OT: re various (E Bailey) (was "Popular" fanfic couples)

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

Oh, great.  First thing in the morning&

> Yeah, Dan, I know, you hate Spike

The Spike who existed through S4 was my favorite character by the end of
S4.  The one you take credit for inventing was used as a vehicle to
trash all the other characters just so no one could take the moral high
ground with him.  Thus we got every bit of joy sucked out of the show,
out of the characters I loved (including the whiny, pathetic bitch Spike
became), and lived in an assinine world where Fucking Andrew could
blithely say "A lot of Buffy's people are murderers, too."  This sucked,
and it sucked because of Spike.   To (misquote) Television Without
Pity's *official description of the show* "Remarkably [BtVS] became one
of the best shows on television.  Just as remarkably, the show's sudden
decline the last three years made [us] want to jam stakes into [our]
eyes."

That's what the change from "Buffy and her friends" to "Great, Redeemed
Spike, the Evil bitch who mistreats him, and her stupid friends who are
Much Much Worse than Spike ever was" did.

So yes, hate.

> and, for some reason, the actor that plays him, 

JM has admitted to playing lines against the writers' and directors'
wishes to fluff Spike with the audience.  Given where that led&

He also had the famous interview where he said he wasn't "good at team
sports.  I'm more like 'give me the ball.  It's *my* ball.'"  He worked
constantly to build his own part to the detriment of the other
characters and the show as whole, and, unfortunately, succeeded.
Possibly because Joss has a gay crush, possibly because the WB put a lot
of pressure to deliver the old B/A ratings and Joss decided to copy
himself, possibly because he listened to a bunch of Spikettes on the
'Net scream "More Spike!" and decided to destroy everything good about
the show to get it, I don't know which.  But James was a part of it, and
while he's a fine comedian, he's an embarrassing scenery-chomping ham
when it comes to dramatics.

Yes, he sucks, too.

> because you get the same way whenever I >express a strong love for
Tara, or the actress >that played her

Different story.  Duller character, inferior actress, superior person.
(Amber is Class, through and through.)

> Now, granted, their presense didn't help this >ship's cause

Not the issue, and you should know it, given that I don't similarly
react to Angel, Riley, and Kennedy.  (Oz is a mixed story; very funny
character, bad relationship for Willow, but not part of the destruction
of the show, so less of a problem.)

In words of one syllable (well, except "Tara", "Buffy" and "Willow"),
Spike and Tara were used as tools to make us hate Buffy and Willow in
S6.  They (and Anya) were fluffed to the skies while B/W/X were crapped
on, launching a billion "I hate the Scoobies" and "Spike and Anya are
the only characters on this show I can stand" posts among the greater
portion of fandom.  Canon was bent into a pretzel to justify the
non-staking of Spike, multiple times, and Tara was a flaming hypocrite
whom the audience was supposed to love, love, love no matter what
happened.

> As I've said before, 

Repetition doesn't make it so.

> Spike had layers long before Season 5

Obsessive and violent tendencies, sure.  The stuff we saw later, not so
much.

> I'd posted a lot of Spike analysis on the >newsgroup during Season 4,
including figuring >he was probably a shy guy who wrote 
> romantic poetry a year before Fool For Love 
> aired. 

Yes, we know.  You got whatever the opposite of "Jossed" is, the story
twisted and *validated* your hypothesis.  Bully for you.  But&

> Seems everything was already in place well >before the arc. 

As *I've* posted before, this is demonstrably not so.  David Greenwalt
(you know, the man who *created the character*) said on the S2 DVD
featurettes (recorded between S4 and S5) that Spike's origins were
probably that of a "Cockney brawler" type.  Brad von Schmoopula,
Sensitive Poet was NOT the conception of the character, it was a
last-minute rewrite to serve the arc.

Remember, although some anti-Riley fans have hypothesized that Marc
Blucas was fired, this just doesn't appear to be so.  Joss has
constantly said that he wanted Marc to stay (and, yeah, Joss lies a lot,
but you can usually pick up a subtext then, and I'm not getting one
here), and Marc has made it clear from day one that it was his decision.
In a recent interview about "First Daughter" that barely touched on BtVS
he said that it was perfect timing for him because he got to be the male
lead and "I was able to leave ON MY OWN TERMS [emphasis mine]".  I tend
to believe him.

