The Fic of a Snick

Dear Internet,

I like your show. However, I *still* do not like jump scenes, from the cat jumping out of the witch's chest in Season 1 to Robin Wood's fake-out death scene on the school bus in Season 7. Snick will testify that she spent a lot of time preparing me for jump scenes and giggling at me when I *still* jumped.

So, is there a modified version of all Buffydom with the jump scenes cut out, ala Phantom Menace with JarJar removed? And if not, will someone love me enough to create it for me? There could be cookies.

~ Housemate

Housemate wishes to inform the Internet that we have only two episodes left in the Great Buffywatch of '09-'10. We're finishing them this afternoon.

- "I could definitely be in love with Principal Wood." He does have a special something, doesn't he? Although she says he's less attractive now that he has a vendetta.

- Of Wood and Giles alone, during LMPTM: "I just realized: here are two really good-looking men, and they are so totally different." And it is the truth!

- Housemate (without any prompting at all): "I really don't like Kennedy. She doesn't understand the gravity of the situation."

Me: But she's awfully cute, isn't she?

Housemate: Yeah, in that, 'I'm cute because I was made to look cute so I am cute' way.

[True fact: Kennedy may still drive me up the wall, but Iyari Limon is growing on me. Who knew a living human being could have eyes that big?

At any rate, the housemate's good taste and sense persist.]

- Likes Andrew and wants to be his buddy. See what I said about her good taste?

- Me (during a flashback to Spike in the subway in FFL): You know, he has really nice arms.

Housemate: He really does. They're the kind of arms you go "Ow ow" over.

Me: Yes.

- Liked Potential and Storyteller quite a lot, which was to be expected. Also very much liked LMPTM and Get It Done, which I didn't expect. She said she liked the Going to War Music in Get It Done, and Spike getting his coat and his swagger back, and him beating up the demon to the Going to War Music, and the growing tension between him and Wood. (Although now she wishes they'd gone a bit more subtle with it in LMPTM. She thought Wood gripping the stake and having blood dribble down was giggle-worthy.)

- Observation by housemate: Whenever this show wants to show that Things are Bad around town, it lights fires in barrels. We all lose our voices? Fire barrels strewn along the streets, right across from the guy preaching the end of the world on his whiteboard. Demon bikers come to town? They light fire barrels. The hellmouth incites the student population to riot? Fire barrels.

What's up with that?

- Overall: likes S7 much better than S6. I remind her that she actually liked parts of S6 - like, say, the beginning and the end - but it seems the Spike/Buffy sexfest scarred her to the point that that's all she remembers of the season. Whereas I'd talked this season down so much that apparently anything was better than I made it sound. *g*

I was instructed to blog these eps now, during our pause between "Sleeper" and "Never Leave Me." So.

Housemate says (through tears): "I hate your stupid show!" Also that First!Spike is creeping her out; that she doesn't like "all the other people saying things" (Cassie and Joyce) either; and that "Sleeper" wasn't pain done right, it was just pain.

Closing thought from Housemate: "I want to make Spike a cup of tea."

Selfless
Good things: Emma Caulfield is excellent here. Oh, poor identity-crisis Anya breaks my heart! The Olaf/Aud flashbacks crack me up - apparently everyone in that time period was strangely literal. And again, I'm really liking the Anya/Willow friendship developing here - I'd totally forgotten it from the first watch. And the Spike-in-the-basement scene is a heart-wringer.

Bad things: Some of the writing is pretty lame, particularly everything Buffy appears in. Anya as a vengeance demon again represents a huge dilemma to our valiant Scoobies, and the episode acknowledges that, but it does so with a flat, obvious argument scene between Buffy and Xander with no nuance at all. And all Buffy's "I am the law" stuff felt like it needed a whole lot of build-up, rather than this sudden foregone conclusion. In fact, pretty much all the Buffy character 'development' in this ep felt as though it was assuming a bunch of previous development we've never seen.

(However, I like how the fact that Xander lied to Buffy in "Becoming" finally came to light, sort of.)

Housemate's opinion: "Pain done right." It hit all the right places, dramatically speaking. She found the cut from "I'll Be His Misses" to Anya with a sword through extremely effective.

Question: is it ever stated in canon that vengeance demons have to be beheaded to be killed? Or is that fanon?

Him
Good: Okay, you guys, fine. You win. I enjoyed this episode much more the second time. Those last few minutes are great. I think my favorite bit was the shot of Wood in his office while we see Buffy and Spike tussling in the background.

Also, yay for Spike being Not in the Basement. Yay for whole minutes together of lucidity!

I love that Michelle Trachtenberg was actually Dawn's age while playing Dawn. It makes a huge difference in the authenticity of the character. I also really liked the Buffy/Dawn sisterly love there at the end.

