Any Buffy fans around to discuss some things that have annoyed me on rewatching?

[MrsBertMacklin]

Posting in Chat because this doesn't warrant a permanent thread. I fully admit to overthinking the issues below, I've been binge watching and may have lost perspective.

• Faith was made a slayer when Buffy died the first time. When she dies in Season 5, no mention of a duplicate Slayer, correct?

• The Principal in Season 7 talks to Buffy about how he's looked through her file, why is her response not, 'you creepy fuck, what a breach of privacy, I left school 5 years ago'?

• Neither Buffy or Willow have regular jobs (Willow is never seen in employment). Who pays for Willow's flights to England for rehab, their weapons, various house repairs (don't tell me Buffy could get insurance for accidental damage / civil unrest with her claims history), Dawn's school books etc.?

• When Spike goes to get himself restored to his former self: why exactly does that Demon con him and actually give him his soul? If it was a good demon I could understand it's ultimately setting him on the road to redemption, but it's not.

• Why did Joss Whedon make Angel Irish, when it must have been obvious within 5 syllables that David B's Irish accent was the worst thing in the world?

• Kennedy: I was all for Willow finding someone else after Tara, why on earth did they make that person such an utter knob? Is she meant to have some redeeming features / be perfect for Willow and the actor ballsed it up?

• After Joyce died, why didn't Buffy's dad make a single appearance, surely they could have found some reason / decent plot to make this happen, it's so clanging for me that a parent, no matter how absent, wouldn't even stop by once after his childrens' mother died suddenly.

I love Buffy (Whedon) and Buffy (MN). Better?

jeanne when you say mentally raped do you mean the brain-wiping in the Dollhouse? Or the sex? There are male dolls too. Victor is used for sex by the female boss of the Dollhouse. I would guess that there are more female dolls because a) more men are likely to pay for sex and b) the dolls are super expensive and men are more likely to be able to afford them. The dolls are supposed to have consented to the brain-wiping at the start of their term.

I don't remember any sexual violence against Tara?

Tara had her memory erased by willow.so she would forget the fight they had which split them up.

that's what she meant. The dolls in doll house had their memories erased

YY, the brain wiping - my understanding was it was meant to be an explicit parallel?

By saying 'more men are likely to pay for sex', aren't you falling into the trap I mentioned earlier? The 'I can imagine a world with dragons, but not a world without patriarchy'?

With Tara, Willow repeatedly erases her memory in order to keep their sexual relationship going. Tara is shown as consenting to sex when Willow has cast a spell on her to make her forget what's going on.

Thinking about imagining a world without patriarchy, do you think it would really be as easy as imagining a world with dragons? Particularly the fact that misogyny is so ingrained and woven so deeply into almost every single interaction in the real world that to imagine it not existing is to create a completely unrelatable world. Which is a depressing thought actually.

Huge firebreathing flying reptiles are a much easier suspension of disbelief.

Though I know you're not being specific about the dragons really. Are there any works of fiction that manage a world without patriarchy?

Without it being a specific commentary on the patriarchy that we live in I mean.

No, I don't think it would be as easy.

I suppose that's why I am surprised at the idea Whedon might not be being misogynistic. My feeling is - how could he not be? He's a man who's grown up in the patriarchy. Of course he will be doing misogynistic things. We all are. So, yes, he's doing some good things, but some bad ones too.

Very true. I've never been on board with Whedon as feminist hero. Like you say, some good things, some bad things.

I don't understand the parallel between brain-wiping and mental rape? I think the suggestion that you could give your consent to have your body do whatever someone else wants it to do without your knowledge for 5 years is more than just about sex. If you want to talk about rape in the Dollhouse, what happened to Sierra definitely fits the bill. The ethics of the set-up is thoroughly explored.

But nobody ever suggested that Margaret Attwood had woman issues when she wrote The Handmaid's Tale.

I haven't watched or read Game of Thrones.

A personal bugbear is how Fred in Angel is the total cliche of the skinny girl who loves to eat, and whose boyfriend loves that she loves to eat. It would have been way more subversive to have a larger woman in that same situation.

