From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V4 #21 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Wednesday, February 20 2002 Volume 04 : Number 021 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/comments0218 ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/comments0218 ["Marta Grabien" ] Re: b/comments0218 ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/comments0218 [Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury ] Re: b/comments0218 ["Marta Grabien" ] Re: b/comments0218 [allenw ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 20:05:13 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments0218 Well, I =did= start a discussion--yay for me--pity I couldn't be troubled to weigh in again before now... A few words to begin with on "Older and Far Away." Everyone seems quite delighted with Tara--with which I heartily agree: seeing her involved, taking charge, and taking the piss out of Spike all at a go was hilarious and heartwarming--and everyone also seems very much fed up with Dawn--which is understandable; but a balanced view is that 1) Buffy has to take a deal of responsibility for neglecting Dawn 2) Dawn's understandable disaffection has gone way too far: there is a line between petty thievery and shoplifting which she has clearly crossed. Things will have to change in the Summers household, and both Buffy and Dawn are going to have to do something about it. It seems to me that Tara's influence--maybe just her emotional support--has given Buffy some resistance to Spike. But we'll see how it is when they're not in a house full of people. Nobody's commented on the =two= "holy @#$%!" moments connected with Anya's buddy the "justice demon"(!). (Though the script apparently spells her name Halfrek, I persist in hearing it spelled as Anglo-Saxon: Haelfric.) First of all, of course, the fact that she was the guidance counselor: curious to know how soon people picked up on that. Gullible me, I didn't realize it until she was lurking outside the house, and I said to myself, "@#$%! Who =is= she?" And realized the truth just a moment before she went all "veiny." As for the =second= "oh @#$%": it's the answer to the following question: why did Spike and Haelfric recognize one another? This was apparently so subtly done that even my daughter Deirdre, quick to the mark with this sort of thing, didn't figure it out; but after racking my brains =again=, I figured it out: She's Cecily, the woman William the Bloody Awful was mooning over back in the 19th century! (It's even the same actress, Kali Rocha, as the IMDB confirms.) How's that for a stunner? So are they going to have her back some more, and if so, how does that mess with Spike's feelings for Buffy? (And will Cute Guy(tm) be back to make it even more complicated?) Speaking of Buffy and Spike... Meredith: We founder once more on our fundamental disagreement. You referred to Buffy's "Never" (in answer to Spike's question if she trusted him) as "completely unbelievable." By which I take you to mean that it was a lie, or a fib anyway, a front quickly put up to protect herself. (Please correct me if I'm misinterpreting.) Whereas I think just the opposite: I think it was the truest word she spoke in the scene. Remember that when Buffy dissembles, she blusters; it's when she's overcome by genuine emotion (especially negative) that she becomes semi- inaudible. (It's an actorly tic of SMG's, truth be told.) To me, it connects up with her heartfelt "Don't make this any harder for me" in the fastfood place, and with her teary-eyed reaction to Tara's attempted reassurance. Not trusting Spike is the way she =really= feels. Remember, the last time Spike tied her up, it was to 1) tell her he loved her 2) simultaneously, to threaten to kill her. And he can now kill her without repercussions, and she knows it. No, she =doesn't= trust him: remember that even after she had entrusted Joyce's and Dawn's safety to him, she =instantly= assumed he had betrayed her (and Dawn) when Glory captured him. (Her exact words, from "Intervention": "Listen, Skirt Girl: we're not going to save [Spike], we're going to kill him. He knows who the Key is, and there's no way he's not telling Glory.") And she felt the need, at the end of the same episode, to go to the length of disguising herself as the robot to go figure out if Spike =had= told Glory. That's trust? My interpretation is that her anger and contempt toward Spike is not a defensive front, but a result of her rage at not being able to protect Joyce and Dawn from Glory herself, and at =having= to entrust them to Spike, the only being in Sunnydale strong enough to put up a fight; also possibly angry at herself for taking advantage of Spike's willingness, i.e. using him. And now she's shamed and enraged that she has this irresistible physical compulsion towards him; this vampire that she's hated since he came to Sunnydale the first time, and who has caused her no end of trouble since. This still seems to me to be the simplest explanation; and I still maintain that overlaying it with a romance-trope of original hate = eventual love or external hate = internal love twists the whole thing unconscionably into a Gordian knot. Karen: I found much of interest in your comments; but what you were attempting to articulate was such a nested tangle of motivations that it made for a nested tangle of sentences (pot calling the kettle black alert!), especially the paragraph about Buffy battering Spike. I =think= I understand you to be saying that Buffy needs to believe that Spike's love has an ulterior motive (rather than being unconditional), and Spike needs to believe that Buffy is hurting him because she secretly loves him. I invite you to elaborate. That's enough for one day's go--except to chime in with agreement about everyone's ideas about the Nemesises (yay David!). Warren is out of control, or will be soon, there's clearly going to be conflict between him and Jonathan, and Jonathan is very likely to betray Warren. And Dawn seems a likely target of their nefarious plans. Oh, one last thing: Warren always refers to The Slayer, which indicates his attitude towards her; Andrew, who hardly knows her, follows Warren's lead; but Jonathan tends to refer to her, at least sometimes, as Buffy--indicating =his= attitude, i.e. he's someone he knows, and at least secretly admires. