Re: OT: Request and Questions - Rewrite season 6

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

Spoilers for "Seeing Red" and the promo for "Villains"

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question, asking what in the original post was spoilery.

To my mind, the question "should Willow fall and how?" rather strongly
implies that there would be a fall a-coming. Which an unspoiled person
would find quite spoilery for the end of "Seeing Red" and the promo for
"Villains". Given that it's the only specific issue you enquire on, and
that you ask for details of the "how", I doubt that many people would
simply think this was a random idea you were considering. 

(If there were no Dark Willow storyline in the current and next
episodes, a purely speculative question on that subject would probably
have read something like "do you think more or less should be done with
Willow's problems with magic? Should she lose control and go over to
the dark side?" But the way yours was phrased virtually assured the
reader that Willow's Fall was a certainty, and thus, IMO, merited
Spoiler Space.)

I may be a little sensitive here, because, if I recall correctly, I
never got directly spoiled for this, just pecked at with a barrage of
comments like "What do you think an Evil Willow would be like?", which
eventually became "What do...WILL be like?" and "What would make her go
over the edge?" became "what WILL make her, etc?" The constant
speculations about the implications of the plot twist basically made it
apparent that the plot twist itself was a given. (IIRC, this is what
drove me off of the board where I met Willow X.) 

So it wasn't flat-out specific and spoilery, but it was in the "why is
she talking about this?" category of quasi-spoiler, enough that I would
have hid/omitted it if I were writing about it. Much as in the same way
that "Should any of the characters die?" or "What should happen with
Willow and Tara?" sounds like speculation, while "Should Tara die and
how?" sounds like this is something that happens, else why would you
ask? (But it's nowhere near as blatant as
"should Tara have died?", obviously, so thanks for that.)

So again, not the world's most humungous spoiler, but when the single
specific question you ask is about the specific plot twist that just
happened in Tuesday's ep, I read and go "hmm, probably should have used
the Spoiler Space for that." Again, not the biggest, but I'm pretty
sensitive on this at the moment, I suppose.

Dan

who agrees with blinviz that Spuffy could have been handled better (very
inconsistent writing of Spike, which I'll get into later), but that any
depression-born relationship only served to reinforce Weak, Mopey Buffy
and further alienate the audience from the character and thus the story.

If she'd been making her own decisions and said "right now, all I need
is a fling and that's all this is. Spike knows I don't love him and he
knows he'd better not try any crap or he's dust, so mind your own
business and butt out, guys!", I would have respected her much more.

Don't get me wrong, I still would have fretted that this was a thin
wedge to B/S romance, I would have said it was much better than Spike
deserves, that Buffy was running from her issues and that she was
kidding herself if she thought she could let Spike into her life and not
pay the consequences. But it would have been miles ahead of "yes, no,
yes, no, I can't resist your sinister attraction" and "you belong in
darkness" and all the misogynistic swill we've had to put up with this
year. It would have been Buffy being Buffy, dealing with her situation
and coming up with a plan, as she usually does. (It just would have
been the WRONG plan, as many of hers are.) And it would have let me
keep far more empathy for the characters and interest in the show.

(thought I'd better throw some commentary Dana's way, to make up for my
visit to LectureLand <g>)