bring up some interesting questions about whether you can be good without a soul? Maybe? Maybe not?

I don't know. If I were Buffy and Spike came back with a soul and I discovered what he went throught to get one
I'd have my own little identity crisis...I'd also want to have a long in depth serious chat with two people: Giles and Angel.
The two people who constructed her whole moral view on vampires. And I would want some answers!!
[> [> [> Ya got a point there! -- Off-kilter, 14:43:30 06/29/02 Sat

Actually, several. I guess it depends on a lot of things Is doing good for selfish reasons still good? Is he getting a soul so that he can get Buffy or so that he'll never hurt her again?

Motivations and methods behind soul-acquirement are evidently still being hammered out by the PTB in ME. If *they* don't have a clear idea of how/why, is it really surprising that we can't figure out what's going on?
[> Re: My first post: Spike's Soul (some S6 spoilers) -- Cydney, 06:57:36 06/29/02 Sat

Very interesting and brought up a few things I hadn't thought about. I never quite understood why Buffy said "it's killing me" about loving Spike. I think you have explained it.

Plus, I knew Buffy was afraid of her feelings for Spike - didn't want to be judged by her association with him - but your idea makes more sense in a deeper way.

Thanks for sharing.
[> Very interesting and Welcome -- shadowkat, 07:13:29 06/29/02 Sat

Very interesting post. I too am somewhat obsessed/intrigued by this whole soul thing. I like these two comments you make:

"The only way Spike can save her and their relation, is restoring his soul. Not because he can be good because of soul, but being good without soul will destroy Buffy. Is it fair or moral? Maybe not. But this is the only way to save Slayer from her total destruction.

In a twisted way, Spike inadvertently did the best favor he could do for Buffy at the end. He did an evil thing to Buffy when he was still souless and will return with soul. Now we will never know that a vampire can be good without soul. It maybe an easy exit from the biggest bad Buffy ever faced, but I just cannot imagine any other choice."

Interesting. So how does Buffy deal with the fact that he went to get a soul? At least with Angelus - it was a curse.
Angelus was evil.

And you make an excellent point here about Buffy and guilt:

"If Spike can be good and she can love him as he is, i.e. without soul, what about hundreds souless beings Buffy killed? Do you remember how much she horrified when she thought she killed one innocent woman?"

Hmmm. Buffy felt tremendous guilt when she killed Angel and he had the soul returned. It drove her to hell. She also felt tremendous guilt when she thought she killed Ted. And she had quilt regarding her involvement in Faith's accidental killing of mayor's deputy. They let her off the hook with TED - showing he was a robot. Katrina - well someone else killed her. Faith? She survived. But I think you hit the nail on the head - how do you deal with someone
who has no soul, who can love you, and is a vampire, and you can love back - when your job is to kill vampires without question or remorse?

But did they really side-step this question? After all - spike went after a soul according to the writers. A soulless, evil demon went after a soul which would point him towards good, provide him with pain of guilt, and why?
For a human woman? for love? And if Spike - the BB vampire who killed two slayers could go after a soul to rejoin the forces of good, what does that mean for other vampires?
Has good and evil gotten murkier?

Or will this question be side-stepped as well? I hope not, it's an interesting one.
[> [> Back to the beginning? -- shygirl, 07:51:09 06/29/02 Sat

Okay, I wrote out a whole thing that seems to have diasappeared.. but here's a question and thought... Joss says next season will be back to the beginning. Perhaps part of that is to review the purpose of the slayers. I'm not able to really focus this thought well, but as mentioned in this thread... spike going to get his soul back may well turn Buffy's values upside down and she could well have lots of questions about why slayers exist. I am not really familiar with the beginnings of this show, but what if the purpose of a slayer was not just to kill vampires but to realease the souls stolen when someone becomes vamped? It seems to me a purer purpose than simply dusting dead flesh. Or, am I wrong that the souls of these vamps do pass on? If they do, then my thought is foolish.. if they don't pass, perhaps it is the dusting of the dead flesh that can potentially release the soul to pass to the beyond and whatever reward or punishment they may deserve. A vamp delibertly retreiving his soul suggests that they may wish to improve their chances of a good passing... Help me shadowkat, I've not expressed this well and am sure you can take this glimmer and explain it better.
[> [> [> Limbo -- Sophist, 08:47:24 06/29/02 Sat

The Angel storyline suggests that the human soul remains in limbo somewhere and can be recalled. It's too early to know if Spike's story will support this, but you have a good idea here: Buffy slays the demon so the human soul can go to heaven (one hopes). A noble calling indeed.
[> [> [> [> A couple of problems... (Spoilers) -- Darby, 11:12:26 06/29/02 Sat

First, the situation does not involve soul / no soul. Vampires and demons have demon souls. Angel and Spike have two souls - perhaps we'll see some implications from that in this season's Spike tale.

Sang, your analysis is fascinating and makes sense, but it's hard for me to see the Buffyverse working that way because it seems too counter to Joss' basic worldview. He doesn't seem to see the afterlife as polar heaven/hells, there's too great a variety. Other than that, what you say could very well fit how things work. Who knows, maybe Joss went the mainstream mythology route. From the early shows, though, Giles says that the human soul "passes on." He didn't seem to think that it went to Limbo, and if the Slayer was liberating the human victim from some sort of Limbo (if anything, that sound like where Buffy went), wouldn't that be an important motivating detail?

Sophist, there are rumors flying (spoilers from a Joss-written comic about Angel) that Angel did not in fact get his own soul back. Maybe Joss realized that Angel really wasn't an extension of Liam. Supposedly, Spike did his own soul. I, like you, would like to know where it had been and why it was retrievable. And maybe how can Willow find this cave demon and try to get Tara's soul back? Could a Tarabot be ensoulled?
[> [> [> [> [> Re: A couple of problems... (Spec/spoiler Angel comic) -- aliera, 13:39:05 06/29/02 Sat

Now there's a new thought on Tara's return. And a very interesting point on whomever's soul Angel has. If that becomes part of the canon, then theoretically, not just a robot, but a demon could be ensouled with Tara.

The fact that we can't get a good working definition of soul going ( and I still think Spike had something beyond the vampire norm going on prior to the trip to Africa) makes it challenging (and fun) to discuss the soul issue.

I think it's also possible although not likely, that the soul doesn't really go anywhere; but becomes overcome by the demonsoul. Yes, I know Joss stated it goes to some ether place or what not. Hence, the not likely.
[> [> [> [> [> [> I'm sure there are good points in your posts Darby and aliera, but I can't read spoilers. -- Sophist, 18:23:27 06/29/02 Sat

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> If it matters, they're Joss-written comics spoilers and not yet confirmed -- Darby, 20:21:55 06/29/02 Sat

[> [> [> [> [> Lessons learned (Spoilers) -- Off-kilter, 01:03:54 06/30/02 Sun

Wouldn't Willow hesitate just a little after her horror at learning that she tore Buffy from heaven?
[> [> [> [> [> [> Hesitate? Yes? Stop. Maybe. Hope so... -- Darby, 06:50:04 06/30/02 Sun

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Now I can't even punctuate! Switch the second question mark & first period... -- Darby, 06:51:42 06/30/02 Sun

[> [> [> [> [> No fair! You've turned my world upside down! -- shygirl, 12:29:29 07/01/02 Mon

okay... this is the first time I've read about a demon soul in the same space as a human soul. I guess I've just missed this concept, but in the episodes.. Spike is called an evil SOULESS vampire by everyone... Now you tell me he and Angel have demon souls AND that they can co-exist with a human soul ... is this part of the official Buffyverse or conjecture on this board or what.... This hard left turn just gave me a headache.... I fail to see how two such polar opposite souls can possess the same body... JMO but I think we're getting really out there when we say both souls can occupy the body at the same time. It sets up MORE than the normal struggle a human soul has with good and evil... it set up a potentially impossibly winnable war within the individual in question whether it is Angel or Spike. The demon soul has no struggle, it wants to be bad...period. If both souls exist in the same space, the host hasn't got a chance because the good is outnumbered and outweighed by the evil! JMO
[> [> [> [> Re: Limbo - thanks -- shygirl, 12:14:39 07/01/02 Mon

thank you... I've been gone and am overwhelmed!!! with how behind I am in the discussion!
[> Very good -- shygirl, 07:28:05 06/29/02 Sat

English may not be your first language but your analysis of character motivation is very interesting and well thought out. Welcome!
[> Cool! Fresh insights ... -- Exegy, 07:29:07 06/29/02 Sat

Nice first post, Sang. Please stay around; you have some wonderful thoughts. I'll just offer a few comments:

It's true that vampires don't have an afterlife--they have an unlife. They are frozen in this state, hardened against any type of change or growth. Thus they give little thought to the repercussions or "morality" of their actions--that would be looking ahead to a condition that is closed to them. There is no need for redemption in the unlife ... you are only judged by yourself, and so you are the God. Stuck in the little hell-room of your own making, perhaps content with the choice because you know of no other. The door to growth has been closed.

But if another should come, one who could cause you to open the door.... I think that Buffy serves as the vehicle for grace in Spike's existence. She indicates to him that there is another way possible. At first he doesn't truly understand her message. How could he, locked within himself? How could he, when even she turns inward from enlightenment? Spike opens the door in DT ... and she's not there to lead him out. Her later actions of that episode only serve to reinforce the idea that he is a "dead, soulless thing," a being who could never be good because of what he is. Ironically, it is this message that gets Spike to realize how limited his current unlife is. He acts like the soulless, evil being--and he commits a transgression against the very nature he has built for himself. He defiles his room ... leaving him only the option of remaining still longer in the wreckage ... or of breaking free, escaping out that door. Buffy has shown him the way, even as she has denied him for what he was.

You are right--Spike seeks a soul for Buffy. This attention to the Other is what draws him outside of his own locked existence. This attention is what motivates him to change. He desires to become someone whom Buffy can accept. For she could never accept him as he was: a soulless demon. As you say, that would cast doubt upon her sacred mission. What if the monsters she battles are not absolutely evil ... what if they are beings who can be incorporated into humanity? No, close the door on that thought. Run away from the evil, soulless fiend. He's everything you should be against ... everything you should hate! Deny him, and deny whatever good he has done for you ... shut him out of your life so that you can return to how you were.

We may never find out whether Spike could have been good for Buffy as he was. I doubt it ... the Slayer would never have allowed such a relationship. The only acceptable interaction between them occurred in late season 5 and early season 6 ... when Spike was her willing and "noble" vassal, and Buffy was the exalted ideal. Even this positive interaction could not last ... as Spike sings of his sexual frustrations in "RIP" and Buffy topples from her pedestal. No, their negative union was perhaps inevitable ... and perhaps eventually good. By realizing for once his limitations ... by realizing the world he has made crumble around him ... Spike is motivated to escape from his unlife. He breaks free of the wreckage, and he seeks positive growth with the soul. The importance here is that he has dedicated himself to change, and the gain of a soul reflects his inner resolve. Now perhaps he has changed enough for Buffy, in her most forgiving attitude, to accept him despite his sins. Or perhaps not. Next season will tell.

A final note--vampiredom is a metaphor for a frozen condition that we can all fall into. It is not a pure determinant of good or evil ... but by existing in the closed state, the vampire turns inward and embarks on that "evil" path. The same can be said of humans--Warren Mears certainly chooses himself over all others. He makes himself the God of his own life, and he becomes a monster for doing so. And so he exists in as frozen an unlife as any metaphorical vampire ... even stripped of his Big Bad visage.
[> [> oooh ooh ooh.... thanks :-) -- shygirl, 07:53:44 06/29/02 Sat

Thank you Ex... you've done what I was too sleepy this morning to think about...yep... lots of interesting potential there!
[> [> Very good post...you answered at least two of the ques -- shadowkat, 08:45:56 06/29/02 Sat

So how do you think Buffy would react if she discovered
Spike of all people went and got a soul for her?

"What if the monsters she battles are not absolutely evil ... what if they are beings who can be incorporated into humanity? No, close the door on that thought. Run away from the evil, soulless fiend. He's everything you should be against ... everything you should hate! Deny him, and deny whatever good he has done for you ... shut him out of your life so that you can return to how you were."

