Mr. Visible: Your point is well-taken about how people go from self-identifying as straight to “realizing” they are gay later in life. One of my college profs was married for 25 years and had 3 kids before he came out, so I know what you mean.
That said, I think ME hedged on their handling of Willow’s gayness. She tells Kennedy she basically “went gay” for Tara, and that she doesn’t like girls so much as she “liked girl.” Also, as I was a huge Oz/Willow fan, it makes me sad to think that Willow has completely disavowed that kind of love. It seemed to me that she really was in love with and attracted to Oz. Perhaps that does not negate her gayness for you, but it did a little for me.
I really didn’t get this impression from VampWillow. She did not seem to hate her human self; she seemed to want to liberate her, to break her out of her stodgy, nerdy self. To me, that says that inside quiet, mousy Willow is a raging bisexual siren (I’ve always thought that people’s Vamp-selves are the person’s Id run wild, sans Superego, to be excessively Freudian about it).
Remember how VampWillow wanted Human Willow to join her? That did not indicate distaste. Nor did I think her flirtations with Human Willow were just to upset HW; I think she was genuinely fascinated by her other self.
I liked Willow/Tara. In fact, in S6, Tara was the only character that did not cause me revulsion or severe annoyance at some point. She was, in fact, the only sane character in the show, and I was sad to see her go. Kennedy, however, is another story.
That’s how I saw it. VW is just Will without conscience or other restrictions-plus a dose of sadism that seems to be a general consequence of being vamped.
Re-Dru & Kendra
I never had a problem with it. Dru is extremely evil and very powerful. It’s just another case of rushing in unprepared and paying for it. Kendra followed Dru’s gesture and ended up making eye contact. Dru’s finger waving after that is just her dramatic flair. She doesn’t have to say ‘Be in my eyes.’. Kendra already was. If you want a more dramatic fight-
Dru tries the hypnotism ploy.
Kendra- Do ya tink I’d be so stupid as ta make eye contact wit you? D’ye tink I did not read the Council’s files on ye?
Dru looks frustrated, like a child told she’ll get no ice cream. Then, she smiles.
Dru-If you know all about me, then you know you’ll die.
Kendra raises her stake and charges. Dru sidesteps. Kendra takes a new stance. She frowns, and looks at her arm. She sees four long scratches. Kendra looks at Dru(being careful not to look in her eyes). Dru smiles as she shows her clawed hands.
“After this, I’ll kill the blonde one. That way, Spoike and I will be even.”
Kendra atacks Dru's legs. Dru again evades effortlessly. This time, she sinks one claw deeply into Kendra's shoulder. Kendra thrusts the stake behind her. It's a well executed and well timed move. It only misses by an inch or so. Dru savagely slashes under Kendra's extended arm. She then walks calmly to the one of the shelves and turns to face Kendra.
Dru seems puzzled and slightly sad. It may be an act. But, it's impossible to tell for sure.
"Why is dolly making me do this? All the pain? All the blood? All the fear? Just look in my eyes and it can all be over. Then, dolly can just lay her head down and go night."
Kendra says nothing. Blood stains the right side of her shirt. Her right arm hangs limp. She tries to close her fingers around the stake and fails. She takes the stake into her left hand.
Kendra simply waits as Dru slowly comes closer. She suddenly explodes with a high kick. Dru ducks easily. Kendra extends the move into a roundhouse with the other leg. She catches Dru in the ribs. Before Dru can recover, a hard uppercut knocks her backwards. Kendra slams into Dru with her good shoulder, bearing them both to the floor. As they fall, Kendra angles the stake at Dru’s heart.
Perhaps it’s her aim. Perhaps it’s her weight. Whatever it is, Kendra missed. The stake is buried in Dru’s chest, but several ribs below her heart.
Dru raises her arm, sweeping Kendra off her and sending her flying.
Dru removes the stake and hurls it the length of the library. She quickly walks to Kendra. Weak from blood loss, with the wind knocked out of her, and with only one arm, the slayer can’t rise in time. Dru grabs Kendra’s left arm and twists. We can hear bones break. Dru opens her mouth and moves toward Kendra’s neck. She looks up at a comotion in the next room.
Dru leaves Kendra and runs out of the library. Kendra struggles to stand as the sounds of combat come through the door. Finally, she stands and begins moving to the other end of the library. She hears a familiar whistle and looks up. Buffy comes running through the door.
“We’ve got to get out of here. Spike’s right behind me!”
