World, Mostly Turning

mbangel10 has been posting the links to Arbitrar Of Quality's reviews of BtVS and AtS over at Google groups. I read his comments on Bargaining today and thought this was an interesting paragraph:

Buffy doesn't appear in the flesh until about midway through the show, and she's front and center for the rest, albeit only getting about three lines of dialogue. On the plus side, not everything's happily back to normal, and it's unclear whether it'll ever be. On the minus side, it's hard to get too invested in this, and I think the reason is that the show has pulled back from Buffy's experience. She's been through several layers of hell before, but then the viewer was always with her. The only time I can remember having a problem with getting into her head is "When She Was Bad," and even there we do tend to know what she's experienced, and by the end of that episode, her behavior is fully understandable. The rest of the time, the viewer has always shared the hero's journey. This, on the other hand, is more like what happened to Angel in S3. We only have a vague idea of what she's been through, and how she's perceiving the world. S3 could get away with this, because Angel wasn't the main character, and only had to be seen for a few minutes each episode, almost always from the hero's POV. Here, since the show's about Buffy and the world revolves around her, they're going to have to let us in.


He does kind of have a point. I've always felt a disconnect from Buffy in S6 and S7 that wasn't there in the earlier seasons. I attributed it to her depression in S6 (depressed people often come across as pretty blank) and her 'General Buffy' persona in S7. But maybe it was a change in the writing, as well--the later seasons seemed to be less her POV than, say, S2 and S3 when the viewer was pretty much installed in her head.

Huh.

A San Francisco arts group is putting Once More With Feeling on stage: Buffy Musical Lives Again.

Neat.

Uninvite or disinvite? Which is correct in the Buffyverse?

When I started reading Buffyverse fanfic, the first big archive site I found was All About Spike. Which worked for me because he was my favourite character. Anyway, one of the things that I was quite delighted with was the wide variety of ways that people came up with to get the chip out of Spike's head.

Being old and fogey as I am (and becoming more so every day), I now can't remember half of the dechipping methods that I've read about. In fact, I can only come up with three. I don't want to spoil people for any stories that they haven't read, so I'm putting this very short list under the cut - click at your own risk.

( This would be the cut. )

I know there were so many more. What ways have you read?

I'm confused. Everyone seems to know that William's last name was Pratt all of a sudden and I don't know why. Please to explain?

Have made it to p. 304 of Harry Potter. I think I can say, with conviction, that I've never seen so many semi-colons used in one book before.

( Teeny spoiler for HBP )

In other news, Dad has made it to Blood Ties in BtVS S5 and called me tonight to ask where Glory had gone. He thought maybe he'd seen the last of her - I don't think he's quite grasped the idea of the seasonal Big Bad yet. He hated the episode Triangle (I rather agree with him on this one - it was a weak episode), but liked Lydia from the Watcher's Council in Checkpoint. I told him that Lydia's thesis is available online (http://www.channelingboards.com/SpikeThesis/) and have just discovered that an updated bound version is available for purchase (http://www.cafepress.com/teaattheford.12070289). Hee - I might have to get a copy of that.

Oh, and his theory for what happens to Buffy at the end of the season? She becomes a vampire. Heh.

If you're a Lost fan as well as a Buffy fan, check out archbishopm's version of Boone and Locke singing "Going Through The Motions" from Once More With Feeling here.

Just make sure you're not drinking anything when you read it.

Here's a preview of the soon-to-be-released Subway Spike figure: Clicky

The safety pins - hee!

Most of my reading prior to LJ was at All About Spike, partly because I liked Spike as a character so much, but also because it was the first archive I found with such consistently good stories. (Maybe we should have an archive appreciation week too?)

After coming to LJ, however, I found new authors I hadn't heard of before. Lots. Lots that I've read and lots more that I haven't had time to read yet. It's hard to pick from among them, but here are a few of my favourites:

jwaneeta writes delightfuly insane prose in the style of P.G. Wodehouse. Her story A Proper Funeral stars Giles, Spike, and Angel, and is side-splittingly funny. jwaneeta has an unusual past and uses it to great effect when she does commentary on her own story The Code of the Watchers with Sister Angelus. Just reading jwaneeta's posts can be wildly entertaining, whether she is expounding on the loveliest desk in the storied annals of deskery or mourning frozen octopi that look like tiny used condoms with tentacles. Check her out.

thenyxie is a wonderfully talented writer with an incredible range. I've pimped it before, but I'll pimp it again: In The Alley (How It All Comes Down) is her take on what happened after the scene faded to black at the end of Not Fade Away and it is brilliant. In my mind, it's canon. Song of the Open Road takes a look at the post-Chosen lives of the surviving BtVS characters and is equally wonderful. Season of the Witch was written for her own Tales of the Slayers Ficathon and tells the story of a Slayer in the days of the Salem witch trials.

stoptocheer is an author I just started to read recently - she does a fantastic Xander. The Tale That The Watcher Tells looks at what might have happened if Xander's and Giles's roles had been reversed in The Wish. Not only is it a great story, but it gets rid of the plot hole in the original episode (see my post here). Seven Conversations Xander Harris Never Had With Rupert Giles sums up Xander's character perfectly and The Inherent Ineluctability of One's Fate is a great alternative ending to BtVS S6.

More tomorrow!

FANFIC AUTHORS APPRECIATION WEEK

March 6 through March 13

Post to your LJ each day at least one of your favorite fanfic authors and why you love them, their work, and why they need more appreciation.

Well, I'm obviously coming into this rather late and I don't think I'm as well-read as many people, but I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring anyway.

I only discovered fanfic last year and, to be honest, I can't remember what or who I read first. Among the first and certainly largely responsible for convincing me that there was quality fanfic out there was cousinjean. I'm pretty sure I found her first at All About Spike (I still do alot of reading there) - my favourite stories were And Miles To Go, Future Imperfect, The Butterfly Effect, and Perfect World. From there, I discovered Dancing Lessons and others. It's hard to walk away from your computer in the middle of a cousinjean story.

Not long after finding cousinjean, I discovered rahirah (also at All About Spike - I love this site!). I doubt very much if I can say anything about the Barbverse that has not already been said - it's fantastic, it's perfect, I've read everything there is at least twice. I salivate whenever a new chapter is posted. Someone should be paying this woman - there are books in print that are not nearly as good as her stories.

And then I found spikewriter and her Magic Box Stories, which I also loved. I definitely need to return to her site and read Seven Years in the Desert.

And that was my introduction to fanfic, and a pretty fine introduction at that.