If she does find out he went and got one himself, wasn't cursed and did it for her. She may have to deal with that
thought. No he couldn't be good for her without the soul, you're right she wouldn't let that happen. But how does she deal with the fact he chose to get one?
[> [> [> We'll find out next season ... ; -) (Spoilers) -- Exegy, 05:14:01 06/30/02 Sun

If Buffy finds out about Spike's quest, then she may have to admit that if one vampire could do this ... then why couldn't another? And why couldn't Angelus realize his love for her, if the demons are all just part of a spectrum ranging from evil to good? I bet Buffy will be very perplexed! She'll need to know more of her calling ... and she'll find out the truth about the Slayer's demonic origins. She'll discover that her "source" of power is perhaps not so different from the vampires she slays.
I think that a lot of the boundaries and illusions that have been set up over the years will come crashing down ... I think next season will be a big one for revelations. Especially if it is indeed the last.

Amidst all of the revelatory confusion, I bet that Buffy comes to regard Spike in an entirely new light. His quest for a soul truly was exceptional.... I bet that she finally comes to trust him ... even if she still doesn't love him. But there will be definite fireworks either way!


PS. Sorry that I was unable to respond to your post on matriarchy and patriarchy. I have been very busy in the past few days, and I'm literally posting this while half-asleep. Hopefully I am not completely off my rocker on the specs!

So I just want to note--your post was very good and I am sorry that I could not do it justice at the time. I get what you were saying--you were not defining matriarchy and patriarchy strictly in terms of gender divisions. You were defining them by role divisions. It's like the active, light yang and the receptive, dark yin--these terms need not be associated just with male and female, respectively. The terms transcend gender and indicate more a way of approaching the world.

I agree with you. The CoW is an obvious patriarchy ... its members seize power and wield it actively like a weapon. This approach is not limited to men. We see Gwendolyn Post seize the power of the Glove of Myneghon, taking on the "man's role" and therefore asserting her place. She literally cannot let go then ... she cannot sit back to receive the power. And so she dies, a victim of her pursuits. This is patriarchy taken to the extreme, and any extreme is eventually self-destructive.

The Devon Coven is definitely a matriarchy ... lots of emphasis on reception of power. So Giles freely partakes of magick ... he does not try to wield it as a masculine force the way *Willow* does earlier on (attacking Warren as he has attacked her, driving the phallic bullet through his chest, asserting her "claim"). The magick Giles lends to Willow ... this is an attempt to balance the active with the receptive. It seems to backfire, for Willow cannot find a balance. She receives all the pain of the world; she goes out to destroy this world. Using feminine power, she raises the phallic temple. Once again, she wields her female strength in an apparent masculine endeavor, and there isn't a balance. She nearly destroys herself; she nearly goes the way of Gwendolyn Post, a victim of power misused.

Note that the feminine and masculine powers are not bad in and of themselves. It's only when you resort to one or the other that you have problems. You need to achieve the necessary balance of strengths ... something the CoW apparently hasn't done. We don't know enough about the Devon Coven to pass judgment, but I would assume that it is a more balanced organization. After all, we see that the witches choose a man as their representative in dealing with Willow; the feminine works through the masculine ... the witches give and Giles receives.

Hopefully the Devon Coven can help Willow to find some balance next season. She certainly needs to deal with her powers.
[> [> [> [> Thank you for clarifying my thoughts...and on little sleep? -- shadowkat, 15:25:14 06/30/02 Sun

Wonderfully written and on little sleep to boot. Wish I could think so clearly awake. Thoughts seem to continue to be a nonlinear jumble - perhaps I am focusing too much on Buffy? Hmmm...perhaps a sabbatical is in order?

I wrote a long and insightful response to this post which was lost when my computer disconnected from the internet.
So will try to regurgiate some of it.

"Note that the feminine and masculine powers are not bad in and of themselves. It's only when you resort to one or the other that you have problems. You need to achieve the necessary balance of strengths ... something the CoW apparently hasn't done. We don't know enough about the Devon Coven to pass judgment, but I would assume that it is a more balanced organization. After all, we see that the witches choose a man as their representative in dealing with Willow; the feminine works through the masculine ... the witches give and Giles receives."

Very well put and exactly what I was attempting to convey in the now archived thread below. We have a tendency to think of masculine and feminine in sexual terms only, ie. if you have a penis you are male/masculine and if you have breasts, etc you are female/feminine. In truth that's not it. It's not limited to biology. We all bare feminine and masculine traits. We function at our best when they are in balanced. I'm not talking about biology or sex glands, I'm talking about yin/yang, id/ego/supergo, and whatever other precise word you can think of. Ded is right when he states in his essay that words can be incredibly limiting. Really feeling that now.

It is interesting that Giles avoids using magic until he is in balance with himself and when he is, he teleports back with the coven's magic. As a watcher, he never felt balanced. The watcher's aren't. They are a hierarchy, imbroiled in internal power struggles. Thus they remain oblivious to anything outside their internal realm of knowledge - they aren't connected to the outside world, they are hidden in their books, logic and knowledge. All knowledge from the watcher's pov can be found in the pages of a book. How incredibly limiting! They aren't experiencing life, so much as merely thinking about it. Hence, their inability to provide Buffy with any true knowledge regarding the slayer's origins or Dawn or even Glory. They have no true experiences to rely on - it's all super-ego or
knowledge or just yang. When they go out to interact in the world it is with violence - the grabbing of Faith in both Conseqences and Who ARe You, the posioning of Buffy in Helpless, or Gwendolyn Post in Revelations. This is what the books state, they say or how it has always been done. The Devon Coven and by extension Tara - interact with the world, they stay in balance. The girls who pretend to be Wicca's at school, again go by knowledge, reading, making bake sales, they don't interact outside of themselves. But that's not to say that just unbalanced yang, ego or male is bad, so is unblanaced yin, id or female - see Willow at the end of Grave, receiving all that pain but no clue or knowledge how to channel it. Or how about Spike, consumed with Passion and Love but no clue how to express it - so we end up with Entropy and his actions in Seeing Red. We need both, in balance. We need to interact with the world, not sit above it judging it. Sharing information as we do on these boards as opposed to just watching the show, enriches it for us, brings us together and perhaps give us some sense of balance as well. By the same token, we need to understand what we are interacting with, and find meaning, not just mindlessly interact. So it's the extremes that do us in. The extremes aren't bad in of themselves. What is bad - is when you only focus on one without the other. We remain stunted, unable to grow, stuck when we don't seek balance and acknowledge both inside ourselves. We see this in the characters: Buffy, Xander, Spike, Willow, Warren, Dawn, Anya - are all unbalanced struggling to find it. Giles and Tara have achieved it.
Perhaps next year we'll see the others get closer to it?

Well not what I wrote before, but close. Oh well.Hope it's clear.

PS: You're not off your rocker. I think your specs are pretty much spot on. I think we'll see Buffy discover more about herself, the slayer, and her role as protector through her interaction with Spike (whatever that is) and Spike's journey. Just as she's learning through Willow's.
It is tremendously interesting to me how much each character's individual journeys affect the other character's, especially Buffy. In every essay I've written I've learned more about the central character in the process of exploring the ones around her. Now that's intricate writing and character development.
[> [> [> [> [> Thanks. Glad that you got to write some of your response (I hate deletions!) -- Exegy, 06:17:07 07/01/02 Mon

[> [> [> [> [> And you have explained exactally why it's not just about Buffy's story -- shygirl, 12:37:46 07/01/02 Mon

"It is tremendously interesting to me how much each character's individual journeys affect the other character's, especially Buffy. In every essay I've written I've learned more about the central character in the process of exploring the ones around her. Now that's intricate writing and character development."

We can never understand a thing, a person, an event or a journey without a reference point. This goes back to one of my very first assertions that the show is not just about Buffy. She is the lens, the focal point and it is through the journeys around her as well as her own that be form our perceptions about the whole. Thanks once again S'kat... and Ex! you are very very smart! ;-)))
[> [> [> [> [> [> Aw, shucks. Now you've got me blushing! : -D -- Exegy, 13:21:53 07/01/02 Mon

[> This is a fine contribution to the discussion.... -- cjl, 07:36:57 06/29/02 Sat

But I also think you've brought up a number of questions that Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy would rather avoid. To me, Joss and company set up Spike's quest for a soul as a purely romantic quest--the desire to be worthy of the Love Object. I think Exegy said it exactly right in her response to my "Seeing Red v. Grave" post above: Spike spent one hundred years defining himself as the embodiment of love's passion, the defender of Eros--and when he assaulted Buffy in Seeing Red, he effectively destroyed that identity. He had to get his soul back to be worthy of her trust.

The idea that Spike's re-ensoulment could save BUFFY from her own conscience is fascinating, and would turn Buffy fandom upside down if Joss actually tackled the subject in Season 7 or beyond. But I get the feeling Joss and Co. will avoid questioning the ethical validity of Buffy's original mission. The fact that they went through such elaborate acrobatics to get Spike his soul seems to indicate they're keeping the party line of soul-less = evil.
[> [> agree...have the same issue -- shadowkat, 08:49:47 06/29/02 Sat

"The idea that Spike's re-ensoulment could save BUFFY from her own conscience is fascinating, and would turn Buffy fandom upside down if Joss actually tackled the subject in Season 7 or beyond. But I get the feeling Joss and Co. will avoid questioning the ethical validity of Buffy's original mission. The fact that they went through such elaborate acrobatics to get Spike his soul seems to indicate they're keeping the party line of soul-less = evil."

Agree. I think they wrote themselves into a corner and are trying to write themselves out and haven't quite succeeded.
Would love to be a fly on a wall during those ensoulement discussions. ;-)
[> [> Re: Problematic nature of the soul in the Buffyverse(Spoilers Season Six) -- Thomas the Skeptic, 09:29:03 06/29/02 Sat

As some of the posters in this thread have already pointed out, the whole question of the soul in the Buffyverse is problematical at best. Myself, I reject the whole dualistic notion of the soul and the body being two distinct entities. Before the Babylonian Captivity and the exposure to Zoroastrian religious concepts, the ancient Hebrews believed the body and the soul were one. This seems imminently practical to me and sidesteps all of the problems of dualism bequeathed to us by Rene Descarte and his sharp seperation of the immaterial soul and material body. Its obvious, however, that ME subscribes to this cartesian tradition and so, while I am watching "Buffy" or "Angel", I simply suspend my disbelief and play along. For the purposes of a thought experiment, however, consider an alternative explanation of vampirism: if the body were the soul, then what happens when a vampire sires an offspring? Obviously, the blood that passes between the predator and his or her victim in these instances is the medium of some type of virus that transforms the body and personality of the its new host. In addition to tremendous strength and seeming immortality, the psyche of the victim is transformed into a negative mirror image of its former self. Everything they once viewed as good or desirable is suddenly anathema. Its almost like multiple personality disorder except that the new personality completely subsumes the old. So, what happens when Angel or Spike acquires a "soul"? Obviously the virus is suppressed in some fashion, perhaps something analogous to what happens in the body of an HIV victim when they ingest their drug cocktails. The "vamp virus" would not be totally erradicated but the original host personality would re-emerge and be in control. If this model were correct, what would this mean in regard to Buffy's moral position in regard to slaying vampires? I believe it would make the situation even more complex and ambiguous. True, the original personality could be assumed to still be in existence somewhere in the vampire's body so you could argue that Buffy is committing murder but, unless the gypsy curse were cast on a worldwide scale or the African demon could be persuaded to work his mojo globally, these personalities would always remain submerged and the violently homicidal vamp personas would be ascendent. Since there is no practical way to cure all the vampires I reluctantly have to conclude that Buffy slaying them is the best solution under the circumstances. I know this is a baldly utilitarian position and lacks the moral nuance of more sophisticated ethical systems but I am hardpressed to think of a better answer. Any opinions?
[> [> [> Re: Problematic nature of the soul in the Buffyverse(Spoilers Season Six) -- aliera, 15:10:29 06/29/02 Sat

Thomas, I don't disagree with what you are stating as a possibility (see my post above). I think the problem with that type of a theory lies in the fact that it doesn't agree with previous statements the characters and Joss have made about the soul.

