On my Buffycation
Jan. 21st, 2010 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotSo, after avoiding it for some long years (mainly for reasons of Needing Another Fandom Like I Need a Hole in the Head) I am finally watching Buffy for the first time. It's a bit weird, seeing things that I've heard other fans discuss for years. But overall I am quite enjoying the experience!
The last ep I watched was the premiere of season 3. (So no spoilers beyond that ep, please!)
Transcript of Xparrot watching the average Buffy ep:
I love you, Giles!
Yay and/or hee, Buffy!
Awww, Willow!
Oh, Giles!
Poor Giles.
Xander, stop being a doofus.
Hee and/or WTF, Cordelia?
Oh, Giles!
Hee, Angel!
Hee, Willow!
Hee, Oz!
Awww, Oz!
Awww, Angel (and/or, OH, Angel...!)
Hee, Spike!
Giles~!
Don't be mean to Giles!
Yay, Buffy, you go girl!
Oh, Giles! <333333
In more detail:
GILES~!!! Giles makes me happy in my happy place which is happy. Anthony Head + glasses + librarian nerdery + awkwardly protective father-figuring + dash of black magic badassery = <333333333333333 Giles is tweedy hot-older-British-guy wonderfulness. I feel so sorry for him, having no one to relate to but teenagers. But he's so sweet with them! (Also him going postal on Angel and beating him with a flaming torch, zomg - and then there was hugs!)
I think I'm going to name my new computer Rupert ^_^
(I anticipate even more trouble watching Merlin, as I was already inordinately fond of Uther, and now...)
Angel! I'll confess, I was pretty sure I was going to be bored by Angel, what I knew of him, broody stalker vampire on the wagon, like that's anything new. But Angel is so self-aware of his broodiness and angst. And the forced-guilt cursed-soul thing is a really nice twist. Then there's Angelus, who surprised me in that's he's not just a sadistic sociopath but also a total dick, which I find inapropriately amusing. Definitely want to see Angel: The Series now. Also want to see more of him and Spike, as it's an interesting twist on the vampire sire relationship to have the sire be the one who reformed...
(Also Angel is pretty when he cries. Kind of odd-looking otherwise - not in a bad way, just odd - but yeah, he does angst very nice.)
Willow!! She is just so adorable and sweet and funny! Okay, I admit that I was already a little in love with Alyson Hannigan after mainlining How I Met Your Mother (one of the reasons I was willing to watch Buffy now was wanting to see more of her) and I still have moments watching Willow where I'm wondering when she's going to meet Marshall. (dude, she looks exactly the same! different hair, but I can't believe that there's more than 10 years from Willow then to Lily now!) But Willow is so smart and well-meaning and gaining in confidence and aww!
Oz! Is also adorable, plus nearly everything he says is hysterical. My favorite Oz line thus far is, "I have to ask you, is Geordi a werewolf? Uh-huh. And how long has that been going on?"
Spike!!! Want to see more of him. James Marsters is goooorgeous and his cheekbones are to die for and his sarcasm is awesome and he and Buffy working together in the season finale was a delight. And knowing what I do know about the future of the show, I am expecting that I am going to become one of Those Crazy Spike Fangirls, but I'm not there yet.
(My brother, otoh, watched the show already and is firmly one of Those Crazy Spike Fanboys, such that he tends to shout "Spike!" in a great excitement whenever he appears onscreen. It's very amusing.)
Buffy!! Gotta talk about the titular character sometime, no? I really do like Buffy; she's fun and funny and she kicks ass (admittedly with an exceedingly variable power level) and I'm interested where she's going as a character; she's developing in intriguing ways. And I find Sarah Michelle Gellar very appealing. But I feel like I need to see more of Buffy to define how I like her. (I do love her with Giles, though. Wait, I love everyone with Giles! But the mixed-up sort-of mentor-student father-daughter Watcher-Slayer relationship is just yays!)