Bad: The Buffy/RJ stuff still squicks me like an extremely squicky thing. The Dawn/RJ stuff, meanwhile, hits my humiliation squick like whoa - Housemate can attest I had my eyes closed a good part of the time. And yeah, just the general fawning girls thing was still pretty hard to take.

Plus, more lameness in the writing department: Dawn raises all those questions about souled!Spike and Buffy's feelings for same, which are great questions inelegantly phrased, made much more frustrating for that fact that, on the former topic, at least, we never get any proper exploration. Argh!

Housemate: Enjoyed seeing Buffy a little manic. Was creeped out by how readily RJ followed Buffy's lead.

Also, it turns out this is an ep that makes me think of fic, which meant first Housemate absolutely had to read Perfect for Home or Office, by deird1, which cracked her up. This led to Towels, also by deird1, which we ended up reading out loud to Housemate's husband - I took the Xander parts and she took the Spike parts (having spent time in England and therefore being more qualified than I.) Hilarity was had by all.

And, speaking of the housemate: see Wizard!Giles there? That is the dedicated Housemate Icon, selected by the housemate herself from my ample stash.

Housemate reports that she is sad that Spike is out of his mind, because since he went and got his soul she'd just gotten around to maybe liking him again. Also, she's mystified by the zombie talisman in "Lessons" (does that ever get explained?) and thoroughly creeped out by the zombies themselves (whom I'm fairly sure we never see again, right?).

Also: Is Nancy in "Beneath You" - she of the wormy boyfriend - the same Nancy as in "The Wish"? It's not exactly a common name, but I'm curious to go back and check actress names. There was Sandy, after all...

Also, I'd totally forgotten we got revisits from all the Big Bads at once there at the beginning. It made me sort of nostalgic.

Wow, that Run, Lola, Run homage wasn't subtle, was it? Or else my idea of Germany has far fewer pink-haired girls sprinting to electronic rock than is actually the case. I'm much amused, though.

And, finally: portentous portentousness. Sigh. And broken Spike. I gotta say, these first two episodes have not changed my previous opinion of this season.

- "It was the best apocalypse ever."

- "As soon as Giles came back, I knew I was ready for whatever else happened. Because Giles came back!"

- "Anya's teleportation was awfully convenient. Hmm."

- Wants to make an episode-by-episode chart plotting her feelings about Spike over the course of the season. There'd be lots of zig-zags, she reports.

- Is tired of the show emasculating Xander all the time for humorous effect; was really glad to see Xander finally make a major contribution to the show.

- Adores Clem. You know Spike's big "Can't be a monster, can't be a man" speech? I kept having to pause so she could giggle over the Clem commentary.

- Overall, feels that S6 was satisfactory. Yay! Because it went dark and dark and dark, but for the purpose of finally coming back up to the light in the end.

[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 housemate speaketh )

Crush: It always amazes me how Drusilla shows up and just flips a switch in Spike; after two and a half years of alternately mopey, pathetic, and cranky Spike he's dangerous again. The change is palpable.

I Was Made to Love You: I still feel as though this ep is saying important things about Buffy's love life, but all I get out of it are fragments.

Tough Love, Weight of the World: I keep rewatching these and I keep being unimpressed. They're just in-betweeners, transitions between the interesting stuff.

Spiral: I like Spiral. I like the actiony scenes, I like every single moment with Spike (not yelling at Tara for burning him, grabbing the sword blade with his bare hands, having Xander light his cigarette), I love Giles' speech to Buffy. I've heard people say it's one of the weaker episodes, but I don't get why.

The Gift/Bargaining: How weird is it that the swan dive flashbacks in "Bargaining" hit me way harder than the actual swan dive in "The Gift"? By the end of "The Gift" I just want it all to be over, whereas in "Bargaining" the running leap off the tower, the accompanying music, and the look on Dawn's face hurt.

In other news, the housemate wishes to inform the Internet that she thinks Buffy's epitaph is tacky and tasteless. I tried to sell her on the irreverence as being in-character, for both the Scoobies and the show, but she was having none of it.

HOUSEMATE: Besides, he's pretty sexy.

ME: Oh?

HOUSEMATE: Yeah, you know, with the trench coat. Did I tell you I have this thing for trenchcoats?

ME: I see. So all this time, "Spike's my favorite character," blah, blah, and now the truth comes out.

HOUSEMATE (weakly): Well, he's a really interesting character, too. Very complex.

ME: Uh huh.

HOUSEMATE: And also, I sort of have a thing for guys carrying torches for girls who don't respond.

ME (thoughtful): Hmm. But this whole Spike/Buffy idea... still icky, right?

HOUSEMATE (almost entirely certain): Oh, yeah. Still icky. The stalking is really creepy.

ME: And then there's the smoking.

HOUSEMATE: Yeah.

ME: I mean, blood breath's bad enough...

HOUSEMATE: But blood breath and smoking...

ME: Yeah.