However, the characters have to be giving you their understanding of the situation which may or may not be correct. And Joss, well who can know the mind of Joss? It's his world.

Not that it matters; but, it would make a richer story if Buffy had to deal with the fact that good and evil are not related to having a human soul (ref previous arguments on evil done by humans). I don't think giving Spike a soul avoids this problem. It may make it possible for Buffy to consider him a more suitable? lover, ...or not.
[> [> [> [> Re: Problematic nature of the soul in the Buffyverse(Spoilers Season Six) -- Finn Mac Cool, 15:17:38 06/29/02 Sat

Well, we already see that a soul doesn't make you good. However, a vampiric soul does make you evil. Trying to say otherwise counteracts the fact that every unsouled vampire we've seen has been EVIL! And not just a little evil, but all-capitals evil, so you know it's big.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Problematic nature of the soul in the Buffyverse(Spoilers Season Six) -- aliera, 16:34:42 06/29/02 Sat

This is quite what I was trying to say but, for the sake of responding to your post regarding vampires...

Spike, as we saw him in season 5 & 6, was completely evil?
[> [> [> [> [> Nevermind, Finn... -- aliera, 16:52:57 06/29/02 Sat

That wasn't nicely done of me. It's too nice a day. I'm off to play. They can be evil if you like.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Nevermind, Finn... -- Finn Mac Cool, 19:40:15 06/29/02 Sat

Not wanting to start an argument, but I didn't say totally evil. There are serial killers, terrorists, pyromaniacs, and mad bombers who can care deeply about certain individuals.

My whole point was, they can't just have the soul not matter, since that ignores the evilness of vampires (if they're not evil by nature, I don't know how to explain it).
[> [> [> [> The difficult case of Billy Ford -- Dochawk, 23:57:56 06/29/02 Sat

Here's why it really can't work that way. Billy Ford was dying of cancer. He choose to be vamped because like Darla he would get to live forever. If he could get vamped and then go get a soul, he is back to being Billy Ford but now he is going to live forever. A hell of a lot better than dying from cancer. in fact, everyone dying from a major illness would try it, hell its better than dying. I really don't think Joss understood the implications of what he was doing when Spike went and got a soul (and supposedly choose to do it).
[> [> [> [> [> I don't think that Billy Ford is a problem ... -- Exegy, 05:53:13 06/30/02 Sun

When a human chooses to become a vampire, he or she relinquishes the ability to develop as a human. He or she is frozen in a state of unlife. Only a miraculous set of occurrences could ever thaw such an icy condition.

Billy Ford truly embraces the unlife. He doesn't want any part of his humanity; he could care less about his soul or lack thereof. He only wants to "live" the vampiric ideal: he wants the immortality, the perceived glory of Big Bad might. He's caught in his illusions ... if he becomes a vampire, then he makes these dreams real for himself. He'll become the image that he plays at in real life.

As a vampire, he wouldn't want a soul. Heck, as a human he doesn't want his soul. He desires only the monster form that he has so idealized, his escape from the humanity that is killing him. No, he doesn't exactly realize what he is getting into, but he's still making a choice that will freeze him forever. He wants to be frozen, because then he will never die. He'll just live a half-life, an unlife ... better than no life at all.

And once a monster, why return to the human? It's easier to be the monster. Far more satisfying to react against your weakness than to actually live it. This is the appeal. This is what is embraced. Live the image of the vampire, live the dark romance and Big Bad dreams. Get everything you thought you wanted ... you only give up your ability to grow as a human. But who wants to be a human when you can be an immortal ... a "God" of your own making? Why realize the limitations you have imposed upon yourself when those limitations are your comfort, your ideal?

Spike's case is extraordinary because an amazing set of occurrences leads him to realize that his ideals are not satisfying, but rather ultimately destructive ... the negation of himself. I don't expect any other vampires to experience this development ... most have permanently frozen themselves to human change. I mean, Angelus was in firm denial of humanity ... only a Gypsy curse awoke Angel. But Spike is just open enough ... coincidence (another term for Fate) leads him to his own realization. A realization that is truly terrible and unwelcome to him, as evidenced by his immediate struggle against himself. But in the end the desire to change wins out, and the gain of a soul signifies this.

But does Spike fully embrace humanity? No ... he only gets a soul, not the full mortal package. He still only comes so far ... but maybe far enough.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: I don't think that Billy Ford is a problem ... -- Finn Mac Cool, 06:51:49 06/30/02 Sun

Not everyone with a terminal illness would want to be vamped knowing that would make them into a murderer.

Exegy, you make many great points, but there is one left untouched:

Spike's trials to get a soul were extremely difficult. He nearly died in fulfilling them, and he's been portrayed as an exceptionally strong vampire. On the off chance a lesser vampire would try to get a soul, they'd probably die in the fight.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Thank you, Finn. I agree ... -- Exegy, 08:18:45 06/30/02 Sun

... I think that the difficulty of the trials is enough to deter most vamps. Transformation is a harrowing process, and I just don't imagine a lot of beings able or willing to undergo such radical change.

Being vamped is the "easy" way out of human hardships. Gaining a soul is incredibly difficult, because one has to accept the life that one discarded ... one also has to deal with what has happened during the interim. I don't know how Spike will adjust.

Hey, I also agree with you on your first point. Not everyone with a terminal illness would seek vampiredom ... Billy Ford just builds this ideal in his mind until it crowds out every other consideration. His is an extreme reaction to imminent death. He'd be willing to become the monster in order to get what he wants.

But I'm not sure that Ford makes a clear distinction between real life and the fantasy he has constructed. I don't think any of his followers do. They're all overshadowed by the image of the vampire in their minds. These people remind me a little of the Troika, who also live in a fantasy world. At first their illusions seem innocuous ... but gradually the three become monsters to follow their ideal. They never think of actual rape with Katrina ... but it nearly happens. They never intend to kill her ... but they do. This is what occurs when the lines between fantasy and reality are so blurred. Men follow the "easy" path and become monsters (although Jonathan's monster-suit is somewhat ill-fitted). If they follow the path far enough ... then it becomes impossible to escape.

But there's almost always a chance to turn back. The difficulty lies in the risks involved ... having to take back what you've given up, and having to deal with what you've become in the meantime.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Agree with both Finn and Exegy, additional pts -- shadowkat, 15:50:40 06/30/02 Sun

Billy Ford is an interesting case. He reminds me a great deal of Jonathan and Warren as well.

Billy wanted to be a vampire for two reasons:
1. To not die of cancer and live forever, always young
2. He was in love with the fantasy of being the Big Bad
(he even tries to act it out with Spike who is highly annoyed with his attempts. This reminded me a great deal of Warren in the demon bar. In fact the scene from Lie to Me shows Billy trying to impress Spike in the same manner, look let's play Bad guy. And of course he gets more than he bargained for.)

All in all - Billy was worse than Liam or William or Darla or Drusilla (when they got vamped)- why? billy traded human lives. Spike wasn't going to vamp him. Had no interest in it. But Billy offered him a room full of victims and the slayer in return. Sort of like Warren offering the demon's Buffy's life for entry.

Something else interesting about Spike. I like Finn's point that not many vamps would choose the trials or survive them.
Remember what Angel said? He says it three times:
1. Angel - he says imagine doing what I have done and having a soul? Pain. No conscience no remorse - easy way to live (not exact quote, too lazy)
2. Innocence - Pain is gone. (he says when soul goes) he's happy about it.
3. Passion - Been there done that. And then he snaps Jenny's neck.

Angelus had the opportunity - chose not too. Darla actually chose to keep the soul and lost it. She killed herself to save her son second time - or if you like to save her newborn soul. But I seriously doubt Darla would choose to do what Spike has. Getting a soul is painful. Becoming unfrozen equals pain.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Nice additional points! More ... -- Exegy, 06:11:35 07/01/02 Mon

Those comments by Angel(us) were very much on my mind when I wrote my response. But I'm also too lazy to look up the exact quotations, so I left them out.

I love what you have to say about the parallel between the Ford/Spike scene and the demon bar scene. In both cases, the man is trying to impress others with his Big Bad persona. The villainy is the ideal, the desired fantasy. But neither man can escape from reality ... both remain humans. Well, Ford gets his wish in the end, but he's immediately staked, so he never really materializes as a vampire. He's still a weak human throughout the episode.

Ford and Warren try to induct themselves into the demon world they so desire, but they ultimately fail. They're rejected as the wannabe's they are ... often at first glance. Spike, whom Ford tries to sway, basically says that he doesn't like the man now--how will he like an eternity of him? Things don't look good for our mortal. But if Ford can't get in on his own merits--he'll barter something. He'll sacrifice the Slayer and a room full of people. He'll acquiesce to wholesale slaughter in order to obtain his fantasy.

Warren treads the same path. From his first appearance in season six, he consents to Buffy's murder. He sics the M'Fashnik demon on her. If Buffy's destroyed ... then Warren will finally be accepted. He probably never articulates this idea to himself, but it his driving motivation as a villain wannabe. Kill the Slayer ... and prove that you are a true Big Bad. This is why Warren brags so much in the demon bar. He's bagged his arch enemy--he's worthy of inclusion at last!

But the demons again reject him. Warren, no matter what he boasts of, is not a super-villain. He never was ... not even with those magick orbs. He was and is a pathetic man, an overgrown boy who likes to play with toys after the others have picked on him. His villainous posturing is completely transparent. The vampire at the bar mocks him as Spike mocks Ford ... pathetic wannabe who thinks his fantasy has become reality. How limited! How pitifully human! Trying to kill the Slayer with real world weapons ... she's a mystical warrior who should be fought with mystical means! Who is this idiot impostor, attempting to force his way into the demon world?

Upon this rejection, Warren's elaborate fantasy life begins to crumble around him. He goes to Rack, and he is again rejected. All those marvelous exploits of the Trio ... no one but his small circle knows. Super-villains? More likely a band of musicians. Rack so discounts Warren ... this is a nightmare, one that he has always tried to escape from. His human weakness, his memory of all the former and continued ostracism. He still tries to escape, carrying the Big Bad visage with him to the end. The face of the villain is the last face he chooses to show to the world. But even this illusion is stripped from him, as Willow strips his skin and reveals him for the weak human that he is. So Ford's illusions are stripped, when Buffy renders him as the dust he should be. The dust he was trying to escape through immortality ... but immortality is an extended lie. One he wanted to believe and couldn't let go of to his last.
[> [> [> [> [> [> I agree with you that it's unlikely in practice. But Doc is right about the conceptual problem. -- Sophist, 08:58:13 06/30/02 Sun

[> Re: My first post: Spike's Soul (some S6 spoilers) -- Finn Mac Cool, 08:54:05 06/29/02 Sat

This is a key thing to remember:

Spike never wanted to be good. He never wanted redemption or morals or ethics. In getting a soul, he wasn't doing it so he could be good, he was doing it so he could get back together with Buffy.

He knows that getting a soul will make him good, but he sees that as an unfortunate side effect to pleasing Bufffy.

Too many people assume love is innately good. It's not. It's an emotion, just like hate (which we all agree soulless creatures can feel). Love can motivate someone to do good, but it can just as easily push them to evil. And hate can motivate both good and evil (all depending on where it'd directed at). Spike loved Buffy, and felt bad about hurting her because, when you hurt someone you love, you emotionally feel their pain. But, as I said before, just because Spike could love someone doesn't make him good. If he loved an evil person, you could bet he would never consider getting a soul.
[> [> Wanting to be good -- Off-kilter, 00:59:28 06/30/02 Sun

I'll buy your theory as to why Spike went to get the soul. Actually, I think I said that very thing in my last post. Dru would never want him to have a soul, so he didn't. Buffy won't accept him without one, so he goes after it -at least per JW's new interpretation of the text.

But what does it mean to say, "he never wanted to be good"? What causes *anyone* to strive to be good? Some people strive to better humanity because they have a benevolent nature. But many ordinary people try to be good for much more superficial reasons and hopefully expand their scope as they mature.