Buffy/Angel: Slayer/Vampire, star-crossed lovers, blah blah blah tragedy-cakes. No, actually I rather like them, with their Miaka-Tamahome hopeless-teenagers vibe. And the denouement of season 2 was satisfyingly tragic, if a bit spoilered what with me knowing Angel gets his own show post-hell.
So far the show has been doing well with the pairings - none of them make me want to scratch my eyes out, most of them I find quite cute, but I'm not invested in any of them in that OTP way which could potentially ruin my enjoyment of the show, seeing as it's by Joss "I Don't Believe in Happy Endings" Whedon. It helps that I'm going into it knowing the love affairs never work out; then, too, they're all teenagers, and most of the relationships thus far feel like teen romance, passionately absolute but quick-burning. (Even Giles and Jenny felt that way, really, with Giles apparently being so inexperienced/out of practice in love. God knows why; I'd expect he'd have to beat off the suitors with sticks. Maybe the tweed is protective camouflage? He stands very still before a stack of books and no one sees him to pounce...)
Xander: hmm, Xander. See, I want to like Xander, and sometimes I do; but then a lot of other times I want to hit him with a fish. How he pines after Buffy is obnoxious - pining I tend to find tiresome anyhow, and the way he sometimes tries to sabotage her relationships out of jealousy is Not On. And then, he can be very cute BFF-y with Willow sometimes, but then he plays with her feelings, too, and sometimes it's like we're supposed to feel sorry for him, torn between all these girls, and just, argh.
Cordelia: I cannot make sense of Cordelia. When she's acting human I tend to like her, but then her unending shallow bitchiness will be played for comic relief and she gets flattened into such a two-dimensional character that I don't get her. At least she's better now than in first season, when I found her utterly baffling as a "popular girl" (in high school, at least in my high school, the most popular girls could be bitches, but not all the time; they were up-and-coming politicians, popular because they knew how to make friends, and took the effort to. First season, a lot of the dynamics of bullying and such felt more like the brutality of junior high than the social stresses of high school. Unless California high school works differently, which by most Hollywood portrayals seems to be the case?)
Xander and Cordelia also suffer from this problem that of their little group, Buffy and Willow got all the talent, and Xander and Cordelia are kind of useless most of the time, except when they need extra bodies. They can be gutsy, and moderately loyal, but that's about all they've got. It's a weird imbalance, and frustrating. They're kind of cute as a couple, but...
Buffy's Mother: urgh. I love parent-child relationships and I want to love this one, but the writing keeps screwing it up. Or maybe it's the acting, or some of both. I get what they're going for, I think, but we don't see enough of Joyce to really sympathize with her side, with what she's going through; instead we get her choosing robot men over her daughter and saying mean things to Giles (no, Giles~!) Again, frustrating.
The Monsters: mostly I like the monsters - I rather like the vampires being truly soulless, such that killing them is more black-and-white than it often is (with the exception of Angel, and I'm wondering how that will be handled now that they have a soul-restoring spell at hand?) And I like that when they're going up against other humans-turned-monster they strive for non-lethal solutions (unlike CERTAIN SHOWS which advocate murdering someone cursed to be a werewolf after one perfunctory attempt at a cure...) And I'm glad they seem to have moved off of the animal-inspired Monsters of season 1 which drove me nuts (mantises are not allergic to bat sonar! female laughing hyenas are the dominant, aggressive sex! (yup, Lion King got that one right...))
The Smallville Connection: oh man the creators of SV were watching Buffy. I'd heard that but I didn't realize how exactly the shows mapped the first couple seasons. Down to Clark skipping town at the end of season 2 and holing up in the Big City for a while. The most amusing thing about the parallel is that Angel = Lex - mysterious sexy older guy gets intimate with bold teen hero but it goes Tragically Wrong (as if we needed more evidence for Clark/Lex.) (and then if you go Buffy=>Smallville=>Merlin, Anthony Head goes from being Jonathan Kent to Lionel Luthor...)
