Slayers and Vampires : the complete uncensored, unauthorized oral history of Buffy & Angel
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Mylie
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I wasn't necessarily saying Whedon's way is completely driven by emotions or that it lacks logic and that Fury's explanation about the soul residue fixed the soul canon. That theory still makes no sense to me. I'm just saying that Fury himself needed to make sense of it and that those things were obviously bothering him. I consider it an headcanon and nothing more.
By the way, I myself love Buffy vs. Dracula and I've never had a problem with it. Just wanted to make it clear that even though I posted the quotes and commented on that one specifically, saying that it made sense to me, as a fan, I still very much love the episode. I tend to love episodes of television that are big on intertextuality and don't take themselves too seriously. My favorite comedy is Community so I can definitely appreciate the postmodernism aspect here.
badsister
so happy to see Community fan here i feel sometimes there's not enough of us! haha
Ethan Reigns
Scooby
Grrr Argh! Is someone trying to sell me on Buffy as a postmodern story or that there is such a thing as "lighthearted postmodernism"?
The reality of postmodernism is that it is a Marxist tantrum of French origin. By the mid 1940's it was obvious to even the most devoted Marxist that capitalism had outstripped Marxism in every way, so there was a philosophical tantrum about it. Capitalism had outstripped Marxism economically. Wahhh. Marxism hadn't ushered in the workers' paradise it had promised. Wahhh. Marxist countries had to have guards to keep people from leaving. Wahhh. The communist party was the new tyranny and it was as brutal as it was incompetent. Wahhh. Add the stamping of feet and you get the unhappy origins of postmodernism.
The idea of postmodernism is that instead of the one-dimensional struggle between the upper classes and the oppressed, there were multiple class hierarchies all contending for power. An additional aspect is that everything we know about the world in general is from our senses and you can see the parable of the six blind men and the elephant although in postmodernism, there is a rejection of any absolute truth beyond our senses - so the real elephant doesn't actually exist or can be made into anything you want. In fact, our normal ideas of due process, scientific method, rational thought and cause leading to effect were part of the White European Male hierarchy and weren't necessary or welcome anywhere else. You now have the so-called Social Justice Warriors on campus accosting black students who are heading to science classes and trying to dissuade them from going to that class when they should be in a black studies class learning how to be victims of oppression. Anywhere else, this would be called racism, but university administrations are complicit or at least wilfully ignorant of this.
For everyone outside of European White Male, logic, meaning and the rest of what we consider the bulwark of education and science is non-existent. We have gender studies classes supposedly taught by "award-winning professors" (who definitely deserve the P. T. Barnum award - he said there is a sucker born every minute and the award goes to whoever monetizes this to the greatest extent). They claim there are 327 genders and there is gender fluidity. You hear that ladies? For the several days a month when it doesn't pay to be female, you can just become a man. How's that working out for you? Who knew it was as easy as wishful thinking? I have a Y chromosome. I can be nothing other than male. If you only have X chromosomes, you are female. That's it. Those are the only choices. And they aren't actually choices.
Someone once said that the French will not accept a new philosophical opinion unless it is at least 25% BS. Postmodernism easily exceeds that. It is a desperate attempt to make reality and Marxist thought come together and they have solved the problem by inventing classes and disposing of reality. There is nothing lighthearted there.
The reality of postmodernism is that it is a Marxist tantrum of French origin. By the mid 1940's it was obvious to even the most devoted Marxist that capitalism had outstripped Marxism in every way, so there was a philosophical tantrum about it. Capitalism had outstripped Marxism economically. Wahhh. Marxism hadn't ushered in the workers' paradise it had promised. Wahhh. Marxist countries had to have guards to keep people from leaving. Wahhh. The communist party was the new tyranny and it was as brutal as it was incompetent. Wahhh. Add the stamping of feet and you get the unhappy origins of postmodernism.