Doesn't Spike's efforts to become good (or at least start out on a more even playing field) count for something, especially seeing as he's handicapped with the natural bent toward evil? It must seem like an "unfortunate side effect" to an evil fiend, even to get something they really, really want, but he choose -at some cost- to go after and fight for a soul. That's a massive effort towards good that some souled beings in BtVS haven't put forward.

How much does it matter that his motivation to change was selfish? How much does it matter that Willow, Warren, Faith, the Mayor and even Jonathon ignored their conscience to do evil?

Not trying to nit-pick, trying to clear fog from mind.
Joss plans for Season 8 to be the last -- A humble servant of the Dark Lord .... Bator, 06:46:09 06/29/02 Sat

[> Source? -- JCC, 09:58:23 06/29/02 Sat

[> and I suppose you have proof -- maddog, 09:58:52 06/29/02 Sat

[> Re: Joss plans for Season 8 to be the last -- A humble servant of the Dark Lord .... Bator, 19:04:35 06/29/02 Sat

I know this post will annoy some people, but it is a necessary evil. I am a writer (I would prefer to stay anonymous) asked by Joss to gauge public feeling on Season 8 being the last. After a general consensus that Season 6 was on the weak side, we're starting to think when it would be a good time to wrap things up before the stage when they deteriorate and the show has to be cancelled.

Again, I realise this post will annoy people, since I am remaining anonymous. But please, I would appreciate it if people reply with their feelings on if it is a good idea for season 8 to be the last (Joss' current plans). Everyone here seems to be aware of the "back to basics" theme of season 7. Without giving too much away, for season 8 to be the final, some pretty drastic things would have to happen. One could think of the theme as "integration and disintegration".

No comments on Angel the Series.
[> [> Re: Joss plans for Season 8 to be the last -- Finn Mac Cool, 19:34:29 06/29/02 Sat

I'd actually prefer Season 7 to be the last. After all, it sounds like Gellar won't come back for an eighth season. Plus, I'm afraid that you may start to get run down if they continue so long. Plus, if you make Season 7 the last, I've got a truly grand season to look forward to in just a few months (I'm hoping for character deaths and lots of stuff that couldn't be done in anything but the last season).
[> [> [> Re: Joss plans for Season 8 to be the last -- Wizardman, 01:44:58 06/30/02 Sun

I realize that with a series that plots the way that Buffy does, you probably have to set plot threads in motion early in order to come to fruition for when they become vital ike. Willow's abuse of magic- we saw as early as S3 that if she lost emotional control, she would lose magical control. Still, I liked S6, depressing though it was, so I say that if all parties on the creative end are willing, then wiat until you get reviews for S7 before making a decision. If it is lighter, and you can keep it adhering to the high standards set by previous seasons, then you may well find S7 to be very well received. On my part, I say that you can do anything that you want, so long as it doesn't become stupid. Buffy has always been an intelligent show. Keep it that way, and you will always have a great fan base. But if you could swing a crossover with Angel somehow, I know I'd be happy... ;) Just my two cents.
[> [> Yeah, right... -- Ete, 06:00:27 06/30/02 Sun

But in the small chance that what you say is true...

come on guys, you *know* if you have still more things to tell. We don't know what's in your mind. As long as Buffy stays interresting and entrancing and keeps exploring new horizon, I'm ready to follow anyway. But in the case you don't anymore what to tell, if it's mere routine, give it up. Anyway, we trust you. Whatever you do, do it only because you think that's the right thing to do.
[> [> [> Re: Joss plans for Season 8 to be the last -- JCC, 06:41:39 06/30/02 Sun

I'd like a season 8. I think the show is strong enough to survive without SMG. Whether or not thats a good thing, different story.
I'd like to see some crossovers. That's the only way to end Buffy I think.

Of course, on the very, very off chance this is true. (Very much doubting)

JCC
That Darn Joss! (cute interview with season 7 spoilers...but not specific ones) -- Rob, 08:31:50 06/29/02 Sat

I got it from http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,266490~3~0~buffybrightensupfor,00.html :

Revamping

Buffy brightens up for season 7 -- Creator Joss Whedon has happier days in store for the Sunnydale gang, with new directions for Dawn, Buffy, and Willow by William Keck

No more downer days in Sunnydale. Look for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon to inject a little Prozac into the UPN drama when it returns for season 7 this fall. "Last season was about getting everyone so depressed they wanted to kill themselves, and next season's about bringing [the show] back to life," says Whedon. "I want to get back to where we started and to the theme, which is girl power."

The action resumes at Sunnydale High with Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) becoming a freshman and Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) starting...a new job! (Whedon won't divulge her profession, but wouldn't it be fitting if she replaced Anthony Stewart Head's Giles as the librarian?) Whedon says a new villain, "everybody's worst nightmare," will wreak havoc in town while witchy Willow (Alyson Hannigan) will be off for a spell with Giles in England. "I'm shooting scenes with Alyson and Tony in his [real-life English estate] for the 'Buffy' premiere that involve Willow trying to deal with the magic in her that she can't get rid of." Oh, that old black magic.

Rob
[> Strike that...reverse it. Yes, there are some minor spoilers... -- Rob, 08:35:13 06/29/02 Sat

...but they are VERY minor, and most of them have already been revealed by Joss at that convention thing. So if you read that stuff, then you should be okay to read this.

Rob
[> Re: That Darn Joss! (cute interview with season 7 spoilers...but not specific ones) -- leslie, 09:50:34 06/29/02 Sat

Yeah, it would be REAL cute for Buffy to be the new librarian--without even a bachelor's degree, let alone an MLS! Hey, I know--why don't we have her set up shop as a lawyer! Or a doctor! Who cares about training? SHE'S THE SLAYER!!!
[> [> Re: That Darn Joss! (cute interview with season 7 spoilers...but not specific ones) -- O'Cailleagh, 16:12:01 06/29/02 Sat

You need a degree to be a librarian now? Surely the ability to read and knowing how the Dewey-decimal system works is enough! ;)
I can't see Buffy as a librarian (Emily Dickens?). I can't imagine what her new job might be though.
[> [> [> law enforcement or landscape architect...hmmm...do you need degrees for those? -- redcat, 16:14:01 06/29/02 Sat

[> [> [> [> For the Law Enforcement community...........Hey! -- Rufus, 20:45:44 06/29/02 Sat

I'd be offended if you had mentioned a degree in Donut making....;)
[> Re: That Darn Joss! (cute interview with season 7 spoilers...but not specific ones) -- Wizardman, 02:01:01 06/30/02 Sun

I thought that Dawn was already a freshman. I'm Canadian. I don't know how it works in the States, but the American freshman is comprable to our Grade 9, and Dawn was in Grade 9 last year. Was it a typo, or is Dawn being held back? I wouldn't be surprised either way, albeit for different reasons.

And a new villain that is "everyone's worst nightmare"... is he being serious or sarcastic. If sarcastic, then it's probably Harmony. If serious... well, starting with S2, opening season villains have two traits in common: they are bad asses, and they usually don't last through the ep. Absalom, Ken, Sunday, Dracula, the Biker Gang- all tough, all dead or otherwise departed by the end of the episode. Is Joss talking about the opener or the Big Bad? Could they be both for the first season since #1?

As for the worst nightmare bit, well, Willow would qualify on every possible level, except that WON'T happen (or will it...). Glory was practically invincible. Adam had potential that wasn't exploited to the degree that it could have been. The Faith/Mayor combo was a major threat. The Master had a creep factor that no major villain has had since- although the Gentlemen had it in spades. And Angelus... do I even need to go there? Who could be worse than any of these? I guess that we'll find out (NOT!) soon enough. Just my two cents...
[> [> Speculation -- Dochawk, 13:11:48 06/30/02 Sun

This doesn't serve the purpose of being lighter, but everyone's worst nightmare? How about VampBuffy?
My long theory about Buffy, Connor, and vampires/slayers! -- zander, 11:04:04 06/29/02 Sat

From the beginning of the Buffy series we have seen that she is the most powerful slayer ever. Buffy has surpassed any slayer by slayer skills or their death wish. She has faced enemies that most slayers could never defeat and fallen in love with two anything but ordinary vampires. My first theory about Buffy is Dracula said that she hasn't even come close to reaching her bodies true physical limits. In the Matrix, She and Neo were the chosen ones who challenge by their enemies to go past their limits. For Neo his full capabilities were unleashed when trinity told him she loved him and Buffy was told she is full of love only needing to unlock it.
My second theory ties with Connor's birth he is the the son of two vampires and has the physical traits of one. Even though his birth was impossible the vampire D.N.A. was merged with his human D.N.A. As far as we know he is human like buffy but mystical enhanced too. Angel's curse gave him his soul back also his essence even though he's undead, so when he slept with darla he felt a similar effect to when he lost his soul but I think it was really part of his essence to give life to connor.
My third theory is about Vampire's and Slayer's power similarities. Both of them can get stronger if live long enough like Buffy and Angel. The master was able to get strong enough to kill Buffy but later she came back even stronger to kill him. As we have seen when vampires get older they become stronger so it is really hard to tell how powerful they can become. If Slayers can get over their deathwishes then maybe they could become where buffy is right now.
[> Re: My long theory about Buffy, Connor, and vampires/slayers! -- Caesar Augustus, 19:17:37 06/29/02 Sat

Nice ideas overall.

One small issue: Fallen in love with two vampires?
You don't mean Spike, do you? It wasn't love.

I like your thoughts though. The Guide's advice that she is full of love has been pretty much ignored in Season 6. We saw in The Gift that it is a great strength of Buffy's when utilised. Her emotions give her power (re: her speech to Kendra in WML, how it gives her fire in the fight)

-Second theory. Sorry, don't watch Angel.

-Third theory.
Buffy has definitely got much stronger as she has progressed. Not only physically, but emotionally (from a slaying pov, of course not from a general pov in season 6). What Big Bad could possibly defeat her now?

BTW, a question:
Does anyone know the reason why Buffy came back stronger when the Master killed her? Is it something to do with Fate no longer controlling her?
[> [> Re: My long theory about Buffy, Connor, and vampires/slayers! -- Wizardman, 01:34:08 06/30/02 Sun

As to why Buffy came back stronger... well, that episode's name is 'Prophecy Girl.' We've seen on Angel that books of prophecy can be altered, although we've yet to see if that alters the prophecy (I'm betting no, but we might find out next season). It's possible that Buffy was intended by the PTB to fight the Master, lose, and then come back stronger in order to finish the job. And on a tangent, maybe some of Buffy's this season problems stem from the fact that the PTB intended for her sacrifice to be final, until a cosmic monkey wrench was thrown into the works. Just my two cents.
[> [> [> my latest theory (spoilers through season 5) -- tost, 10:39:15 06/30/02 Sun

In "Intervention" the guide told Buffy that the slayer forges strength through pain. It is arguable that she was in more pain when the Master killed her then at any point in the first five years.

It seems to me that the whole conversation was more about answering the question she asked at the beginning of the year then the one she asked in the episode(Intervention.)
ummmm hi, I bring you a pro- Buffy fandom article from the alternate media -- Simon, 16:37:34 06/29/02 Sat

I'm a regular at the B C & S website and I stumbled upon this board last night and loved the threads here, very interesting and full of passion.

Anyway I digress, saw this article , I was impressed by that and thought you guys might like to have a gander at it.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13467

Consumers and Creators
Alana Kumbier, PopPolitics.com
June 26, 2002

Recently I've been wondering: When exactly did I become a fangurl?


Was it at the Multiple Alternative Realities Convention last month, when my friends and I found ourselves whispering answers to "Buffy/Angel Jeopardy" questions during a game session, or later that evening, when I was dressed up as Darth!Willow, dancing with a group of vampires for the evening, to a set dj'd by Dr. Demento?


Or was it last fall, when I obsessed about what to wear to see filmmaker Jim Jarmusch speak at our local contemporary arts center? Or last summer, when my drag king friends and I danced onstage at a club in New Orleans, lip-synching and busting boyband-style moves during a homoerotic performance of 'NSync's "Bye Bye Bye"?


I don't know when it happened exactly, just that it did, and now I've found myself, at 26, involved in more fandoms than I care to count.


