Directly from the Housemate's mouth
Apr. 3rd, 2010 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backup[Snick: I was hearing some complaints about my insufficient reportage of housemate reactions, so after we watched OMWF today, I offered to let the housemate speak for herself. Here be the result.
IMPORTANT: For this post only, no spoilers past OMWF in the comments, please. You know what I mean. No implications, no hints. 'Kay?]
The Body
I tend to have few emotional barriers between me and the world. I've worked years to shore up my heart's defenses, because otherwise I'm incapacitated by sympathetic compassion or grief. "Has the fear threshold of a 6-year-old" has been said of me. That I can watch a show with vampires in it AT ALL, let alone featured regularly (and enjoy it!) is something which I find myself shaking my head over increduously from time to time.
That said, I was prepared for The Body to have a much greater, uncontrollable impact on me than it did. Snick had warned me earlier in the season that there would be "unexpected tragic major-character deaths," and I guessed that it would be Joyce, so when it WAS Joyce, I must admit, with some guilt, that I felt the tiniest bit of validation. "Aha!" I said to myself, "I guessed it right!" And it took out enough of the sting I was able to handle it.
The episode was very precise in expressing the immediate pain of losing someone so close: the semi-public revelation to Dawn was especially awful, when the camera is behind the glass of the art classroom and the audience is suddenly sharing the view with the 8th-graders. Another dead-on was Willow's fixation on her clothes, the certainty that if only, if only she could solve *this* problem of "the blue one," then she would be brave enough to solve Joyce's death. When a life-long friend died a little more than a year ago, I went to be with her family and obsessed over whether or not everyone had enough coffee, if there was fresh coffee in the pot, whether or not there was coffee in the cupboard. Poignantly powerful was Anya's confused outburst in which she begs her friends to please explain what she is supposed to do and feel. It would have struck a chord from anyone, but that Anya was chalking up her natural grief to ex-demon culture shock made me want to hug and rock her gently.
The jittery cinematography - how the film sputters and jumps - was an excellent tool to create the panicky mood of Buffy discovering Joyce, and Joyce's actress did an amazing job of playing dead, especially when Buffy is giving mouth-to-mouth and CPR. Can you imagine playing limp and heavy and responseless to all that?
My only "c'mon guys!" moment to the writers is when Dawn (the little twerp) sneaks off to the morgue to look at her mom's body and gets herself LOCKED in the MORGUE with a NEKKID VAMPIRE. Such a distraction to the emotional tenor of the episode as a whole.
Intervention
The conversation is recreated creatively.
"So the Internet wants your response to the Sexbot episode," says Snick.
"Cool," says I. "Which one is the Sexbot episode?"
"So Buffy goes off to the desert and the spirit of the first Slayer says that death is her gift."
"Oh yeah. That was in that episode?"
"And Spike has ordered the Sexbot and the Scoobies see them in the cemetary together."
Oh yeah. She has the pretty pale skirt on with the accordian pleats, thinks I. It was all splayed out creatively over Spike's chest and pants to give the illusion of cheesy kinky graveyard impossible-robot sex without nakedness.
"And Buffy gets angry with the Scoobies because they can't tell her from a robot," says Snick.
"Huh. I remember that, too, I think. Is that when the Buffybot's wearing the pretty skirt?"
"Maybe."
"I remember the skirt."
Once More With Feeling
This was my very, very first Buffy episode which I watched with my brother-in-law around 2006. He was a critical-serious Buffy fan and was trying to introduce me without scaring me. (Remember - fear threshold of a 6-year-old. Which episode would you show a 6-year-old?) So he decided "the musical episode" would be perfect.
Except what a catastrophe! Plot development everywhere, references to all kinds of big past events, and I didn't know any of the characters at all except one of them was named Buffy, and I was kinda sure that Buffy was a woman. I spent most of that watch-through pointing out people and saying "Is that one Buffy?" ("No, that's Dawn/Anya/Willow/Tara/Giles.") "Oh."
So ever since I've been watching the series in choronological order with Snick and developed a much greater certainty that Buffy is a woman, I've been looking forward to "the musical episode." And it was fabulous. I've been rooting a weeny bit for Spike's tender affections and to have them finally kiss was a swoony moment for me. (I kinda block out that he ordered the creepy Sexbot and had the Shrine-o'Buffy complete with stolen panties. Oh yeah, he chained her up in his crypt. I block that too.)