So, suddenly, pre-S5 (Blucas agreed to Riley's 10 appearances in that
year, but he was leaving before they ever started filming), Joss finds
his show down a male lead.  Again.  And obviously not looking forward to
having to replace Blucas with some new guy, given the trouble he'd had
getting the B/A fans to accept Riley.

And the WB is yelling "the ratings were better when Buffy was dating
Angel!"  And the show's contract with the WB is up at the end of the
season, too&

So Joss turns to his existing cast for Buffy's new boyfriend, and
chooses the vampire with the very vocal fan base.  Problem is, he's evil
and proud of it, so we have to make him more sympathetic.  Fortunately,
there's this loopy <g> theory on the 'net that Spike was a sensitive
bloke who liked to write poetry, which may not be how they'd written the
character (Spike, the "bad, rude man" whose sole interest in the arts
was a soap opera, was written to *contrast* with Angelus the Artist, but
never mind that), but hey, this is why we don't spell everything out, so
we can keep our options open.  

> Of course, there were a lot of things about 
> Spike that I could identify with. Same with >Tara.

Really?  You're a hypocrite who reaps the benefit of a double standard,
your sins ignored while others' are held against them?  Lucky you.
 
> Which means we can't criticize them when >they do something wrong? 

Never said that.  That's a Nixonian false alternative.  ("My enemies
want me to let the Russians take over the world.  But I am not going to
do that!", etc.)

> Willow did some very bad things. 

Well, not as bad as Tara did the first year of the relationship, but
yes, she made mistakes.  But implying that she did anything even in the
same ballpark as what Spike did on that bathroom floor is the sort of
Spuffy crap I shouldn't have to waste time with on this list.  

> I don't see how simply pointing out something >she did on the show,
which, by the way, was a >major plot development, is "saying something
> nasty" about her.

This is a pro-Willow list.  You want to cite the facts ("Willow did a
memory spell and Tara felt violated"), fine.  You want to put the most
possible pro-Spike, anti-Willow spin on those facts ("Willow did just as
bad as Spike, actually worse, and Tara forgave her, so Buffy MUST
forgive Spike"), that's not fine.  Very, very not fine.  Not here, bub.

(Before you give the "I never said that!" response, I never said you
said that. But I felt that you were implying that, and you were very,
very close to saying it flat-out, so that's where the warning came in.)

> She redeemed herself, and came out of it a >stronger, and more mature,
person than she >was before, a true champion. 

Or an empty shell treated like crap by Buffy and used only as a shaky
magical weapon with no emotional connection to anyone else, same diff.

> It was Willow's Hero's Journey that made her, 
> by the end, the second most important >character in the series, second
only to the title >character. 

It was Willow's place as Buffy's best, truest friend in a show all about
the power of friendship that made her the second-most (or even most)
important character on the show.

It was the fake, forced "Hero's Journey" (not all of which, btw, have to
include psychosis and murder, a fact Joss seems to have missed) on a
show desperate to claim St. Spike as Buffy's One True Friend, The Only
One Who's Been Watching Her Back, that raped Willow of every emotional
nuance she had and by the end of the show, shunted her down to about
sixth on the depth chart, behind the boringly-identical "redemption"
(Hallelujah!) arcs of Spike, Faith, Buffy, Fucking Andrew, and Wood.
(You'll notice that Willow gets written out of the **series finale** in
early Act 3, essentially, whereas the key Buffy/Faith, Buffy/Spike,
Faith/Wood and Fucking Andrew's Journey scenes all take place at or near
the climax.) 

> If she HADN'T developed beyond Season 3, >she'd have ended up like
Xander, the regular >who wasn't given anything to do by the end. 

Yet another dazzlingly false alternative.  Yes, being ignored *might*
have been worse.  But this was by no means the only story to tell about
Willow.  

We've told quite a few others here, for instance.

Dan

objecting to the vilest mischaracterizations of Willow is NOT wanting
her to be "saint-like at all times", as easy a defense for slurs as that
may be.



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Willow: "It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in."
Buffy:  "I kinda love you."
                     'Choices'

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