In a recent New York Times article about potential copyright violation by Star Wars fans who digitally revise George Lucas' films, Jim Ward, Lucasfilm's vice president for marketing, offered his company's take on fandom: "We've been very clear all along on where we draw the line," he said. "We love our fans. We want them to have fun. But if in fact somebody is using our characters to create a story unto itself, that's not in the spirit of what we think fandom is about. Fandom is about celebrating the story the way it is."


Ward was referring to fan edits of Star Wars circulating online, and about which of these the company deems appropriate and which violate Lucasfilm's copyright. The sort of fan behavior Ward supports is the fandom of appreciation and consumption. It's a fandom that's pleasurable for many, one that's accessible if you can afford a movie ticket or CD or a cable hookup.


While this definition makes sense for Lucasfilm -- or for just about any large corporate production unit interested in selling its film, featured celebrity, band or television show and then protecting its interest by controlling use and distribution of the product -- it's a limiting interpretation for most of the popcult-obsessed fans I know.


The definition of fandom is a tricky one. If you regularly watch a particular TV show each week, does that make you a fan? Or is it more than that (taping the show, discussing it with others, re-viewing it, quoting dialogue, taking screencap photos to post on your Web site, which will then be the basis for others' bad fan art?) Is it standing in line for a ridiculous length of time to see a film's opening, or working with digital technology to create a version of the same film other fans may enjoy more?


It's my belief that fandom exists along a broad spectrum -- including, but not limited to, fans whose idea of participation is sitting back and enjoying a show's broadcast, to those who read spoilers and speculate a series' plots in online forums weeks in advance, or to those who put their creative energies to work writing fan fiction. These writings, which are based on a show/band/movie/etc. and introduce alternate storylines and/or character relations, are then posted online (or, if you're old-school, distributed via fanzines).


While I don't want to create a hierarchy of fan behavior by suggesting that it's better to be one sort of fan than another, I do believe that those on the further-out end of the fan spectrum are the most interesting, because while they're actively consuming popcult product, they're also creating it. Instead of solely behaving in the appropriate, good-Lucasfilm-fan-way (consuming, collecting, appreciating), these fans are putting their consumption to work, making their preferred cultural product meaningful in different contexts and mediums.


If being a bad, obsessive fan means learning how to use various technologies in new ways for your own ends, such as digitally editing videos and manipulating images in Photoshop, creating and maintaining fan Web sites, building virtual communities around shared interests, or exerting creative agency in any number of other ways, then there are millions of "bad fans," operating online and off -- and they're all the more informed and engaged because of it.


At present, I'm somewhere in the middle of the fandom-spectrum, operating as a purely appreciative consumer in some cases, and demonstrating a more rabid obsession in others. There are TV shows I sit and watch each week like a normal person (watching "Looking for Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska" counts as research for a cultural critic!), but then there's also "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."


Three years ago, I started watching the show, alone in my apartment, and didn't tell friends about my viewing. I was a cultural studies grad student curious about the representation of the show's young lesbian couple, Willow and Tara. I didn't realize I was a BTVS addict until the next fall, when I found myself living in New Orleans without cable TV, begging a Tulane University faculty member who I'd heard was doing scholarly work on the show to lend me her tapes of the episodes I'd missed during the first few weeks of the new season.


Then came the cable subscription I couldn't really afford on my salary. And then, a few months later, I was at Tower Records, scooping out the BTVS official fan magazine and the BTVS lunchboxes and memorabilia. Shortly thereafter, I got together with a college friend whose devotion to BTVS fandom inspired and amazed me: She was co-writing and co-presenting her scholarly work about BTVS's biggest online fan forum, The Bronze (here's the original forum, started during the WB days, and the new UPN forum). She was writing her own fanfic. She was a co-editor at a hip, snarky, girlie pop culture site. She and her cohort introduced me to the world of spoilers and online discussion about the show. And she made me understand that what had seemed like crazy-obsessive fan behavior was really OK, because while it is obsessive, it's also intellectually and socially engaging, and a whole lot of fun.


I still have moments of shame. When I found myself searching online for Spike/Giles "slash," fanfic in which characters are re-written in a romantic or sexual way, usually in same-sex pairs (see cultural critic Constance Penley's book Nasa/Trek for some of the best slash theorizing around), or when I do things like derail my household's Thanksgiving plans so that we can tape the episodes of an FX BTVS marathon, I've had to pause and ask myself at what point fandom becomes extreme. But there have also been moments of pride.


I love that this past Christmas all of my roommates exchanged gifts that were BTVS-related. Some of them we bought (the boardgame, the Sunnydale High Yearbook, several volumes of Buffy-inspired comics), but others we made (bedazzled t-shirts with "Slayerette" and "Spike" ironed and glittered across their fronts, CDs of this season's musical episode, games we've devised to play around our burgeoning vampire obsession). Fandom became a way to express our collective participation and to acknowledge each other's relationship to the show and its characters.


In our house, BTVS is the only show we all watch together; it's the only weekly event guaranteed to bring us all together on the couch to watch, critique, squeal and moan, and then later take what we've seen and interpret it, write about it, co-opt it and appropriate it for our own use. And this is the part of fandom that I think is the most valuable, the part that Ward misses in his definition: In this particular mode, it's more fun to admit our obsession and put it to some creative use than it is to watch passively from our spot on the couch.
[> "Consumers and Creators"...... -- Rufus, 18:29:20 06/29/02 Sat

Yes, we have that article in the archives here.

I know cause I did all the extra links that are in it.

I've seen you before over at the Cross and Stake..welcome here...take a tour..(not like Willow did to Rack)...you will find great stuff in the archives, then for everything you needed to know about the Buffyverse go to Masqs main site and look around. Welcome to the board Simon. I also have many articles over at the Trollop Board....but it is a place with spoilers so beware.;)
Buffy and El Cid or Cantar de la Mia Buffy -- Ixchel, 22:12:46 06/29/02 Sat

The legendary 11th century Spanish knight, Rodrigo Diaz y Vivar or El Cid (from Arabic for "lord") Campeador (Spanish for "champion") after his death was fastened to his horse (sword arm raised) and headed his army out into an enemy laying seige to Valencia (his city). His reputation was such, that on seeing him (according to story) the enemy fled. It is interesting to compare this to the illusion maintained by the SG after the death of Buffy. The imperfect (though charming, to me) proxy of the Buffybot, with the direction of the SG (as El Cid's retainers directed his horse carrying his dead body), is sufficient for some time to dissuade would-be threats to SD and to control the present dangerous demon population.

This makes me wonder at Buffy's reputation in the demon world (the demons in the bar in Villains seem quite afraid of her). It would be interesting to hear them talk about her and her defeat of the Master, the Mayor, Adam and Glory (I doubt they'd know about Angelus). When Dracula (amusingly, IRL a national hero in Romania for keeping the Turks out) said she was reknown was he trying to flatter her or telling the truth (I suspect the latter)? With a reputation like hers, it would seem only the arrogant and the foolish would attempt to attack her.

Ixchel
Classic Movie of the Week - June 29th 2002 -- OnM, 22:39:02 06/29/02 Sat

*******

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not
become still more complicated.

............ Poul Anderson

*******

I am for integrity, if only because life is very short and truth is hard to come by.

............ Kermit Eby

*******

The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

............ Allan K. Chalmers

*******

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

............ Comte DeBussy-Rabutin

*******

One of the most common 'new' film genres to emerge within the last half-century is the so-called 'teen
film'. I tend to think that this is primarily due to the fact that at some point in time, the demographics of
theater attendance shifted in such a way that persons below the age of 25 or so became the predominate
attendees at movie screenings, at least in the United States.

Adolescence and youg adulthood has always presented a challenging situation to live through, and so like
any potential drama, it can become the source of artistic inspiration. Unfortunately, over the last decade or
two, artistic inspiration has increasingly taken a back seat to commercialization, since the major difference
between the kids who were kids when I was a kid (the 50's and 60's) and the kids who would be my kids if
I had had kids is that the latter have more discretionary income to spend.

Going to see a movie was big deal when I was in my late zeroes and early teens. There were no such things
as videos-- VCR's didn't exist on the consumer market until the mid-70's. So, you either saw a movie on
TV, which is where I saw most of mine, or once in a rare while-- maybe every month or so-- the family
packed up and headed out to the local movie house. When videotape did start to become popular, it
spawned an attitude in the hearts and minds of Hollywood's PTB that still exists to this day in one
strangely permuted form or another, an attitude pretty much summed up with the simple words WE'RE
DOOMED!!!. Yes, paranoia strikes deep-- into their lives it did creep. It starts when you're always
afraid that someone's going to take the money away.

You've heard me rant and rave on numerous occasions about the perversion of the original intent of a
movie's creative vision by subjecting widescreen films to the editing knife of the so-called 'pan and scan'
method that makes the image fit onto our narrow, squarish TV screens. What you may not know is
that the whole concept of widescreen movies first came about circa the 50's because Hollywood was
completely and totally freaked about this new medium called 'television', and how it could theoretically
make theater audiences vanish faster than a board post sucked into the Voy Archive Vacuum. The
producers and other money-fronters were positive that no one would go out to see an movie in a
theater if they could watch it 'for free' at home on the tube. So, one of the results of this competition led
filmmakers to do something that the viewer couldn't get within the teensy confines of his or her domicile--
a really large, very wide screen, that made for a far more significant visual involvement for said viewer.
Also, there was this clever new sound thing called 'stereo', and the film industry also rapidly embraced this
reality-enhancing technology, and went on to become one of the earliest purveyors of the concept in the
public domain.

This give and take between the film industry and and it's technological competitors has gone on ever since,
in a pattern very similar to Elisabeth Kubler Ross' 'Stages of Dying'. You know-- Denial, Anger,
Bargaining, Acceptance, etc. It would be nice if all this was about supporting the artists who make film
creativity possible, but actually it's more about glomming onto the cash that large theater audiences bring
in. And today, the audience is increasingly younger and younger, and wealthier and wealthier.

So, we shouldn't be surprised that we get to see so many youth films that are boring, repetitive and
derivative, because that's the monetarily 'safe' way to make them-- formula sells, that's why it's
'formula'. Take a little adolescent angst, mix in some sleazy sex, the occasional random banal 'insight' and
pretensions of 'growth', and there you be-- rollin' in moola.

But it isn't always so. Some filmmakers, like Cameron Crowe, the writer and director of this week's
Classic Movie, Say Anything... not only understands the mind and heart of the youth of
today, they care enough to treat that mind and heart with intelligence and respect. The same elements are
there-- angst, sexuality, insights, growth-- but they are portrayed with the understanding that the events of
adolescence and early adulthood act to direct powerful forces that shape our later lives for better or worse.

Joss understands this also, of course-- even while setting his 'morality plays' within the classic structures of
the fantasy and horror genre, he infuses his visions with 'reality'-- acknowledging the fact that at the
time, surviving high school is an ordeal, not getting a date for the prom is the end of the world, and all
those other things many adults tend to snicker self-righteously about because they've effectively
repressed all of their own horrific memories and so can no longer identify with their own children.

Crowe, like Whedon, seems to have never grown up completely, and so can still write very effective
descriptions about what it is like to be young and vulnerable and attempt to make sense of a typically
non-sensible world. Further, not only can he write brilliantly, but he can successfully integrate the power of
the word with the power of the image, and then complete the cinematic triad by choosing some of the more
subtly skilled actors to portray his protagionists and the others that interact with them. This man has a
great gift, there is no two ways to it.

Say Anything... plays out a classic dramatic motif, namely a love story between a young man and
woman. The lead male role is played by the very talented actor John Cusack. His character, Lloyd Dobler,
has just graduated from high school, and isn't really sure what he wants to do with his life career-wise,
(other than emphatically not buying, selling, or processing anything), but one thing that he does
know for sure is that he is irrepressibly drawn to the considerable charms of one Diane Court, played with
glorious craft and subtlety by folksinger Donovan Leitch's daughter, Ione Skye.

Both these actors bespeak a brilliant casting choice from a standpoint of looks and personality. Even
though early on in the film one of the other students refers to Diane as 'a brain in a model's body' or words
to that effect, Skye most assuredly isn't a typical 'model', she's far too 'normal' looking for an attractive
person, if that makes any sense. (It will if you see or have seen the film). The very same is true with Cusack
and Lloyd-- he's quite handsome, but still within a range that makes him approachable, and sympathetic.

