and now - fannish content!

[lotesse]

I fell back into BtVS courtesy of Jenny Trout's watchthrough - I don't know that I'd recommend it though, really, I don't think her analysis is quite smart enough to be worth reading. But she ships Buffy/Giles in a loud, proud, and kinky way that seriously works for me, and I started poking through episodes to find bits she was talking about because her screenshots are all bleeding broken, and then I was in the middle of season 3?

-I like the arc of the whole story best when I'm shipping Buffy/Giles. All other readings are too depressing.

-I am still fucking easy for Angel though, and I don't understand why - after all this time, really? He just does it for me in some idk hindbrainy way. B/A is uncomfortable for me now, though, owing to Ex Issues.

-I don't like s4 on the whole but that is some boss shit it's doing at the end with Frankenstein/parenting issues/Haraway-style cyborgism. Hella fine structural work. Elegant af.

-Joss really does still work for me, in a deep and fundamental way

-although all of a sudden I think Willow is disturbing and creepy as a person, and i'm not at all surprised she skins a dude after a few years tbqh

-wow also Riley's Black Friend is the weakest character in the entire buffyverse, what the hell.

Comments

[msilverstar]

I watched it on Netflix with my daughter a couple of years ago, it was creaky but mostly watchable, though I had to explain some of the sex and violence.

[lotesse]

Interesting! I didn't watch Buffy until I was in college - in fact, I may have actually read Carol Clover's work on gender, horror, and the Final Girl before I watched Buffy - because I was brought up without a tv. But I remember having to get a lot of explanations when I read The Scarlet Letter as a kid, and I bet it was similar - you can tell there's something big there, something weird, but you don't have the cultural context to understand all the knurdles and permutations and elisions that are going on, so you just end up with this confusing impression of hidden intensity.

[autumnia]

I loved Buffy! I still do, but on a lesser scale and I wish I was more caught up in the comics. The show went a bit downhill after Season 3 and Riley, the Initiative and the Glory storylines never really grew on me.

And I still ship B/A, though I don't really understand why either. I think there's something about their journey together that appeals to me and no one can ever take his place in her life. I can only see Buffy with Spike in a platonic relationship and besides, Sarah herself is a B/A fan.

Willow definitely became creepier in the later seasons when she continued to dabble in dark(er) magic. It probably began when she brought Buffy back and things escalated from there. Can't remember in what BtVS seasons she crossed over with the Angel series but I think she appeared more normal when she was in LA.

[lotesse]

Willow actually set me off a lot earlier than that this time around. Narratively, I think it was a problem for her character that Joss couldn't figure out how to write in college/careers; too much of her characterization has to fall away to let her stay living at Buffy's house through her early twenties, and I think it leaves an unsettling emptiness underneath her wide-eyed sweetness, a trait that worked for me when she was the smart girl but less so when she seemed to lose all life direction. What at first reads as protective coloration started to feel manipulative for me by mid s4.