Fannish things

[oyceter]

CB and I have been watching Buffy and Angel, with him watching for the first time and me being all, "I want to watch [episode title] with you!" I think he just started this year, and we're already in the beginning of Buffy S7 and just finished Angel S4 yesterday.

It's funny because the prior seasons of Buffy make me feel nostalgic for the characters, who aren't quite as broken as they get later, but the latter seasons make me feel nostalgic for me, since I started watching live and engaging with fandom around S6. It's funny just how many posts I remember from when I was lurking around AtPoBtVS, from the ones connecting everything to Restless to all the spoilery ones I devoured.

I remember various fannish wars and arguments too, but mostly I have a large fuzzy feeling toward fandom right now. It's especially interesting going through memories as someone who just delurked and started to tentatively send out feelers, versus now, when quite a few of my best friends are from the groups of people I met on DW/LJ and I talk about it regularly with CB and we have OTW and I go to cons and etc.

I don't remember very much from my senior year of college since it was mostly being depressed, fighting with people, and being even more depressed, but I remember Buffy and Angel posts and discussions and what vids came out when and I can still tell you how my ideas about antiheroes and angst and manpain has changed just from AtPo.

And it's odd watching and knowing about all the social justice fail in the shows. I think CB gets a bit defensive when I critique at times, but he is newly falling in love with them, whereas I am the Bitter Old Fan ranting about Firefly and Dr. Horrible and Dollhouse and yet still cheers on the idea of a Joss-run SHIELD show.

Random notes, spoilers for all of Buffy and Angel

• The worst parts are rewatching Spike from S6 on, especially because I started watching Buffy as a die-hard Spuffy fan. I still love the dysfunctional relationship between the two in S6, but I hate the rape and the subsequent attempt to redeem Spike. I was so bought into his pain after he had just gotten his soul back when the show aired, and now I just cringe at seeing the focus on his angst at his remorse for trying to rape Buffy, as opposed to Buffy's anger and pain. And I know where it's going, which is even worse.



• Grave still makes me sob every time I watch it. I wasn't depressed when it aired, but I think I rewatched it several times during the Internship from Hell and read extensive S6 commentary and S7 speculation. S6 Buffy is forever linked in my mind with depression, with a visceral identification with Buffy, torn out of Heaven, lost and confused and self-hating and still alive.



• I am sad at how much weight the romances get as the shows go on. Willow and Buffy get a few moments to bond in S6, but it's nothing like Willow and Buffy in S3. Also, Tara and Anya aren't nearly as integrated into the Scoobies as Oz and Cordelia were. The romance thing is even worse on Angel, where Fred never quite gets the chance to establish herself outside the context of romance. She's great in individual bits, but her overall arc is almost always folded into Angel's or Wesley's. And S4 Angel is terrible re: relationships among women. Cordy and Fred are jealous of Faith because she gets Gunn and Connor's attention. Lilah and Fred are jealous of each other. Fred is jealous of Gwen. And Fred and Cordy barely have a relationship. The women almost all relate to each other through the men. Even when Fred gets her own cool storyline, it's set up against Jasmine and the guys.



• It's criminal how much Gunn is underused. They keep almost giving him things to do, and I remember having so many hopes for S5 after the White Room scene.



• I had forgotten a lot of how bad the Cordy S3-S4 stuff was. "Give Momma some sugar" as she kisses the Beast?! It's also creepy how sexualized Cordy is when she is evil. Let's not even talk about various demon pregnancies and dead mothers and the many many gender issues in Angel.

Mostly, though, it's hard to believe this was ten years ago.

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

What they do to Gunn makes me so sad. ;____; Even though Angel was sooooo much w/the helpless ladies, as a show I was more drawn into it than Buffy, maybe just b/c it was darker & that was what I was in the mood for? But OMG Gunnnnnn nooooooooooooo.

[oyceter]

Gunnnnnn!!! He gets to be cool in individual scenes and episodes, but it's never linked up and made into an arc.

I always love whichever show I watched more recently best, so right now I am all about the Angel love! I think katie_m said something about how Angel was about finding grace in the darkness, while Buffy was about turning on the light, and I waver between what I need.

[lady_ganesh]

My final goodbye to the Buffy/Angelverse was when I got spoiled for what they did with his character in the comics. DONE.

[laurashapiro]

I'm getting nostalgic just reading this. (:

The worst parts are rewatching Spike from S6 on

Amen to that, though I'd change it to "from S4 on". I really hated what they did with the character after "Lovers Walk". Chipped Spike as woobie: DNW. I loved him with Dru so much in S4, it's kind of hard to believe. ::sigh:: Ah, well. That's what this vid is for...