The idea of postmodernism is that instead of the one-dimensional struggle between the upper classes and the oppressed, there were multiple class hierarchies all contending for power. An additional aspect is that everything we know about the world in general is from our senses and you can see the parable of the six blind men and the elephant although in postmodernism, there is a rejection of any absolute truth beyond our senses - so the real elephant doesn't actually exist or can be made into anything you want. In fact, our normal ideas of due process, scientific method, rational thought and cause leading to effect were part of the White European Male hierarchy and weren't necessary or welcome anywhere else. You now have the so-called Social Justice Warriors on campus accosting black students who are heading to science classes and trying to dissuade them from going to that class when they should be in a black studies class learning how to be victims of oppression. Anywhere else, this would be called racism, but university administrations are complicit or at least wilfully ignorant of this.
For everyone outside of European White Male, logic, meaning and the rest of what we consider the bulwark of education and science is non-existent. We have gender studies classes supposedly taught by "award-winning professors" (who definitely deserve the P. T. Barnum award - he said there is a sucker born every minute and the award goes to whoever monetizes this to the greatest extent). They claim there are 327 genders and there is gender fluidity. You hear that ladies? For the several days a month when it doesn't pay to be female, you can just become a man. How's that working out for you? Who knew it was as easy as wishful thinking? I have a Y chromosome. I can be nothing other than male. If you only have X chromosomes, you are female. That's it. Those are the only choices. And they aren't actually choices.
Someone once said that the French will not accept a new philosophical opinion unless it is at least 25% BS. Postmodernism easily exceeds that. It is a desperate attempt to make reality and Marxist thought come together and they have solved the problem by inventing classes and disposing of reality. There is nothing lighthearted there.
TriBel
Scooby
Did I use the term "lighthearted"?
"Linda Hutcheon claimed postmodern fiction as a whole could be characterized by the ironic quote marks, that much of it can be taken as tongue-in-cheek. This irony, along with black humor and the general concept of "play" (related to Derrida's concept or the ideas advocated by Roland Barthes in The Pleasure of the Text) are among the most recognizable aspects of postmodernism." Wiki.
And yes - it's considered postmodern.
“Just a girl”: Feminism, Postmodernism and Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Jim Thompson
http://www.whedonstudies.tv/uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/rose_wj_7.1.pdf Nothing Normal about the Monsters: Postmodern Monstrosity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “Normal Again”
Mylie
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I haven't done this for a long time but my s6 rewatch has made me want to catch up, so here it goes...
What happened was when I went in to audition for the role, they just had two pages of dialogue, no character description. They didn't indicate that she was going to be bad, even. Or if it was just for one episode. I decided to play her a certain way - the Glory way - and as they went with my story line, they would decide things two or three weeks ahead. So I didn't even know she was going to be the Big Bad until after a couple of episodes in. I certainly didn't know she was going to be a god.
- Clare Kramer
I came up with the idea that when she opens the dimension to go back to her hell dimension, all the dimensions open up and basically bled into Earth. That's where you get the dragons and the monsters that basically destroy the planet. First, I pitched it to David Fury and everybody and they go « Yeah, you should pitch that to Joss ». I remember pitching that to Joss and he goes « Yeah, yeah. That's a good idea. » Then I pitched him another idea that he hated. I got one win that night and one « No, that's stupid. ». - Steven S. DeKnight
Finished the s5 part of the book and and entering s6...