That Crowe is 'daring' enough to depict Diane and Lloyd as 'normal' teens says a lot for his obvious
willingness to put art before income, since here is very little present in this movie for a studio marketing
department to relentlessly hype up. Lloyd is just a 'regular guy' who is driven enough to ignore the
well-meant recommendations of his best friends (interestingly, two of the closest ones being female) and
just go and call up the beautiful class 'brain' he is so smitten with. Diane, who is initially politely
dismissive, becomes slowly charmed by Lloyd's quiet sense of humor and gentlemanly behavior. What
starts out as a friendship based on mutual respect soon grows into what Diane only half-teasingly refers to
as 'friends with potential', and then as the weeks of the summer pass by, goes farther yet.

Crowe has the self-confidence in his story and his actors to 'ease back' and let things happen at a pace they
naturally would, and so allow the viewing audience the chance to grow with and then inhabit the lives of
these two young people. Even though Lloyd and Diane are of above average intelligence, their youth
makes it only reasonable that they would still be awkward or nervous at times, as they examine the degree
of love and trust they share. As such, we never get to see any scene that seems forced upon the characters
purely for 'ratings'-- i.e., gratuitous sex, pointlessly raunchy language, or behavior wildly and erratically
out of character just for the sake of a 'cheap laugh'.

The various supporting characters are wonderful also, especially Lloyd's girl friends (not
girlfriends, please note!) D.C. and Corey (Amy Brooks and Lili Taylor respectively). While
technically a 'supporting' role, John Mahoney as Diane's father, James Court, is more of a third lead, as far
as I'm concerned. His relationship with his daughter is of a type that is almost never depicted in the youth
film market, namely one in which she loves and admires him, and he his daughter in return. James is never
once made the butt of a stupid joke, portrayed as a mindless, clueless idiot, or shown as the stereotypical
uninvolved or distant parent. This factor of and by itself is, sadly, enough to make Say Anything...
almost revolutionary.

If you've never seen this movie before, you are in for one of the best two hours in the dark you are ever
likely to have. There are many reasons why several well-respected film critics have placed this flick on their
'best of all time' lists, and your own humble movie-man certainly joins them in that opinion. This is a film
that can be viewed over and over, and gets better and better with each viewing. It is one of the best
films I have reviewed since I started writing this column, and if you go back over the list, you'll see
that's saying a lot.

And I would never just 'say anything' like that if I didn't really feel that way, now would I?


“Honest Weight, No Springs",

OnM


*******

Technically I could say anything to you, but as usual I did actually look this stuff up:

Say Anything... is available on DVD. The review copy was on laserdisc, unfortunately in a
pan'n'scan version. (Ya take what ya can get sometimes, and p'n's laser is still way better than
p'n's VHS, ja?) The original theatrical aspect ratio is 1.85:1, which very likely is preserved on the DVD
version. Running time was 1 hour and 40 minutes.

The film was produced by James L. Brooks, Paul Germain, Richard Marks and Polly Platt. Director
Cameron Crowe also wrote the screenplay. Cinematography was by László Kovács with film editing by
Richard Marks. Production design was by Mark W. Mansbridge, with set decoration by Joe D. Mitchell
and costume design by Jane Ruhm. The original theatrical soundtrack was presented in standard Dolby
Surround. The film contains quite a large roster of songs contributed by a raft of popular artists, and as
usual with Crowe films, really work synergistically in conjunction with the cinematography and script
work.

Cast overview:

John Cusack .... Lloyd Dobler
Ione Skye .... Diane Court
John Mahoney .... James Court
Lili Taylor .... Corey Flood
Amy Brooks .... D.C.
Pamela Segall .... Rebecca
Jason Gould .... Mike Cameron
Loren Dean .... Joe
Glenn Walker Harris Jr. .... Jason, Lloyd's Nephew
Charles Walker .... Principal
Russel Lunday .... Parent
Polly Platt .... Mrs. Flood
Gloria Cromwell .... Ruth
Jeremy Piven .... Mark, Gas N'Sip Boy
Patrick O'Neill .... Denny, Gas N'Sip Boy

*******

Miscellaneous:

While watching Say Anything... again prior to writing this weeks column, and noting the truly
wonderful performance by Ione Skye, I couldn't help but think that 'here was a very talented actress, and
she seems to have almost disappeared from view' movie-wise. Did she get tired of the grind? Want to start
a family? Is really really picky about choosing scripts? I wonder what's she's been doing all these
years.

Well, a quick 'ol visit to the IMDb sure set me straight-- Ione is making beaucoup flicks, just not many
mainstream ones. Check out this list:

Birth name Ione Skye Leitch, born September 4th, 1971, in Hertfordshire, England, UK

Actress - filmography:

Angryman (2001)
Babylon Revisited (2001) .... Virginia Rappe
Free (2001) .... Catherine
Chicken Night (2001) .... Mama
Southlander (2001) .... Miss Highrise
Good Doctor, The (2000) .... Nadia Wickham
Men Make Women Crazy Theory (2000)
Moonglow (2000)
Jump (1999) .... Stephanie
But I'm a Cheerleader (1999)
Mascara (1999) .... Rebecca
Guardiani del cielo, I (1998) (TV) .... Diane Shannon
Dream for an Insomniac (1998) .... Frankie
Went to Coney Island on a Mission From God... Be Back by Five (1998) .... Gabby
One Night Stand (1997) .... Jenny, Charlie's Friend
Perfect Mother, The (1997) (TV) .... Kathryn M. Podaras
Size of Watermelons, The (1996) .... Maggie
Four Rooms (1995) .... Eva (segment "The Missing Ingredient")
Cityscrapes: Los Angeles (1994) .... Young Woman
Color of Evening, The (1994) .... Halys Smith
Girls in Prison (1994) (TV) .... Carol Madison
Covington Cross (1992) TV Series .... Eleanor Grey
Guncrazy (1992) .... Joy
Gas Food Lodging (1992) .... Trudi
Wayne's World (1992) .... Elyse
Samantha (1991) .... Elaine
It's Called the Sugar Plum (1991) (TV)
Carmilla (1990) .... Marie
Mindwalk (1990) .... Kit Hoffman
Rachel Papers, The (1989) .... Rachel Noyce
Say Anything... (1989) .... Diane Court
Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, A (1988) .... Denise Hunter
Stranded (1987) .... Deirdre Clark
Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (1987) (mini) TV Series .... Pauline
River's Edge (1986) (as Ione Skye Leitch) .... Clarissa

Wow-- now thassa lotta work, it just appears that we haven't seen very much of it. So, now you
can go look up some of these and thereby annoy the rental store people who don't understand why you
aren't renting the latest inane blockbuster of the month which, hey, they've got tons of in stock!.

*******

The Question of the Week:

So far, I'm still diligently waiting to view a film treatment that accurately illustrates my actual youth
experiences. Oh, there are bit and pieces here and there that they get right, but mostly I look at movies like
Say Anything... and then get all emotional and whimper “Now why can't that be me?? Why didn't I
get to date Ione Skye?" (Better to have loved and lost, my ass... humph.) Of course, the fact that she was
born about three months after I graduated from high school could be a factor there. Ah well...

Have you ever gone into the dark of the theater and later came out, blinking and squinting in the bright
light of day, saying to yourself, 'Self, that was me! Wow!' If so, what was the film, and why was it
your life?

That be it, dear friends, so until next week, by all means post 'em if you've got 'em, and take care!

See ya!

*******
[> Great Choice! -- Darby, 07:35:26 06/30/02 Sun

...And how can you go wrong with a lead-off quote from Poul Anderson?

- But isn't Kermit's last name "the Frog"?

Maybe now I'll do what I've been intending for quite a while (kinda waiting until my son's old enough to appreciate it, but screw it, I can rent it again later) and rewatch it. Hard to fight that boombox-on-the-car. Have you ever wondered what other songs would have been able to deliver the same impact (I guess not You Ain't Nothin' But a Hounddog, huh?).

To the question - I've got two answers that aren't really answers, but here goes. Real Genius was the first movie I remember that showed an idealized but seemingly accessible version of a me I'd really like to be, and made me forever a Val Kilmer apologist. All That Jazz showed someone who was nothing like me, except that everyone can be achingly self-absorbed, obsessive, insensitive and just stupid about what this second's decisions can do longterm, and it was interesting to see someone who was like that and still loved by those around them despite, or maybe because of, those faults. Usually it's some sort of cautionary tale about driving folks away, but here was an underlying message of, "don't expect them to straighten you out, it's going to be up to you." And the music and choreography...whew!
[> A wonderful,wonderful movie....... -- AurraSing, 08:38:35 06/30/02 Sun

..Lloyd standing in the rain with Peter Gabriel blaring out over the boom box was once of my favourite scenes in a movie from the 80's.....

I'm a John Cusak ho anyhow and I watch this movie at least once a year,more for John than for Ione or for Cameron Crowe's touch.Speaking of which,can someone explain to me why on earth he made "Vanilla Sky"?? I thought he had more originality than to remake an already good movie........

As for seeing myself in a movie,I've always related to Princess Leia-particularily when it came to getting kissed by Han Solo!!
[> Re: Classic Movie of the Week - June 29th 2002 -- Ronia, 09:16:08 06/30/02 Sun

My husband and I watched this movie on our very first date....yes, it is a classic. Did you miss Joan Cusak as the older sister/caretaker? They are nearly always in movies together.
Religious imagery in 'Restless' -- yabyumpan, 22:39:52 06/29/02 Sat

It has long been thought, and actually said by Joss, that the 'cheesman' in Restless didn't actually mean anything. I don't believe that's true; I think he was actually trying to get a very subtle message out to all true belivers. I think that it's actually a reference to the lesser known passage in The Sermon on The Mount: Blessed are the Cheesemakers :-)
Scoobie Gang training and equipment (long) -- Just George, 23:04:34 06/29/02 Sat

For a moment, lets assume:

* That Buffy and the Scoobie Gang are serious about patrolling and fighting vampires and demons.
* The SG have access to some money, but don't have access to items that would be hard for them to buy.
* The SG don't want to "break" the core themes of the show (no one carries a sawed off shotgun.)

Given these, what kinds of training and equipment should be mandatory for each member of the gang? What situations do they get into? What would be useful?

Here's a list I made up after surfing for a while. I found most of these items on Yahoo shopping. The prices listed are from public sources.

What training/equipment would you suggest?

------------------------------

TRAINING TO BE A SCOOBIE

The members of the gang get into a lot of scraps. I'll bet it would be a good idea for them to know some first aid and have some martial training. It would also be good for them to keep in shape year round:

Courses to take once:
Self Defense / Street Fighting Intensive Classes (5 days, $500)

Courses to take on a regular basis:
CPR / AED/ Community First Aid, $ 100 every year
Martial Arts Group Classes, $20 once / week


EQUIPMENT CARRIED BY ALL SCOOBIES

This equipment includes things that anyone could carry without raising questions with the authorities. It would be good for the gang to carry these with them at all times. I picked the phone for the one touch Direct Connect feature. When the SG need to contact each other, they need to do in instantly:

Nextel i90c Cell Phone with one touch Direct Connect, Group Calling, Silent Ringer, Speaker Phone, text messaging $250 + $50 per month
Cross Pendant $50
Pepper Spray $10
Flashlight $25
Drivers License
Health Insurance Card


CAMERA

Someone on each patrol should carry a camera to document a crime scene and preserve clues. The camera should be small enough to carry easily. It should be self-contained so no external group sees the crazy stuff the SG might photograph. The gang only needs one camera at a time, but I list here three of various prices and capabilities. I see Xander carrying the Polaroid, while Willow would dig the digital camcorder:

Polaroid Mio Instant Camera (Wallet Image. Size: (d x h x w) 2.2" d x 5" h x 4.6" w) $120
Canon S300 Digital ELPH (1600 x 1200 Image, 3.7" x 2.5" x 1.2") $500
JVC GR-DVM55U Digital CyberCam Video (3.8" x 4.7" x 2.1" with low light, stabilization, still image, and fire-wire) $1100


QUESTIONABLE EQUIPMENT

These items may or may not be illegal, but will get the authorities to give the characters a second look if spotted them. The gang might keep them in their car and only carry them while "patrolling".