So, yeah, those are my present thoughts on Buffy thus far. Definitely looking forward to more! Again, I would appreciate it if no one mentioned any spoilers in the comments - thanks to fannish osmosis I've picked up a fair bit of Buffy canon, but there's still a lot of things I don't know, and would prefer to discover them for myself - thanks!
The last ep I watched was the premiere of season 3. (So no spoilers beyond that ep, please!)
Transcript of Xparrot watching the average Buffy ep:
I love you, Giles!
Yay and/or hee, Buffy!
Awww, Willow!
Oh, Giles!
Poor Giles.
Xander, stop being a doofus.
Hee and/or WTF, Cordelia?
Oh, Giles!
Hee, Angel!
Hee, Willow!
Hee, Oz!
Awww, Oz!
Awww, Angel (and/or, OH, Angel...!)
Hee, Spike!
Giles~!
Don't be mean to Giles!
Yay, Buffy, you go girl!
Oh, Giles! <333333
In more detail:
GILES~!!! Giles makes me happy in my happy place which is happy. Anthony Head + glasses + librarian nerdery + awkwardly protective father-figuring + dash of black magic badassery = <333333333333333 Giles is tweedy hot-older-British-guy wonderfulness. I feel so sorry for him, having no one to relate to but teenagers. But he's so sweet with them! (Also him going postal on Angel and beating him with a flaming torch, zomg - and then there was hugs!)
I think I'm going to name my new computer Rupert ^_^
(I anticipate even more trouble watching Merlin, as I was already inordinately fond of Uther, and now...)
Angel! I'll confess, I was pretty sure I was going to be bored by Angel, what I knew of him, broody stalker vampire on the wagon, like that's anything new. But Angel is so self-aware of his broodiness and angst. And the forced-guilt cursed-soul thing is a really nice twist. Then there's Angelus, who surprised me in that's he's not just a sadistic sociopath but also a total dick, which I find inapropriately amusing. Definitely want to see Angel: The Series now. Also want to see more of him and Spike, as it's an interesting twist on the vampire sire relationship to have the sire be the one who reformed...
(Also Angel is pretty when he cries. Kind of odd-looking otherwise - not in a bad way, just odd - but yeah, he does angst very nice.)
Willow!! She is just so adorable and sweet and funny! Okay, I admit that I was already a little in love with Alyson Hannigan after mainlining How I Met Your Mother (one of the reasons I was willing to watch Buffy now was wanting to see more of her) and I still have moments watching Willow where I'm wondering when she's going to meet Marshall. (dude, she looks exactly the same! different hair, but I can't believe that there's more than 10 years from Willow then to Lily now!) But Willow is so smart and well-meaning and gaining in confidence and aww!
Oz! Is also adorable, plus nearly everything he says is hysterical. My favorite Oz line thus far is, "I have to ask you, is Geordi a werewolf? Uh-huh. And how long has that been going on?"
Spike!!! Want to see more of him. James Marsters is goooorgeous and his cheekbones are to die for and his sarcasm is awesome and he and Buffy working together in the season finale was a delight. And knowing what I do know about the future of the show, I am expecting that I am going to become one of Those Crazy Spike Fangirls, but I'm not there yet.
(My brother, otoh, watched the show already and is firmly one of Those Crazy Spike Fanboys, such that he tends to shout "Spike!" in a great excitement whenever he appears onscreen. It's very amusing.)
Buffy!! Gotta talk about the titular character sometime, no? I really do like Buffy; she's fun and funny and she kicks ass (admittedly with an exceedingly variable power level) and I'm interested where she's going as a character; she's developing in intriguing ways. And I find Sarah Michelle Gellar very appealing. But I feel like I need to see more of Buffy to define how I like her. (I do love her with Giles, though. Wait, I love everyone with Giles! But the mixed-up sort-of mentor-student father-daughter Watcher-Slayer relationship is just yays!)
Buffy/Angel: Slayer/Vampire, star-crossed lovers, blah blah blah tragedy-cakes. No, actually I rather like them, with their Miaka-Tamahome hopeless-teenagers vibe. And the denouement of season 2 was satisfyingly tragic, if a bit spoilered what with me knowing Angel gets his own show post-hell.