When Joss presented that idea and when Marti and I were discussing it when Joss wasn't around, because he was off writing the musical for the first several episodes of the season, we knew this had to be a very painful birth bringing Buffy back, and we had to play into that. That's what people were responding to. They were saying things like « It's not as fun as it used to be; Buffy is such a drag; it's so serious ». That was all intentional. There was a lot of discussion about that. How much of the audience was going to be alienated and when are we going to snap her out of this? Obviously, the key was it's going to be the end of the season when she needed to climb back out of her grave for herself to decide she wanted to live in this world. That was the biggest part. - David Fury
We were dealing with marriage and alcoholism and a really abusive relationship. We were dealing with someone who is practically suicidally depressed. It's weird, but people didn't respond to that so much. - Joss Whedon
We both wanted to reflect the tumult of being in your twenties. Even though the show wasn't as clearly defined by metaphor as it was when we were back in high school, it's appropriate. The twenties are a much more murky period. I think we both wanted to make sure that it felt very real; that when you get to the age that Buffy and the others were, there's supposed to be this really strong conflict between that desire on one hand to be young and taken care of and irresponsible, and on the other to really take charge of your own life. Those two things pull you in really different directions. For me - and I think for a lot of people I knew at that age - it's kind of a war. Sometimes, the grown-up is winning and sometimes the kid is winning. That's what we really wanted to deal with. - Marti Noxon
What happened was when I went in to audition for the role, they just had two pages of dialogue, no character description. They didn't indicate that she was going to be bad, even. Or if it was just for one episode. I decided to play her a certain way - the Glory way - and as they went with my story line, they would decide things two or three weeks ahead. So I didn't even know she was going to be the Big Bad until after a couple of episodes in. I certainly didn't know she was going to be a god.
- Clare Kramer
I came up with the idea that when she opens the dimension to go back to her hell dimension, all the dimensions open up and basically bled into Earth. That's where you get the dragons and the monsters that basically destroy the planet. First, I pitched it to David Fury and everybody and they go « Yeah, you should pitch that to Joss ». I remember pitching that to Joss and he goes « Yeah, yeah. That's a good idea. » Then I pitched him another idea that he hated. I got one win that night and one « No, that's stupid. ». - Steven S. DeKnight
Finished the s5 part of the book and and entering s6...
When Joss presented that idea and when Marti and I were discussing it when Joss wasn't around, because he was off writing the musical for the first several episodes of the season, we knew this had to be a very painful birth bringing Buffy back, and we had to play into that. That's what people were responding to. They were saying things like « It's not as fun as it used to be; Buffy is such a drag; it's so serious ». That was all intentional. There was a lot of discussion about that. How much of the audience was going to be alienated and when are we going to snap her out of this? Obviously, the key was it's going to be the end of the season when she needed to climb back out of her grave for herself to decide she wanted to live in this world. That was the biggest part. - David Fury
We were dealing with marriage and alcoholism and a really abusive relationship. We were dealing with someone who is practically suicidally depressed. It's weird, but people didn't respond to that so much. - Joss Whedon
We both wanted to reflect the tumult of being in your twenties. Even though the show wasn't as clearly defined by metaphor as it was when we were back in high school, it's appropriate. The twenties are a much more murky period. I think we both wanted to make sure that it felt very real; that when you get to the age that Buffy and the others were, there's supposed to be this really strong conflict between that desire on one hand to be young and taken care of and irresponsible, and on the other to really take charge of your own life. Those two things pull you in really different directions. For me - and I think for a lot of people I knew at that age - it's kind of a war. Sometimes, the grown-up is winning and sometimes the kid is winning. That's what we really wanted to deal with. - Marti Noxon
Mylie
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It was definitely tough for me. It's so hard to separate myself from her, so it was tough for me to see these situations and think, « But Buffy wouldn't do this... » And I felt pressure from the force of the fans. I know Joss and Marti both particularly talked me down from a ledge a couple of times, because it just felt so far removed for me at the time. And maybe that was the point - maybe I was struggling in the same way that she was struggling to find who she was. It just felt so foreign to me.