Fake Driver's License (Xander carried one)
Wooden Stake (Buffy carries them all the time)
Stun Gun (Cordelia carries one in AtS) $100
Collapsible Baton (Like Riley carried) $60
Metal Hinged Handcuffs (Extra strong type) $42
Plastic Handcuffs (Cable Ties)
Large wooden cross (possibly carried in two pieces and snapped together. Xander could make them.)
Container of Holy Water (Buffy has lots in her "war chest")


CAR/TRUCK

Xander's old lavender Taurus was trashed in "Two to Go". I figure that as a construction supervisor, he should have a pickup. As the gang's designated taxi, his truck needs 4 doors. Xander could put a pair of lockable toolboxes in the back. One carrying construction tools. The other carrying Scoobie Gear.

Ford F-150 XLT SuperCrew (A four seat SUV combination construction truck and "War Wagon") MSRP $28,145


EQUIPMENT IN THE TRUCK

Some stuff is so big, that it can be kept in the car. This equipment is useful in an extreme emergency, on a specific mission like surveillance, or when setting exploring a night-time crime scene.

Automated External Defibrillator (AED) $2,750
Electric Camp Lantern $50
Baton Flashlight $50
Famous Trails FT400 "Atlas" Night Scope 2.5x Image Magnification with IR illuminator, $300
Bausch & Lomb BL 8x24 Legacy Binoculars $70
Car Spotlight $25
Big First Aid Kit
Big weapons (sword, ax, etc.)


What would you have them carry?
[> Re: Scoobie Gang training and equipment (long) -- drew de-lurker, 23:55:34 06/29/02 Sat

Not terribly seriously, but...
1.Enough Theological training to be able to bless water (some online churchs/cults/whatevers can ordain a person for as little as twenty five dollars and this is perfectly legal to qualify them to marry people my state anyway)

2.Cross tattoos on their necks and over other arteries.

3.Fake Fangs and yellow eyed contacts...to better blend into a crowd of evil.
[> [> Troll comments on combat training -- Drizzt, 18:21:08 06/30/02 Sun

Warning!
I am a troll; do not talk to me;)

Hi Drew Delurker

I liked the idea of the cross tattoos:)

Minor points about the original post; I liked the ideas for equiment...interesting and usefull list.

RE combat training; any of the Scoobies could spar with her and hit her as hard as they can, full contact martial sparring. This would not bother Buffy much; she survived that punch from Glory that sent her flying 20 feet, and then she dented the wall she hit...so the best punch from a normal human would not even phase Buffy. Of course Buffy would have to seriously hold back; just tap them. If you want to develope martial skills would you prefer a black belt martial artist with twenty years experiance, or Buffy with hyper reflexes, durability, and strength...as your sparring partner?

RE training Buffy; how about having Spike train in a martial art, then he could be her sparring partner. Spike has the strength and speed to at least make a fight with him require effort from Buffy. All the fights with Spike he fights with a basic bar-fight brawling style; if he got some REAL training in martial arts he would be a good sparring partner for Buffy to improve her own skills.
[> [> I've always imagined Xander with Holy Water-filled Super Soaker Water Gun -- cjc36, 09:04:23 07/02/02 Tue

It'd be like a flame thrower to vampires, and wouldn't hurt humans at all.
[> Saving the world? Priceless. -- Sophist, 08:45:23 06/30/02 Sun

For everything else, there's MasterCard.
[> [> LOL -- I'm glad somebody else posted this before I had to. :-) -- Rattletrap, 06:47:50 07/01/02 Mon

[> So you want it to become a role-playing game? -- Maroon Lagoon, 13:48:56 06/30/02 Sun

Let me veer OT....

I'd like it if every time they killed a demon, they ransacked its body to steal its equipment. "Xander has obtained a broadsword."

Every character would only be able to carry x pounds, so they'd have to trade off on what supplies to keep in their inventory. If they collected enough gold to buy that defibrillator, it would take up their entire inventory, so they'd have to bury it in the woods and after every battle walk halfway across the entire map to replenish their health points.

And every character should have statistics like health, strength, agility, magic, etc.

Willow and Tara would be the spellcasters in the battle sequences, but would very low hit points, so one of the warriors would have to guard them.
Xander's special skill would be metalworking for repairing weapons and armor. He'd repair the weapons and armor from defeated enemies, then sell it for gold in the nearest village.
Oz could morph into the wolf for brief blitz attacks, but it would use up most of his health points.
Wesley would be the cleric who is good at mixing herbal potions, and would be good with a small crossbow (remember The Ring?)
Fred would be expert at stealth and lockpicking and could repair complicated weapons (like her toaster-axe-thrower).
Connor would have the most agility points.
Groo would have the most strength points.
Anya's only weapon would be a wooden staff, but she could teleport during battle to sneak up on opponents.
Lorne would have no special abilities during battle except making wisecracks, so Tara would have to waste magic points doing a protection spell on him. However, he could spy on enemies when they sang their ale-songs at the local taverns.
Groo would be able to carry the heaviest armor and could take the most hit points, but Tara and Fred could only take light armor, so would have to defend themselves with magic or avoidance.
Faith would do a berserker attack in which all combatants within a certain radius, whether good or bad, sustained major damage.
Angel and Buffy would have rapid healing abilities and wouldn't use up any healing potions.



Some good opponents would be:
Minor: vampires, Hobbit-demons, knights of Byzantium, demon bikers, the two-headed fire-breathing demon Wes and Gunn fought in Blood Money

Major: Glory, Senior Partners, Vocah, Adam, The Judge, Luke and the Master


Also, whenever the characters are having trouble figuring out a certain puzzle, in certain towns there'd be a hidden room where they could spend 100 gold pieces to talk to a representative of the Watcher's Council. Four out five times, the advice would be worthless or vague of something they already knew, but occasionally they'd get good advice.


Anybody with me or am I the only one who'll admit to being this lame?
[> [> I tried to find a Buffy MUD once... -- ZachsMind, 17:16:28 06/30/02 Sun

The best I could find were a few MUSH's which were roleplaying with emphasis on the role, but they were little more than elaborate chat forums which needed either GMs online all the time or mutual understandings between players. I haven't found a Multi User Domain that has coded all the powers & skills & character generation stuff into their system, like a D&D oriented RPG MUD.
[> [> Not lame. A sim city Sunnydale? -- Vickie, 18:51:26 06/30/02 Sun

I thought it might be fun to create Sunnydale as a sim city (in the game Sim City), and that's easily lamer than your idea.
[> [> [> Re: Not lame. A sim city Sunnydale? -- Drew the De-lurker, 22:41:16 07/02/02 Tue

Actually the Buffy faces are very popular in The Sims games. I've downloaded at least five different Buffy feature, Three or Willow/Xander ones and even a very decent Riley one.

Course if you aren't a TheSims-aholic like me that doesn't mean much...:-)
[> [> Re: So you want it to become a role-playing game? Nope! -- Just George, 22:52:45 06/30/02 Sun

I used to make a living writing role-playing games (both pencil & paper and computer ones.) That perspective may be why I spent the time making up the list. I do NOT want BTVS to become an RPG, especially a "lame" RPG like the one you described. Though, I'll admit to making some just as "lame" early in my career. I thought of this as a "mental exercise" more than suggestions for the show.

However, some of these elements listed are things that have been on BTVS or ATS. As PatHawk points out below, the characters on ATS tend to be much better equipped than those on BTVS. The SG should at least carry cell phones! They could check out one of those cheap "family" plans with 4 phones for one price.

Specializing in specific equipment might also be a way to differentiate the characters. There is already some of that in the show. Willow has her computer and Xander has his car. Xander might get more serious about physical training and carrying a collapsible baton in his boot (like his friend Riley did.) Willow might carry a camera to document a crime scene. A human Anya might carry a stun gun. I think Dawn should have an electronic scooter.

Also, training could be used to show healthy changes in the group dynamic. A single scene showing the gang (including Dawn) coming out of a CPR course could be used to show the SG being more focused and together than they were in Season 6. It would also be a public service.

Going overboard might be "lame." Using equipment and training as a tool for storytelling could help show how the characters grow.
[> [> [> I know, I know. -- Maroon Lagoon, 23:23:49 06/30/02 Sun

I know you don't really want the show to be a role-playing game. It's just your list reminded me of the type of inventories those games have. I wasn't even talking about the show; I was talking about a hypothetical game. That's why I said, "Now I'm going OT," and came up with some suggestions that were only meant to be amusing.
I think d'Herblay knows what to do in this situation (regarding humor-detectors).

(There is a real Buffy game for the X-Box that I've never played. Amazingly enough, the character actually looks like SMG. http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/buff4k/images/game/xbox5.jpg
If I had that game, I'd kiss my screen a lot more than I do now.)


And I only use the word "lame" in deference to that weird social convention where you're supposed to be self-deprecating about your own ideas. I happen to think my list of statistics was clever and that computer role-playing games (at least the graphical kind) are fun.


TTFN
[> [> [> [> Re: I know, I know. -- Just George, 00:17:56 07/02/02 Tue

Sorry if I got too intense. I've been working to get out of the RPG biz and I may be a bit sensitive. I thought your list was funny. You have a good feel for parody.

I was smiling with you when you talked about "lame" games. But my smile didn't come through in my writing. My bad.
[> [> [> [> OT: bit of info on Buffy game -- ahira, 19:50:10 07/02/02 Tue

Yep, Buffy is going to come out on the Xbox. Currently set for an end of July release, but over the last few months, I have seen the release slip every now and then, so, it will be out when it is out I guess. There is a pretty good hands on preview at www.gamespot.com. So, if you are also a game player, you might want to check it out. And now back to your regularly scheduled thread.
[> [> LOL! Especially Faith the Berserker! -- Scroll, 15:45:08 07/01/02 Mon

[> SG lack of Equipment & Training -- PatHawk, 21:39:38 06/30/02 Sun

I've always found that the SG complete lack of Equipment & Training to be BtVS biggest ongoing plot hole.
Sure, Buffy is the designated fighter, but that does not change the fact that other characters like Xander, humanAnya, Dawn(until Grave), regurlarly square off against a large variety of Demons and Vampires.
When violence does occur, these characters are often left with nothing to do except run away or fight uneffectively. They often end up getting saved by Buffy and her Slayer powers, Willows magic, or Giles skill.

I mean, it wanders into the realm of the absurd when someone like Xander, who is physically fit, and has fought alongside Buffy for years, cannot ever swing an axe effectively. What happened to his pledge of not being everyones butt monkey anymore...

Anyways, I found that AtS deals with this in a much more realistic manner. All the characters are accomplished warriors with training, or like Lorne(pacifist) & Fred(frail) are clearly unable to engage in combat.
Angel investigation have ready access to weapons and rarely go out into danger without them, and are not shy about getting some outside(magical) assistance when needed.
Although I do find that they never make use of any modern combat tools(nightvision goggles or handsfree radios for example), light weight readily available body armor, and modern weapons(stun grenades is a tame example) that would make their urban operations run more smoothly and make them more like the profesionnal mercenaries-with-ethics that they really are.

However I must admit that my own personnal vision of the SG & AI would have them equipt, trained, and operate like a modern special forces team. And then both BtVS & AtS would be nothing like the shows we love and be light years away from what Joss would ever do.
But still, I am talking about what would make sense under the circumstances.

I Agree with Just George that some additionnal training and equipment would be needed for the SG to be at their peek effectiveness and solve the Dead Weight syndrome affecting some of the team members.
[> [> As far as equipment goes, -- Maroon Lagoon, 23:05:42 06/30/02 Sun

you have to sacrifice some realism for drama.

If Buffyverse were realistic, Buffy would have simply machine gunned those knights of Byzantium in Spiral and the scene would have been over in ten seconds. How much fun would that be?

And if the gang carried wireless communication gadgets, Buffy would have simply called Riley instead of running in slow-motion while his chopper took off. And so on.