I'm really curious to see how this romance plays out in soon-and-near episodes because when I first saw "Something Blue" and they were "engaged," the idea of a Buffy and Spike couple was ridiculous. I burst a seam laughing over it and had Snick play some of their conversations more than once so that I could giggle helplessly some more. I never took the idea seriously, and even when Snick assured me that, in fandom, all ships are possible, I scoffed at the notion of Buffy and Spike. It just - what? - are you kidding me? Puh-lease!
(Did you see me say "ships?" Can I be a real fan now that I've established my street cred?)
So I forgot about it until suddenly Spike woke up with Buffy-visions. And I sputtered and gasped and yelled and pouted about Spike's sudden lusting, which generally got creepier and more pathetic by the episode. (Did we mention the Sexbot? And stolen panties?) However, as lusting gradually and sporadically was replaced by militant affection and desire-to-protect, my digusted "ughs!" were replaced with soft "awws." For some reason Spike's "king of pain" stance strikes my heart's chords when Angel's "king of pain" stance grates my teeth.
~~~
And now for something not Spike and Buffy from "Once More With Feeling."
Giles' adult uncertainty in his song was very heart-felt. A little uncomfortable with the explictness of Tara and Willow's duet. Glad to see some of Xander and Anya's premarital anxieties. And dancing janitors!
That's what I got.
IMPORTANT: For this post only, no spoilers past OMWF in the comments, please. You know what I mean. No implications, no hints. 'Kay?]
The Body
I tend to have few emotional barriers between me and the world. I've worked years to shore up my heart's defenses, because otherwise I'm incapacitated by sympathetic compassion or grief. "Has the fear threshold of a 6-year-old" has been said of me. That I can watch a show with vampires in it AT ALL, let alone featured regularly (and enjoy it!) is something which I find myself shaking my head over increduously from time to time.
That said, I was prepared for The Body to have a much greater, uncontrollable impact on me than it did. Snick had warned me earlier in the season that there would be "unexpected tragic major-character deaths," and I guessed that it would be Joyce, so when it WAS Joyce, I must admit, with some guilt, that I felt the tiniest bit of validation. "Aha!" I said to myself, "I guessed it right!" And it took out enough of the sting I was able to handle it.
The episode was very precise in expressing the immediate pain of losing someone so close: the semi-public revelation to Dawn was especially awful, when the camera is behind the glass of the art classroom and the audience is suddenly sharing the view with the 8th-graders. Another dead-on was Willow's fixation on her clothes, the certainty that if only, if only she could solve *this* problem of "the blue one," then she would be brave enough to solve Joyce's death. When a life-long friend died a little more than a year ago, I went to be with her family and obsessed over whether or not everyone had enough coffee, if there was fresh coffee in the pot, whether or not there was coffee in the cupboard. Poignantly powerful was Anya's confused outburst in which she begs her friends to please explain what she is supposed to do and feel. It would have struck a chord from anyone, but that Anya was chalking up her natural grief to ex-demon culture shock made me want to hug and rock her gently.
The jittery cinematography - how the film sputters and jumps - was an excellent tool to create the panicky mood of Buffy discovering Joyce, and Joyce's actress did an amazing job of playing dead, especially when Buffy is giving mouth-to-mouth and CPR. Can you imagine playing limp and heavy and responseless to all that?
My only "c'mon guys!" moment to the writers is when Dawn (the little twerp) sneaks off to the morgue to look at her mom's body and gets herself LOCKED in the MORGUE with a NEKKID VAMPIRE. Such a distraction to the emotional tenor of the episode as a whole.
Intervention
The conversation is recreated creatively.
"So the Internet wants your response to the Sexbot episode," says Snick.
"Cool," says I. "Which one is the Sexbot episode?"
"So Buffy goes off to the desert and the spirit of the first Slayer says that death is her gift."
"Oh yeah. That was in that episode?"
"And Spike has ordered the Sexbot and the Scoobies see them in the cemetary together."
Oh yeah. She has the pretty pale skirt on with the accordian pleats, thinks I. It was all splayed out creatively over Spike's chest and pants to give the illusion of cheesy kinky graveyard impossible-robot sex without nakedness.