Buffy puts an arm around Kendra’s shoulders and half carries her to the door.
“Cheez! What did she do to you?”
"I've got broken humerus, a broken ulna, severd muscles and tendons in me right arm and . . . I lost Mr Pointy."
"Don't worry about it." says Buffy as they reach the door. Kendra looks up and freezes. As with many school doors, these have inset windows. Thes particular windows reflect Kendra being supported by Drusila.
"You don't have to worry about anything anymore dolly."
Dru places her hands on Kendra’s head and twists expertly.
BTW-Please exuse poor quality of writing in this scene. I’ve run out of Paxil. Besides the usual mental problems I suffer without the stuff, suddenly running out like this also adds the fun of withdrawal.
It’s hard to keep track of what’s vampire cannon where. First, I started playing Masquerade. Then, Buffy came on the air. Then a Malk I used to play began popping up in Philly. Okay, so the line between reality and fantasy[sub]*[/sub] was a little blurry (I made the mistake of using that phrase whilst talking to Mr Smith. He proceeded to walk around blurry for the next week. Rub your eyes, clean your glasses, squint all you want, the undead CPA will remain free from sharp edges or discrete color boundaries.). But the line between Buffy and Masquerade was clear. Then, John appeared as the cheese man. Add to all this John’s delusions that Buffy is a depiction of real events (his grasp on the difference between television and reality is nonexistant) and you begin to see my problems keeping all this clear. Masquerade vamps (except, of course, Lasombra) reflect just fine. Buffy vamps cast no reflections.
John will sometimes tell me that I am merely the straightman in his act. Or that he is grooming me to be the chronicler of his deeds. On truly disturbing occasions, he insists that one of us is the other’s sire. I then deny that I am a vampire or that vampires are real. He nods and insists that these delusions of mine are perfect proof that I am a childe of Malkav. With great tenderness and sincerity he tries to free me of my delusions and bring me “into the world we no longer live in.”
I’m afraid I didn’t follow much of that post. I had a friend who was a V:tM player, so I’m kinda-sorta hip to Malkavians being crazy, but you lost me completely with John the cheese man.
Everybody has made good points and ideas (with the exception of the oil wrestling stuff; well as long as the girls get in on it too) so I’m just gonna add one thing that always kinda irked me: how strong are these people? Vampires are stronger than normal people, Slayer is stronger than them, Caleb and Glory are stronger than her…but the only way we see this is people being punched across the room.
Look at the Beast/Faith or the Jasmine/Angel fight. At least there you got the feeling of real power. Maybe I’m being silly, but after the nth time of seing someone be thrown across the room, it kinda lost its “oh shit” impact, until I saw Jasmine lift that car. I realize that budgetwise there’s only so much you can do, but still…
And another thing: are you telling me that in all the thousands of years of there being a Slayer no group of bad guys has sat down and said “What are we gonna do about her?” and proceeded to figure out a way to kill Slayers? Make it a really long-term project that comes to fruition when the Faith/Buffy death thing happens, because now there’s two and that’s too many. Hell, have Wolfram & Hart or the Initiative have something. I just felt that an Anti-Slayer would have made sense.
Think of the episodes they could have had with Buffy confronting the idea that there’s someone out there whose only purpose is to kill her. Not to rule the world or have some huge plan, just to kill the Slayer, and that’s it.
Also, that those fights hurt. Yes, the slayers have superstrength and healing powers, but it’s still gotta hurt like hell to be thrown into a brick wall, even if you’re jazzed up by mutant adrenaline. After Faith faught the best, she could barely move. It was only sunlight that saved her from Angelus. The shower scene, with the blood emphasised this. When it started, I thought it was gonna be lame - “we show James and David without a shirt, let’s throw in a gratuitous almost nekkid Dushku for the guys”. It wasn’t. I could feel the pain, in a way I’ve never seen in when Buffy took a beating. Maybe it’s the shows, since Angel is supposed to be darker and geared for an older audience.
This all begs the question of why no one ever just blew up Buffy’s house with a buttload of dynamite, or shot her with a howitzer from across the street. I guess there’d be no show, then, though. Good thing I’m not a supervillain, because I’d use heavy ordnance and I would definitely not stand around and chat.
Okay, his honor can’t be hurt by any weapon IIRC ‘forged by the hand of man.’
I still think an RPG was a stupid thing to do.
Weapons not forged-stone, cold wrought iron, bone, wood etc.
Just make a weapon out of one of these and chop the Judge back into pieces.