However, I thought the Initiative's use of the infrared thermometer to detect people at room temperature was a very sensible idea. I enjoyed S4's (underdeveloped) theme of science vs mysticism, and would liked to have seen the SG adopt some of Riley's methods and he some of theirs. Instead, the final speech in Primeval made it seem like the show was writing off the Initiative as a complete wash, instead of taking a more realistic "let's take the best of both worlds" stance.


Fred is not entirely non-combat. She used her toaster-axe-thrower to kill the Durslar demon in Fredless. She gives Gio the carotid artery speech after turning the crossbow on him. And she (pretends to) take Darla hostage with the dagger in Quickening. So she has at least some experience with weapons and a willingness to use them according to her own initiative.

I have a publicity photo that shows Lorne holding a crossbow. I wonder why Andy Hallet didn't speak up and say that Lorne has never used a crossbow. Maybe he doesn't watch his own show!
The Love that dare not say its name...(spoilery speculation) -- Drew De-Lurker, 23:32:16 06/29/02 Sat

The OTHER type I mean, that of Xander and Willow.

I mean, Xander says he loves Willow. What does he mean by this? Does he mean romantic hearts and flowers? Or simply as a friend? It must have been enough to break through to her human side, but I'm still not sure why exactly. Does Xander himself know what his 'love' for her is? Does the word love mean the same to Willow as Xander?
It would be very Joss-like to mess with our minds over Willow's lesbianity/bisexuality and our expectations concerning it. Sexuality is never is as cut and dried as many people expect it to be.
And exactly where does this leave Anya? I noticed her reaction to Giles explaining how Xander stopped Willow was rather muted. How do vengence demons take being dumped by lesbian ex-girlfriends?
Any thoughts?
[> Re: The Love that dare not say its name...(spoilery speculation) -- Wizardman, 01:23:48 06/30/02 Sun

I thought that Anya's reaction was mixed due to her own ambiguity to Xander. I believe that she does still love him, but she hates him at the same time, and just doesn't know which way to go. She said it herself: "I care whether you live or die, Xander. I'm just not sure which one I want." As to the Xander-Willow relationship, I've always seen it as siblingly. Ditto with their relationships to Buffy.
[> Re: The Love that dare not say its name...(spoilery speculation) -- Majin Gojira, 05:45:56 06/30/02 Sun

You need to understand the difference between Passion and Compassion. compassion being the more complex and 'higher' of the two emotions. I think that it was Compassion that lead to what xander did for willow.

In other words. Sex has NOTHING to do with it.

People often mistake Compassion for passion. and it's just funny to see where that leads people :p

Majin Gojira
------------
Best example: Buffy/Giles Fanfiction....ewwwww....
Giles vs Ben/Glory, Willow vs Warren (spoiler for finale) -- Drew De-Lurker, 23:39:41 06/29/02 Sat

I'm kinda curious: How is what Willow did to Warren diferent than what Giles did to Ben? Am I the only one who thought the two scenes echoed each other. Why was one different than the other? Is Giles being hypocritical in condeming Willow for using 'borrowed magic'?
Take the ball and carry it :-)
[> Re: Giles vs Ben/Glory, Willow vs Warren (spoiler for finale) -- Dochawk, 00:04:20 06/30/02 Sun

Well, in my mind they are different, Warren was 100% human and Ben was 50% God. But to Joss who got asked this question last week, the SG jusst don't know about Giles killing Ben.
[> [> Re: Giles vs Ben/Glory, Willow vs Warren (spoiler for finale) -- Wizardman, 01:15:43 06/30/02 Sun

Well, if the SG doesn't know, then shouldn't they find out? Ben wasn't an innocent when he died, but Giles didn't know that. A scene at sometime during this season, in which Giles showed remorse for his killing of Ben, or at least over the fact that it was neccessary, would have been nice. Or maybe it will come early next season in a Giles-Willow exchange. To my mind, Giles had a better reason, but Willow had more justification. I mean- Glory *may* have returned. *May* have- there was no guarantee, even if it is a certainty to Giles, and to us as well. It was repeatedly established that Ben had no control over Glory, and the Scoobies knew this- Giles was spurred by his fears of the possibilities. A possibility doesn't justify the murder of someone that is believed to be an innocent, although he had a very good reason to do so ie., the protection of his adopted children, the Scoobies. Willow, on the other hand, lost Tara, one of the two people that she loves . The other is Oz. You may disagree, but I think that she would have gone over the edge if he was killed. She wouldn't have gone very far if Tara was still alive to pull her back, but she would have at least pulled a stunt similar to S5's 'Tough Love.' Anyway... what Warren did was horrible, but he did it with a gun. He didn't make a robot, he didn't use a spell or a demon, he shot her. Therefore, his crime was punishable by the mortal realm, and should have been so punished. Even so, he was an unrepentant SOB, and there was no guarantee that he would have been caught by the police if Willow retained her sanity. Willow's killing him was a primal act of vengeance, something that we can all understand, if not necessarily condone. Killing someone for what s/he actually did is more understandible than killing him/her what s/he may do, especially as s/he had no control over what might occur.
[> [> [> So should Giles kill Willow? -- Darby, 07:11:43 06/30/02 Sun

Good points - just mentioning Oz made me realize how Giles' attitude toward werewolves was the reverse of his actions toward Ben.

But if the potential for world-threatening (or Buffy-threatening) evil is the deciding factor, how can he rationally (I know that the answer is more emotional than rational) allow Willow to live? It's not the parallels between Willow and Giles here, it's the parallel between the pairs of Ben & Glory and regular Willow & Dark Willow.

As Kendra said, sort of, "She should die, am I the only one who sees it?"
[> [> [> Re: Giles vs Ben/Glory, Willow vs Warren (spoiler for finale) -- Jane's Addiction, 07:54:27 06/30/02 Sun

Exactly right. I recall thinking that there would be all sorts of season 6 consequences and repercussions for Ben's murder, or at least some sort of consequences and repercussions. And then ... nothing. Not even the acknowledgment of the act. Did anyone ever find Ben's body? Did Giles take him out to the forest and bury him when no one was looking? From recent remarks Joss has made to reporters, I have to think there will be some acknowledgment of Giles' actions in season 7. Because, from my point of view right now, it would appear pretty hypocritical for Giles to sit in judgment of Willow when he has yet to even 'fess up to his own crime.

And I can't quite agree with the argument that Ben was half human and half insane hellgod. I thought the monks indicated that Ben was indeed a regular human who had a hellgod placed within him, perhaps at birth. Bottom line - I certainly thought he was entirely human. He and Glory didn't even seem to have any knowledge of what the other did when they were in control of the body, at least not until very near the end. I always thought of it more like sharing an apartment. ("Ok - I have Monday through Thursday and you have Friday through Sunday.")

In the season 5 finale, Xander first addressed the possibility of killing Ben to stop the ritual and then was horrified that he'd even had the thought. Giles apparently did not even know about Ben's betrayal of Dawn when he took it upon himself to end a human life just to safeguard against the possibility that the crazy hellgod inside of said human would get out and start wreaking havoc again. And he should've been well aware that the expiration date was at hand for the particular ritual she was trying to pull off at that point. Remember that poor, brain-sucked soothsayer Tara looked at Giles before they all left the Magic shop to do battle and declared "You're a killer"? Had Giles already decided at that point that, in the unlikely event that Ben made a reappearance before the ritual, he would murder him in orded to take out Glory? I believe that he had, but had simply resolved not to trouble the children with that pesky knowledge.

I always get into trouble when I try to deal with these JossVerse scenarios in any sort of literal sense. These characters live on a hellmouth where there is always the possibility of some incredibly powerful mystical being wreaking havoc and bringing apocalypse. But is the solution to take matters into our own hands by murdering innocents just to prevent the possibility of a future crime? Talk about refusing to accept the limits to what one can - or should - control in the universe! Is Giles less guilty than Willow is of this fault, or more? He very calmly decided to take matters into his own hands and murder a human being to maintain a bit more order in his world. Willow - whatever we may think about how much she was being controlled by dark magicks at the time - was certainly in a state of deep, grief-fueled rage when she tortured and murdered Warren.

As for the two human characters who were murdered, one essentially appeared to be a decent guy. He committed one terrible act out of weakness and cowardice, but everything else we had been shown indicated his guilt and fear probably would've driven him to become even more determined to find the right combination of med's to stop Glory from ever coming out again. And from what we'd been shown of Glory, it certainly seemed plausible that she might've gone underground in some sort of catatonic state for a while after such a devastating loss. As for Warren ... yes, he was a doof. And a human. He was also a sociopathic, murderous little doof with a lot of technical know-how who was able - and utterly willing - to access mystical powers(or fool others into doing it for him) to commit his crimes. Could the "deeply stupid" SDPD have dealt with him? I tend to think not. At the very least it seems the Initiative guys would've needed to be called in. Maybe a cell right next to Ethan's?

Again, this is why I don't usually try to look at the story lines in any literal way, but rather as horror genre externalizations of our internal emotional battles. Does the action bring forth the emotional pain to push forward the character development and the story arc? Well, ok then. If I really tried to compare the JossVerse to our RealVerse in any literal way, I fear my head would explode. It just gets so very muddled. (The JossVerse, not my head ... Ok, the JossVerse and my head.)
[> [> [> [> "Maybe a cell right next to Ethan's?" -- Kitt, 08:36:48 06/30/02 Sun

"As for Warren ... yes, he was a doof. And a human. He was also a sociopathic, murderous little doof with a lot of technical know-how who was able - and utterly willing - to access mystical powers(or fool others into doing it for him) to commit his crimes.... Maybe a cell right next to Ethan's?"

ummmmmm...... now, looking at it that way, if Warren and Ethan teamed up, that would, to paraphrase Buffy, be SO not of the good, dontcha think? ;)
Maybe a cell NEXT to Ethan's not such a good idea...
{Giggling maddly at the mental image of Ethan pulling an Andrew}
[> [> [> [> [> Re: "Maybe a cell right next to Ethan's?" -- Jane's Addiction, 09:53:54 06/30/02 Sun

ummmmmm...... now, looking at it that way, if Warren and Ethan teamed up, that would, to paraphrase Buffy, be SO not of the good, dontcha think? ;)
Maybe a cell NEXT to Ethan's not such a good idea...


Ha! Too true. But perhaps some of Ethan's humor would've rubbed off on Warren along with his flair for chaos. I can forgive so much more of a fun bad guy than I can of a tiresome bad guy. It's a weakness of mine ...
[> [> [> [> Preventing the *possibility* of a future crime. That's pretty much the idea of Minority Report -- Exegy, 08:49:40 06/30/02 Sun

*Spoilers for movie*




An elite force, led by John Anderton, prevents crimes before they happen. The "law" enforcers condemn would-be murderers to a life in stasis ... and they are perfectly assured in their decisions. The murders would have occurred as predicted by the PreCogs; the PreCogs have never been wrong. Or so Anderton et al must believe in order for their new justice system to function effectively. If any discrepancies are exposed, then the whole network falls apart, and humanity is back to square one: having to apprehend the criminal after the fact.

People must believe in the PreCogs; they must believe in a justice above and beyond mere humanity. But the PreCogs are not the gods many make them to be ... they are three impotent individuals, three dreaming brains soaked in a vat. They may be very reliable predictors of the future; but with all human things, there is the possibility of error. The PreCogs disagree with each other occasionally; they make mistakes. These mistakes are covered up, of course. The bulk of Minority Report consists of these mistakes being exposed, first to Anderton and then to the world at large. The new justice system disintegrates in the end, and the PreCogs are set free.

If escape is ever possible for those who would witness the horrors of humanity, again and again. The PreCogs have been taken out of the vat, but they are still submerged. In their little cottage apart from the world, they remain in the triangular configuration of the pool. The twins continue to stare at each other, turned forever inward; but Agatha, the special one, gazes out, perhaps looking for the escape that she never really had.



This tangent relates to your paragraph on the maintenance of order ... on trying to control a universe that perhaps, in the end, cannot be controlled.

Very good post, by the way.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Preventing the *possibility* of a future crime. That's pretty much the idea of Minority Report -- Jane's Addiction, 09:57:40 06/30/02 Sun

I haven't seen Minority Report yet (of course, now that I'm all spoiled ... Just kidding), but it does look pretty interesting for this exac