"And Buffy gets angry with the Scoobies because they can't tell her from a robot," says Snick.
"Huh. I remember that, too, I think. Is that when the Buffybot's wearing the pretty skirt?"
"Maybe."
"I remember the skirt."
Once More With Feeling
This was my very, very first Buffy episode which I watched with my brother-in-law around 2006. He was a critical-serious Buffy fan and was trying to introduce me without scaring me. (Remember - fear threshold of a 6-year-old. Which episode would you show a 6-year-old?) So he decided "the musical episode" would be perfect.
Except what a catastrophe! Plot development everywhere, references to all kinds of big past events, and I didn't know any of the characters at all except one of them was named Buffy, and I was kinda sure that Buffy was a woman. I spent most of that watch-through pointing out people and saying "Is that one Buffy?" ("No, that's Dawn/Anya/Willow/Tara/Giles.") "Oh."
So ever since I've been watching the series in choronological order with Snick and developed a much greater certainty that Buffy is a woman, I've been looking forward to "the musical episode." And it was fabulous. I've been rooting a weeny bit for Spike's tender affections and to have them finally kiss was a swoony moment for me. (I kinda block out that he ordered the creepy Sexbot and had the Shrine-o'Buffy complete with stolen panties. Oh yeah, he chained her up in his crypt. I block that too.)
I'm really curious to see how this romance plays out in soon-and-near episodes because when I first saw "Something Blue" and they were "engaged," the idea of a Buffy and Spike couple was ridiculous. I burst a seam laughing over it and had Snick play some of their conversations more than once so that I could giggle helplessly some more. I never took the idea seriously, and even when Snick assured me that, in fandom, all ships are possible, I scoffed at the notion of Buffy and Spike. It just - what? - are you kidding me? Puh-lease!
(Did you see me say "ships?" Can I be a real fan now that I've established my street cred?)
So I forgot about it until suddenly Spike woke up with Buffy-visions. And I sputtered and gasped and yelled and pouted about Spike's sudden lusting, which generally got creepier and more pathetic by the episode. (Did we mention the Sexbot? And stolen panties?) However, as lusting gradually and sporadically was replaced by militant affection and desire-to-protect, my digusted "ughs!" were replaced with soft "awws." For some reason Spike's "king of pain" stance strikes my heart's chords when Angel's "king of pain" stance grates my teeth.
~~~
And now for something not Spike and Buffy from "Once More With Feeling."
Giles' adult uncertainty in his song was very heart-felt. A little uncomfortable with the explictness of Tara and Willow's duet. Glad to see some of Xander and Anya's premarital anxieties. And dancing janitors!
That's what I got.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 12:03 am (UTC)You have used the word "ship" and expressed an opinion often repeated by Spike fans. Street cred officially established!
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Date: 2010-04-04 01:40 am (UTC)~ Housemate
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Date: 2010-04-04 02:10 am (UTC)Sometime when you have absolutely nothing to do for the next five or six hours, you should get on the TV Tropes Wiki and look at all the tropes involving puns on the word "ship" (some of my favorites being "die for our ship" "ship to ship combat" and "shipper on deck").
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Date: 2010-04-04 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-04-04 02:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-04-04 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 12:16 am (UTC)For some reason Spike's "king of pain" stance strikes my heart's chords when Angel's "king of pain" stance grates my teeth.
So say we all! This line especially resonated with me. Consider your ticket punched!
Though the end of Intervention didn't strike anything? It's one of my favorite scenes ever, where she leans in and kisses him so gently. "What you did... for Dawn. That was real. I won't forget it."
Oh, plus he's all covered in sexy wounds! (Lauren knows what I'm talkin' 'bout.)
*appropriate icon is appropriate*
Date: 2010-04-04 01:06 am (UTC)I always know what you're talking about!
And yes. I will never get over how much I love watching him be all bloody and beautiful. And now the whole "he's very reckless with his body" line is what I associate with it as well.
Re: *appropriate icon is appropriate*
Date: 2010-04-04 01:19 am (UTC)*pleads ignorance*
Re: *appropriate icon is appropriate*
Date: 2010-04-04 01:21 am (UTC)But we don't expect you to have every line memorized like we do. ;)
Also, Emmie and I have had conversations about how attractive we find Spike when he's all bloody and such. It's a thing. :D
Re: *appropriate icon is appropriate*
Date: 2010-04-04 01:23 am (UTC)I meant the "he's reckless with his body line."
