From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V3 #145 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Friday, September 28 2001 Volume 03 : Number 145 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: b/again, the gift [GHighPine@aol.com] RE: b/again, the gift [Dawn Friedman ] Re: b/again, the gift [Dawn Friedman ] Re: b/again, the gift [Dawn Friedman ] Re: b/again, the gift ["David S. Bratman" ] RE: b/again, the gift ["Karin Rabe" ] RE: b/again, the gift ["Karin Rabe" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 09:55:24 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/again, the gift In a message dated 9/26/01 8:48:40 PM Pacific Daylight Time, rabek@email.uc.edu writes: << overall Buffy's death still had a certain sense of inevitability to it, as her final solution to all the inner =and= outer conflict that had developed over the story arc, certainly Season Five's, but even over the entire series. To the point where it is indeed hard to imagine how they can resurrect her on UPN, without cheapening both her self-sacrifice and that entire arc. >> I share Donald's feelings about the finale, but I agree with all the above. Still, it's not hard to see how they can resurrect her in a =practical= way. I have not rewatched the finale at all, but it seems that -- hadn't Glory created some dimensional vortexy thingamabob, which Buffy fell into, really leaving only her body dead in this dimension? Or maybe just my brain filled in that impression. Gayle Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 20:44:46 -0400 From: Dawn Friedman Subject: RE: b/again, the gift At 11:47 PM 9/26/01 -0400, Karin wrote: >But what =really= bugged me about "The Gift," was Dawn's IMHO very out of >character behavior while Spike was doing his best to rescue her: had she not >screamed out his name, robbing him of his one advantage, the element of >surprise, the Joel Gray character would never have accomplished his purpose. I'm not sure of that. I got the impression that ol' Doc would have been hard to sneak up on in any case -- and that he might well have beaten Spike even with the element of surprise. Everyone underestimated him (except Buffy, I suppose!) Dawn ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 21:00:50 -0400 From: Dawn Friedman Subject: Re: b/again, the gift At 09:22 AM 9/26/01 -0700, DB wrote: >Well put. That's exactly my reaction. Faked loss cheapens real loss, even >in fiction. My tendency is to say, "Not if it's done right." Sometimes (very, very rarely these days, but still) even in real life you think someone's dead and they aren't. The grief you feel is exactly the same, right up to the point when they come back, as the grief you feel when they don't. But I'm biased. Having lost someone for real not long after the Buffy finale, and knowing she was comforted by the knowledge that Buffy, at least, would be back, I can't help feeling that one "real loss" last season was more than enough. >Which is also why I dislike happy endings that consist of >supposedly dead characters coming alive again. Well, 99% of the time, they're done so badly you end up hating *all* the characters. >(What about Gandalf? Well, >his return wasn't the happy ending - and this is a trick that can be pulled >_once_.) Also, his return was ambiguous at first, permanently mysterious in some ways, and he was changed. I think that made a difference. Dawn ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 21:08:37 -0400 From: Dawn Friedman Subject: Re: b/again, the gift At 09:13 AM 9/26/01 -0400, Micole wrote: >Always find suspension-of-disbelief sawed through by the failure of the >Scoobies to recognize the Buffybot after catching on to April in 10 seconds >flat. They were unrealistically slow. But I thought part of the point of that was that Spike's specs were a hell of a lot closer to his model than April was to any human being whatsoever. Spike may have been not much better as a fanfic writer than he was as a poet, but he had actual feelings for Buffy as an individual, and some clues about what that individual was like. Dawn ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 19:10:49 -0700 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/again, the gift At 06:00 PM 9/27/2001 , Dawn wrote: At 09:22 AM 9/26/01 -0700, DB wrote: Well put. That's exactly my reaction. Faked loss cheapens real loss, even in fiction. My tendency is to say, "Not if it's done right." Sometimes (very, very rarely these days, but still) even in real life you think someone's dead and they aren't. The grief you feel is exactly the same, right up to the point when they come back, as the grief you feel when they don't. If it's done right, it isn't faked. That's not quite tautological. A missing person, who might well be dead, is not the same thing as a person definitely assumed to be dead who then turns up. And HOW they turn up has a lot to do with it. Even good authors can fall for this. I like Mark Twain a lot, but I get really tired of the number of times in "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn" that a known truant runs off, is instantly assumed to be dead, and then shows up usually just in time for his own funeral. Whereas, when somebody really dies (for instance Pap Finn), this knowledge is kept secret. (What about Gandalf? Well, his return wasn't the happy ending - and this is a trick that can be pulled _once_.) Also, his return was ambiguous at first, permanently mysterious in some ways, and he was changed. I think that made a difference. That's also true. In the Buffyverse we have the interesting variant of people dying and coming back as vampires, which puts strange emotional twists on things. (I found Gunn's encounter with his dead sister to be particularly affecting, even though she'd hardly been around live.) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 00:14:31 -0400 From: "Karin Rabe" Subject: RE: b/again, the gift Gayle, re: > > Still, it's not hard to see how they can resurrect her in a =practical= > way. I have not rewatched the finale at all, but it seems that -- hadn't > Glory created some dimensional vortexy thingamabob, which Buffy > fell into, > really leaving only her body dead in this dimension? Or maybe > just my brain > filled in that impression. > I had much the same impression, but then, the body =is= what dies, in this dimension, no? :) And in the previews I've been seeing of the UPN premiere, her arm comes out of the grave, just like a vampire's undead revival. - ---Karin ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 00:16:38 -0400 From: "Karin Rabe" Subject: RE: b/again, the gift Dawn, re: I got the impression that ol' Doc would have been > hard to sneak up on in any case -- and that he might well have > beaten Spike > even with the element of surprise. Everyone underestimated him (except > Buffy, I suppose!) Possibly, but because of her scream, we'll never know. It seemed like an out of character contrivance to me, one that made Spike's defeat not just possible but inevitable. - ---Karin ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V3 #145 *****************************