- Sarah Michelle Gellar
The dynamic changes a little bit when you don't have the show runner and visionary of the show around and part of you feels like we're kind of floundering. As much as we're moving forward and we're trying to anticipate and go, « What would Joss do here? » it was difficult. Marti tried to rely on me a lot for that. I was flattered and appreciative, but I had also been doing a lot of work at Angel and kind of splitting my time between the two, so I feel like I wasn't available enough to her, which I felt very badly about. We tried to work together and Marti tried to run the show just as she felt Joss would, but I guess there was always a feeling in the back of our minds, Joss is coming back, right? The show is still going on, he's not just gone, he'll come back eventually. And he did come back. He was living on the East Coast at the time. He would fly in for a few days and discuss what we were doing for those first couple of episodes and he'd give us thoughts, and then he would go away again. Marti never really, to my mind, got enough time to really mold into the role of show runner. As much as Joss said he was turning the show over to her, it didn't happen sort of. I was busy writing the second episode, she was writing the first, and when we were writing, we were really not together during that period. So there were a lot of times when she would convene the writers while I was writing or I'd get together with some of the writers while she was writing. We hadn't quite found the way we were going to do it. Joss would come in and give his blessing on certain things, give his notes on scripts we'd hand in, and then disappear again. - David Fury
I always looked up to Buffy. I thought when I was younger I would have loved to have a role model like that. A woman who showed you that you don't have to be the smartest and you don't have to be the most beautiful, but you can protect your family and the people that you love and you can be a powerful woman. I think that's what made season six hard for me. For all of us, but especially Joss, Marti, and me, we love her and it was hard for all of us to watch her suffer. I think it was part of growing pains. It was a tough time, and that's what came through in the end, which was great, because when Buffy herself resurfaced, we all resurfaced and found her voice again. - Sarah Michelle Gellar
We started to say, « Yeah, we recognize that the season was dark » and now it's what everyone says. I've talked to a lot of fans who really enjoyed the season and didn't have problems with it since, overall, there was still a lot of funny and a lot of good. However, we definitely went to a very dark place, particularly with Buffy and Spike. I recognize that. We took that elevator pretty far down. We got the message that people didn't like a dour Buffy, and, you know, we absolutely agreed. You can't stay in that place. But at the same time, it's hard to hear people say, « Yeah, it just wasn't to our liking ». We've had criticism before. Season four had a great deal of great in it, but people didn't like Riley, people didn't like the Initiative, people didn't like Maggie. It was a loyal fan base, but we heard people wanted stuff to lighten up a bit. - Marti Noxon
Marti's sensibilities might have been darker than what the show was used to. And it was really her show. Joss was there, but season seven he was running Angel and Firefly. So the change of ownership, if you will, was a little jarring. And, as many good episodes as there are in seasons six and seven, the change in tone sort of left me missing what was there before. - Jose Molina
I will say the show got extremely sexual in the last couple of seasons. It went there. I know Marti and Joss wanted to push the envelope. Joss wanted to make the show darker and he wanted to push standards and practices into letting him do some really twisted things. He wanted Buffy to be self-destructive in a twisted way, and it's hard to convey that in a family show or something that is more network friendly. Marti was very into the relationship stuff; she was into the Spike-Buffy thing and the sort of self-destruction, the idea of Buffy being reckless with Spike and getting into a kind of, like, hate sex. It's kind of sophisticated dark stuff, psychology certainly. That was largely the tone of that season, which was a shift from what we'd been doing on the WB. It seemed appropriate at the time. I think Joss was a little surprised that there were so much pushback, but he never regretted it or thought we made a mistake. He always knew it needed to be that way. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry is a cranky teenager. I told Joss that in season six Buffy is Harry. He needed to go through that. It's part of the ritual of growing up into adulthood. It's going through the process of being an asshole who hates everybody, because no one understands them. He agreed that's sort of what Buffy was meant to be in season six. - David Fury
We had talked about the Spike-Buffy romance toward the end of season five. Joss and I were like « You know, this is what has to happen. We've got to take this seriously, because he is by far the most sort of screwed-up guy around ». We just felt like that's whom she'd be drawn to under the circumstances. Also, you know, he's not unsexy. So we wanted to take advantage of that - Marti Noxon
It became, « Does Buffy need a love interest? ». Of course, it eventually came around to Spike, which was an unusual choice. It was one many of the fans embraced. I was a little less enthusiastic since I knew the vampires were demons essentially. The demons possess someone once they die. So the idea that Spike could love genuinely or Buffy could fall for Spike in any way was tricky for me. We were able to get there once Buffy came back from the dead and she was all messed up. Then she could become Spike's love interest, because it was self-destructive. A lot of people still romanticize that. I myself had to come around to is as I eventually started writing episodes about the relationship and I had to believe in it. Those were the challenges that came when we removed Angel. Joss loved those challenges more than he would have loved keeping them together and keeping everything safe and letting the fans dictate « Oh, don't ever break them up; we love them ». He was all about pain. - David Fury
I'll stop there for now but there are a lot of interesting quotes about s6. I'll post more later.