And oh god, the way AtS treats women goes from bad to so, so much worse.

[oyceter]

I, uh, imprinted on Fool for Love Spike... saw it randomly on TV on some FX marathon, was fascinated, and started downloading Spuffy S5 eps, so that was my point of comparison. It's funny remembering going from a huge shipper to... whatever I am now.

Oh Angel. Oh show. You are so good, and yet so unkind to your female characters.

I was so excited to rewatch home, and then I sicced Without You on CB.

[laurashapiro]

Now I want to rewatch Without You. (:

You're so right about Gunn, too. He was critical in the early days and then he had no arc and was just some guy who was inexplicably dating Fred for no reason.

[sara]

You think it's trippy for you, I remember watching Angel during the hell week we were stuck in the hospital while Herself was born. Of all the shows NOT to watch while pregnant/having a birth with complications....

Also, this means the kid is almost 10. I just had this child five minutes ago, I don't know who thought it was a good idea for her to start puberty.

[oyceter]

Ahahaha, SO not the right thing to be watching while pregnant/giving birth! At least the kid didn't go through a portal and come back a surly maladjusted teenager in two weeks and then father a demon-god?

[sara]

It feels like it's only been two weeks. She hasn't fathered a demon-god yet, but I really wouldn't put it past her. I mean, this is Herself we're talking about.

[lady_ganesh]

I was pregnant for Conner's birth, so.

:D

[laceblade]

I still like Spike, which I'm sure Says Things About Me.

I wish that I had watched any of this show when it was on the air, but it's really neat to read reminisces about it.

I wish Angel had been better in so many ways ;_; (EXCEPT WESLELY). UGH AT CORDELIA IN ANGEL SO HARD. UGH, UGH, UGH.

[oyceter]

WES!!! OMG we were watching S3 Buffy and I was all "Awwwwww, inept watcher Wes!" and CB was a bit confused.

CORDY WHYYYYYYYY.

I kind of vary in how much I like Spike depending on how much I feel like the writers want me to like him? I like him snarky and funny, but I really hated how the romance turned out in S7 =(. I really like him as a foil to Angel in Angel S5 though.

I wish I had watched more of it live! It would have been funny too, because Buffy is the same age as me, so we would have graduated from high school the same time!

[sqbr]

Gunn :( :( He was my favourite Angel character but clearly not Joss's.

[oyceter]

SO SAD! So much wasted potential!

[rachelmanija]

I shipped Gunn/Wesley. That was lonely.

[lady_ganesh]

I actually found some decent stories back in the day, before Mutant Enemy put gasoline on the ship and set it ablaze.

[softestbullet]

Aw, I'm an ambivalent Spuffy shipper too.

[oyceter]

Yay, more ambivalent Spuffy shippers!

[thistleingrey]

Aw, Gunn and Tara and even Wesley! And I totally agree about the female relationships, within and among; it's a major reason (not the only one) why I haven't rewatched. I did watch nearly all the episodes live--no tv at the time, and a friend hosted a weekly gathering, so we were like junkies together. Heh. I didn't find online fandom till rather later, though, and thus in a muted way.

[oyceter]

Oh Wes! He really did get one of the best character arcs of both shows.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would have rewatched without CB instigating it, though it's been really fun to do. Also awwww to being able to watch it with friends. Most of my memories of watching it live are of huddling by myself by the TV in a dorm common room and really hoping no one else was there first, except a few finales where I got a group of people.

[lady_ganesh]

The Avengers was nice because it kept so many of Whedon's worst tendencies in check. I hope the Shield show, if it happens, can do the same.

My biggest worry is the way ME kept trying to tell us who we should ship and pretty much wrecking any popular ship they didn't approve of, apparently out of spite. I never quite got it. (Compare, for example, to the showrunners of Teen Wolf, who seem to clap like baby seals every time a new ship crops up.)

[oyceter]

Yeah, I am really hoping the SHIELD show and it being a Marvel property keeps some of his id out of it (Joss... enough skinny brunette broken girls!).

And argh, I was a Spuffy shipper and I am still annoyed at how it felt like I was getting my wrist slapped for shipping them in S6 only to have the entire thing turn around in S7 AFTER I was done with it.

[lady_ganesh]

Yeah, same. (I KNOOOW)

I didn't ever want them to hook up! I was NOT a shipper! But even then I was so fucking pissed that they not only fucked the ship up, they basically tried to make every viewer who shipped it feel bad about it.