Hand of *man*-fine just get a weapon forged by a woman.
'No weapon forged by the hand of man, huh? I still say this sword Sam made will do the job. Know why? Sam is short for Samantha.'
No. Because the Judge was not only formidable in his own right, he had Angelus, Dru, and Spike protecting him. A sword wouldn’t help for the reason that it would be unlikely to hurt him seriously for those reason - never mind who forged it. Ditto the bone, wood, iron weapon.
In S6, I would have had Buffy go totally rogue and Faith be “The Good One”, therefore setting up the S4 eps of This Year’s Girl and Who Are You as brilliant foreshadowing.
IIRC Macbeth seemed equally invincible til Birnham wood came to high Dunsinane and he faced a man of no woman born.
The leader of the Nazgul has convince everyone, himself included, of his invincibility. He then receives, as one Doper put it, “the ultimate semantics lesson.”
For that matter, have you ever heard the myth of Balder? Invulnerable. Surrounded by the hosts of Asgard. Slain by mistletoe thrown bly a blind man.
You don’t, I’m afraid. MacBeth won his battles because he was a kickass warrior, not because he was invincible. This is a matter of destiny rather than finding a weak spot.
**
By doing the equivalent of dying in a car crash when he’d said he couldn’t die in a plane crash - not exactly semantics, is it?
**
Except Balder wasn’t invulnerable. Invulnerable means “without vulnerability”, but Balder did have a vulnerability - mistletoe, which of all things was the only one that had not agreed not to harm him.
Yes his sword smoked with bloody execution and all that. He’s unseaming folks from crotch to chaps. But when he asks the sisters for advice on staying king(cuz it’s good to be the king-I’m joking here. Macbeth’s motivation is of course fear and possibly twinges of conscience. It is, however, good to be the king.), he does indeed come away thinking that he is invincible.
**
For the benefit of those who haven’t read the book or seen the animated ROTK.
No man can kill him. It seems that he’d made the mistake of interpreting that as no human. When Eowen makes her speech, the witchking of Angmar realizes that the meaning may be more literal. An important point depends on which definition of a word is used. To me, that’s semantics.
**
I used the word invulnerable for effect. That and I can’t read nigh invulnerable or nigh invincible without thinking of the Tick. Of course, he was vulnerable. Otherwise, we’d have a very different story and I wouldn’t have bothered to bring it up.
But, remember why mistletoe did not take a pledge to not harm Balder. It simply couldn’t see how it could possibly be a threat. The gods seem satisfied. The problem seems taken care of. Until the minor thing, the weed, kills the Balder. Until that moment, even Balder’s mother, Frigga was satisfied that he was safe and could not be killed. Sure mistletoe hadn’t taken the pledge, but this is a threat to my kid?
The Judge has protection, armor, and powers of unknown extent. But he was dismembered once before. Why not have Buffy and the Scoobies fire barrages of arrows and quarrels? The Judge would be vulnerable. I also doubt that the 3 vamps would sit still while potentially fatal weapons flew through the air (OTOMH, I can’t recall if there’s been a staking by bow or crossbow. But I’m guessing there has been). The initial attack would only need to distract the vamps and the Judge while Buffy rushed in to decapitate him. His body would remain capable of attack. But, it’s tough to engage a Slayer while your head is in a box.
Remind me at what point anyone but the Witch-King himself said that no living man could harm him? He could have been talking out of his undead ass for all I know.
**
Because it wasn’t asked, actually.
**
And? The episode says that he cannot be *killed[/] by any weapon forged by man, but it doesn’t mention that they can’t harm him.
“To bad novels aren’t part of canon. Spike already tried to kill all the Slayers during WW2, according to Pretty Maids All In a Row (Horrid book btw).”
Another one of the Buffy novels where the bad guys had a good plan to take out the slayer was “The Lost Slayer”. In it, the vamps figure out that the way to foil the “when one dies another is called” situation is to simply kidnap the slayer and imprison her. As long as she’s kept alive but locked in a concrete cell, the slayer was out of their way and another new one wasn’t going to show up.
But she’d age and die eventually, right? And Spike trying to kill them all isn’t really the same thing: he was just doing it for kicks, not because he was created specifially to do it. After all, other Slayers had been killed by vampires and such nasties.
Sam, well of course she’d age and die. Are you saying that from a bad guy’s perspective having the slayer locked up and out of the way for 80 or so years until she dies of old age and a new slayer is called isn’t a sufficient window of opportunity for evil-doing? C’mon, give a big bad a break!