Re: *appropriate icon is appropriate*
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2010-04-04 01:47 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: *appropriate icon is appropriate*
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From:no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 01:44 am (UTC)~ Housemate
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 01:57 am (UTC)But I'm sorry to hear real life is stompy! Though I kinda love that "inert" can now be used as an accusation. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 04:32 am (UTC)That is, I remembered everything except for one thing - the kiss at the end! I remembered Buffy spoofing as the Sexbot, and Glory calling Spike "precious" in that torturous way, and I remember thinking "why is that elevator that Spike is riding moving if no one called it?" But I didn't remember the kiss and Buffy telling Spike "What you did for Dawn and me, that was real."
Which, when contrasted to the plasticine nature of the poor pitiful Sexbot, I feel is the point of the episode besides introducing the "Death is your gift" concept.
So thanks for poking me until I realized I needed to rewatch it.
~ Housemate
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 01:04 am (UTC)Such a distraction to the emotional tenor of the episode as a whole. I agree. I get what he was trying to do there, but to me that episode was about (as I think he even says on the commentary) the banality of death. I realize that in Buffy's world, vampires are banal and every day, but I kind of wish he'd left it out just so we could stay so completely immersed in the commonality of the episode.
I am cracking up forever about "Intervention." I, too, love the pretty skirt!
And it was fabulous. I've been rooting a weeny bit for Spike's tender affections and to have them finally kiss was a swoony moment for me. Awww! Welcome to the dark side! We have cookies!
(Did you see me say "ships?" Can I be a real fan now that I've established my street cred?) You'll be receiving your membership card in the mail any day now.
For some reason Spike's "king of pain" stance strikes my heart's chords when Angel's "king of pain" stance grates my teeth. You are so one of us. Yay!
Dancing janitors are always good things!
This was fun!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 01:12 am (UTC)Hi, I'm Emmie and I'm (also) your biggest fan! By biggest fan, I mean the one who constantly (forgets to) tell
sSnick how much I vicariously enjoy your reactions. :Dno subject
Date: 2010-04-04 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2010-04-04 04:26 am (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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Date: 2010-04-04 01:53 am (UTC)I have to say I *don't* get what Whedon was doing there with the vampire. The only thing I can think of was he needed a way to get Buffy to the morgue (couldn't she just wonder where Dawn is and follow her in, exactly as she did but minus a vampire?) or that he wanted to put Dawn in danger. Like she isn't in danger CONSTANTLY anyhow.
Blech to nameless nekkid vampire.
~ Housemate
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 02:03 am (UTC)Also, it's official: I like you. You make good puns!
I think what he was trying to do was show that Buffy never gets a day off. Like...her world never is entirely everyday, because the supernatural is always intruding, even in this most human of moments. Also, like I said, that killing vamps is part of her everyday-ness.
Like she isn't in danger CONSTANTLY anyhow. Poor Dawnie!
I agree with your "blech," though.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 02:20 am (UTC)What is with all the odd nicknaming, especially girls' names that get nicknamed into boyish names? Willow --> "Wil" and Dawn --> "Dawnie (Donnie) and I thought I remembered another one. And then there's Harmony --> "Harm." I can understand Willow's if Whedon is trying to make a lesbian/feminist statement, but the other two seem really strange to me. Also I'm convinced there's another one I'm not remembering offhand.
Humorously, the word verification for this comment is "Mr Eloise."
~ Housemate
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 02:24 am (UTC)Or Hush. She has a bubblegum pink shirt in Hush.
I notice bubblegum pink shirts a lot.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-04 06:29 am (UTC)My favorite bit of the Bot's outfit is the pink bedazzling of her faux leather jacket. And yes, if you join us, there could be icons involved...
I agree with everybody else, that you are already one of us, what with the saying of the word "ship", the disregard for Angel's paternalism couched as martyrdom (I could possibly be putting words in your mouth), and your willingness to be swayed by Spike's affection and fortitude (no matter what the cost to himself). All a bunch of big words, but all they mean is "Welcome aboard (the ship)!" Heh.