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 17:32:38 -0800 From: "Marta Grabien" Subject: Re: b/comments0218 I still say the 'big bad' this season is addiction. Buffy to Spike Dawn to thievery Willow to witchcraft Not sure what Zander is addicted to, but that may come out. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 00:25:43 -0800 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/comments0218 At 05:05 PM 2/18/2002 , DGK wrote: >everyone also >seems very much fed up with Dawn--which is understandable; but a balanced >view is that 1) Buffy has to take a deal of responsibility for neglecting >Dawn 2) Dawn's understandable disaffection has gone way too far: there is >a line between petty thievery and shoplifting which she has clearly >crossed. Things will have to change in the Summers household, and both >Buffy and Dawn are going to have to do something about it. It's rather like the moment when everyone (or at least me) got fed up with Faith. In this case it's more startling, as even when we already knew she was stealing last season, Dawn was still the cute kid. >Nobody's commented on the =two= "holy @#$%!" moments >connected with Anya's buddy the "justice demon"(!). (Though >the script apparently spells her name Halfrek, I persist in >hearing it spelled as Anglo-Saxon: Haelfric.) First of all, >of course, the fact that she was the guidance counselor: >curious to know how soon people picked up on that. Gullible >me, I didn't realize it until she was lurking outside the >house, and I said to myself, "@#$%! Who =is= she?" And >realized the truth just a moment before she went all "veiny." My reaction, until I recognized her, was "is this going to be a re-run of 'The Wish'?" For some reason, after I recognized her, it was OK, because at least this time the demon was already there and didn't come out of nowhere as Anya originally did. >This was apparently so subtly done that even my daughter >Deirdre, quick to the mark with this sort of thing, didn't >figure it out; but after racking my brains =again=, I figured >it out: > >She's Cecily, the woman William the Bloody Awful was mooning >over back in the 19th century! (It's even the same actress, >Kali Rocha, as the IMDB confirms.) How's that for a stunner? >So are they going to have her back some more, and if so, how >does that mess with Spike's feelings for Buffy? Wow: thanks for pointing that out. I remember Cecily (though not by name), but didn't make the connection at all. What do you mean, _even_ the same actress? If it were the same character without being the same actress, we'd need more textual clues to make the connection, and I don't think they've ever done that on BTVS. So the actress doesn't seal the identification, she makes it in the first place; it's Spike's recognition that seals it (though we already know it must be somebody he knows), because it's always possible it could be the same actres without being the same character. Your interpretation of Buffy's distrust of Spike rings OK with me. _Angel_ tonight. The love scenes were just as agonizing as the last time, and I kept expecting Dennis to bop Cordy and Groo over the head while they were making out in her apartment. (Wasn't Groo the name of Sergio Aragones's cartoon tarzan? And doesn't this Groo remind you of that one?) However, the humor was somewhat more successful. I liked this wry line from Wesley: Gunn: Are you [Fred's] brother? Wesley: Apparently. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 12:29:21 -0700 From: Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury Subject: Re: b/comments0218 At 08:05 PM 2/18/02 -0500, Donald G. Keller wrote: >She's Cecily, the woman William the Bloody Awful was mooning >over back in the 19th century! (It's even the same actress, >Kali Rocha, as the IMDB confirms.) How's that for a stunner? >So are they going to have her back some more, and if so, how >does that mess with Spike's feelings for Buffy? They have to bring her back. I want to know how she turned into a "justice" demon and if Spike had anything to do with that. There's got to be more to all of this and it must be relevant or else they wouldn't have stuck in the recognition bit--right? >(And will >Cute Guy(tm) be back to make it even more complicated?) If he has any brains at all, he won't come back. At 05:32 PM 2/18/02 -0800, Marta Grabien wrote: >I still say the 'big bad' this season is addiction. > >Buffy to Spike > >Dawn to thievery > >Willow to witchcraft > >Not sure what Zander is addicted to, but that may come out. to Anya? (Or just to breathing--no matter how nervous he feels about marriage and all that goes with it, there's no way he can back out because he knows Anya has very powerful friends....) So, are the Nemeses (plural of Nemesis) addicted to anything? Phaedre/Kathleen workshop@burgoyne.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 11:54:41 -0800 From: "Marta Grabien" Subject: Re: b/comments0218 > So, are the Nemeses (plural of Nemesis) addicted to anything? sure, power. After all, they are all 'losers' in societys eyes. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 20:13:43 -0600 (CST) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/comments0218 On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury wrote: > At 08:05 PM 2/18/02 -0500, Donald G. Keller wrote: > >She's Cecily, the woman William the Bloody Awful was mooning > >over back in the 19th century! (It's even the same actress, > >Kali Rocha, as the IMDB confirms.) How's that for a stunner? > >So are they going to have her back some more, and if so, how > >does that mess with Spike's feelings for Buffy? > > They have to bring her back. I want to know how she turned > into a "justice" demon and if Spike had anything to do with > that. There's got to be more to all of this and it must be > relevant or else they wouldn't have stuck in the recognition > bit--right? > Given her current Norse-germanic name, it seems likely to me that she's of similar vintage to Anya(nka), implying that she was "on the job" as Cecily when Spike knew her. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V4 #21 ****************************