So far the show has been doing well with the pairings - none of them make me want to scratch my eyes out, most of them I find quite cute, but I'm not invested in any of them in that OTP way which could potentially ruin my enjoyment of the show, seeing as it's by Joss "I Don't Believe in Happy Endings" Whedon. It helps that I'm going into it knowing the love affairs never work out; then, too, they're all teenagers, and most of the relationships thus far feel like teen romance, passionately absolute but quick-burning. (Even Giles and Jenny felt that way, really, with Giles apparently being so inexperienced/out of practice in love. God knows why; I'd expect he'd have to beat off the suitors with sticks. Maybe the tweed is protective camouflage? He stands very still before a stack of books and no one sees him to pounce...)
Xander: hmm, Xander. See, I want to like Xander, and sometimes I do; but then a lot of other times I want to hit him with a fish. How he pines after Buffy is obnoxious - pining I tend to find tiresome anyhow, and the way he sometimes tries to sabotage her relationships out of jealousy is Not On. And then, he can be very cute BFF-y with Willow sometimes, but then he plays with her feelings, too, and sometimes it's like we're supposed to feel sorry for him, torn between all these girls, and just, argh.
Cordelia: I cannot make sense of Cordelia. When she's acting human I tend to like her, but then her unending shallow bitchiness will be played for comic relief and she gets flattened into such a two-dimensional character that I don't get her. At least she's better now than in first season, when I found her utterly baffling as a "popular girl" (in high school, at least in my high school, the most popular girls could be bitches, but not all the time; they were up-and-coming politicians, popular because they knew how to make friends, and took the effort to. First season, a lot of the dynamics of bullying and such felt more like the brutality of junior high than the social stresses of high school. Unless California high school works differently, which by most Hollywood portrayals seems to be the case?)
Xander and Cordelia also suffer from this problem that of their little group, Buffy and Willow got all the talent, and Xander and Cordelia are kind of useless most of the time, except when they need extra bodies. They can be gutsy, and moderately loyal, but that's about all they've got. It's a weird imbalance, and frustrating. They're kind of cute as a couple, but...
Buffy's Mother: urgh. I love parent-child relationships and I want to love this one, but the writing keeps screwing it up. Or maybe it's the acting, or some of both. I get what they're going for, I think, but we don't see enough of Joyce to really sympathize with her side, with what she's going through; instead we get her choosing robot men over her daughter and saying mean things to Giles (no, Giles~!) Again, frustrating.
The Monsters: mostly I like the monsters - I rather like the vampires being truly soulless, such that killing them is more black-and-white than it often is (with the exception of Angel, and I'm wondering how that will be handled now that they have a soul-restoring spell at hand?) And I like that when they're going up against other humans-turned-monster they strive for non-lethal solutions (unlike CERTAIN SHOWS which advocate murdering someone cursed to be a werewolf after one perfunctory attempt at a cure...) And I'm glad they seem to have moved off of the animal-inspired Monsters of season 1 which drove me nuts (mantises are not allergic to bat sonar! female laughing hyenas are the dominant, aggressive sex! (yup, Lion King got that one right...))
The Smallville Connection: oh man the creators of SV were watching Buffy. I'd heard that but I didn't realize how exactly the shows mapped the first couple seasons. Down to Clark skipping town at the end of season 2 and holing up in the Big City for a while. The most amusing thing about the parallel is that Angel = Lex - mysterious sexy older guy gets intimate with bold teen hero but it goes Tragically Wrong (as if we needed more evidence for Clark/Lex.) (and then if you go Buffy=>Smallville=>Merlin, Anthony Head goes from being Jonathan Kent to Lionel Luthor...)
So, yeah, those are my present thoughts on Buffy thus far. Definitely looking forward to more! Again, I would appreciate it if no one mentioned any spoilers in the comments - thanks to fannish osmosis I've picked up a fair bit of Buffy canon, but there's still a lot of things I don't know, and would prefer to discover them for myself - thanks!