I saw James marsters in torchwood mimble

Was not happy when they pointed out how short he is compared to jack harkness

My ds(16) has just finished angel after watching buffy last year-he really enjoyed angel but felt robbed at the unfinished conclusion in series 5 compared to buffy!

Oh, gosh - noble, loads of people think Atwood has issues!

And Tara does call it rape. Like buffy says (I'm getting confused here!), it is the exact words.

buffy - YY, would recommend it very much. I think it lost its way a bit, but really interesting characters and concept.

pointy - yes, and I felt they never quite figured out what they wanted to say about her body. There are comments about how she's very thin that are slightly odd, too.

Buffy died at the end of S5 and at the beginning of S6 the gang were pretending that Buffy was alive.

Why the fuck did they have a grave with her name on then?!

I wrote my dissertation about Angel (and other vampires) and have been to several Buffy conventions and met James Marsters in person swoon

mermaid.

Yep, that's one of the criticisms I've often seen: Whedon's female characters are usually slim, and often white.

Though, I do love Zoe and I love her relationship with Wash, which is brilliant both for the fact they challenge expectations of male/female dynamics and for the way it's a marital relationship that's still a major romantic story. I am still really fed up Firefly was cancelled!

I haven't RTFT so if any of this has already been mentioned, I apologise.

hardcore fan for 12 years and have watched it approx eleventy billion times along with all the fandom sites back when I still had AOL dial up

Whedon had to cram his plot lines for the final two seasons (7 & what would have been 8) into one utter wank stain of a season because SMG got too big for her boots and refused to do an 8th season - she was the only one who wouldn't sign. Original plan was Caleb as S7 Big Bad (obviously along with the First) and then a 12 episode run for S8 to deal with the First and the uber vamps.

Spike with a soul swoon Just when I thought he couldn't be any hotter, he went insane in the basement. 12 years on I still love him more than anyone else with Dean Winchester a VERY close second

RE the demon: Spike asked the demon to help him give Buffy "what she deserves" and clearly the demon thought that what she deserved was Spike with a soul - also not all demons are bad (eg Lorne, Angel and numerous others)

The Kennedy plot line again, meant to be dragged out over a big time span, as was the introduction of the all the Potentials. Still dislike her. Tara didn't just die, she was murdered, in front of Willow, who was covered in her blood. Who then went and murdered the fucker.

Poor Anya got massively shoved to one side, although ep5 of s7 was a proper heart breaker for me.

I thought Handmaid's Tale was supposed to be a feminist classic? Yet it's all about rape.

The suggestion that Whedon is a misogynist because he doesn't set his shows in a patriarchy-free utopia is a bit odd.

Whether Tara was raped by Willow as she obtained consent to sex through deceit is one not really explored by the programme, but it does support what I said when I suggested Willow should be compared to Spike rather than Giles in terms of punishment issued to the character.

Tara was the fat one in Buffy! I wish I was fat like her

I like Joss Whedon. I think in the world we live, he's doing better than most mainstream film/TV makers. He's mentioned that he sort of regrets identifying as a feminist. I think it has made people attack him. People are more likely to complain about Avengers 2 for not being feminist 'enough' rather than complaining about the dozens of horror/torture porn movies that get produced.

I don't think it's possible to make a feminist movie. Certainly not a successful one.

Oh, that's a bit sad (that he regrets it - hope he doesn't regret it because he got attacked, though).

I do think he hugely changed the way people think about women main characters.

"What about the episode where Buffy is in the psychiatric hospital? It never is clarified if it was the work of the demon the trio unleashed or whether Buffy really was in the hospital suffering delusions of being a vampire slayer all those years."

Whedon cleared it up himself Gleaming - it was genuinely a spell and there is no parallel universe. Although it's one of my favourite episodes in the entire thing and I do love the 'what if' about it!

There's also the fact Whedon booted Carpenter from his show because she dared to get pregnant, and dicked her about when she did return. He's no white knight.