- Sarah Michelle Gellar
The dynamic changes a little bit when you don't have the show runner and visionary of the show around and part of you feels like we're kind of floundering. As much as we're moving forward and we're trying to anticipate and go, « What would Joss do here? » it was difficult. Marti tried to rely on me a lot for that. I was flattered and appreciative, but I had also been doing a lot of work at Angel and kind of splitting my time between the two, so I feel like I wasn't available enough to her, which I felt very badly about. We tried to work together and Marti tried to run the show just as she felt Joss would, but I guess there was always a feeling in the back of our minds, Joss is coming back, right? The show is still going on, he's not just gone, he'll come back eventually. And he did come back. He was living on the East Coast at the time. He would fly in for a few days and discuss what we were doing for those first couple of episodes and he'd give us thoughts, and then he would go away again. Marti never really, to my mind, got enough time to really mold into the role of show runner. As much as Joss said he was turning the show over to her, it didn't happen sort of. I was busy writing the second episode, she was writing the first, and when we were writing, we were really not together during that period. So there were a lot of times when she would convene the writers while I was writing or I'd get together with some of the writers while she was writing. We hadn't quite found the way we were going to do it. Joss would come in and give his blessing on certain things, give his notes on scripts we'd hand in, and then disappear again. - David Fury
I always looked up to Buffy. I thought when I was younger I would have loved to have a role model like that. A woman who showed you that you don't have to be the smartest and you don't have to be the most beautiful, but you can protect your family and the people that you love and you can be a powerful woman. I think that's what made season six hard for me. For all of us, but especially Joss, Marti, and me, we love her and it was hard for all of us to watch her suffer. I think it was part of growing pains. It was a tough time, and that's what came through in the end, which was great, because when Buffy herself resurfaced, we all resurfaced and found her voice again. - Sarah Michelle Gellar
We started to say, « Yeah, we recognize that the season was dark » and now it's what everyone says. I've talked to a lot of fans who really enjoyed the season and didn't have problems with it since, overall, there was still a lot of funny and a lot of good. However, we definitely went to a very dark place, particularly with Buffy and Spike. I recognize that. We took that elevator pretty far down. We got the message that people didn't like a dour Buffy, and, you know, we absolutely agreed. You can't stay in that place. But at the same time, it's hard to hear people say, « Yeah, it just wasn't to our liking ». We've had criticism before. Season four had a great deal of great in it, but people didn't like Riley, people didn't like the Initiative, people didn't like Maggie. It was a loyal fan base, but we heard people wanted stuff to lighten up a bit. - Marti Noxon
Marti's sensibilities might have been darker than what the show was used to. And it was really her show. Joss was there, but season seven he was running Angel and Firefly. So the change of ownership, if you will, was a little jarring. And, as many good episodes as there are in seasons six and seven, the change in tone sort of left me missing what was there before. - Jose Molina
I will say the show got extremely sexual in the last couple of seasons. It went there. I know Marti and Joss wanted to push the envelope. Joss wanted to make the show darker and he wanted to push standards and practices into letting him do some really twisted things. He wanted Buffy to be self-destructive in a twisted way, and it's hard to convey that in a family show or something that is more network friendly. Marti was very into the relationship stuff; she was into the Spike-Buffy thing and the sort of self-destruction, the idea of Buffy being reckless with Spike and getting into a kind of, like, hate sex. It's kind of sophisticated dark stuff, psychology certainly. That was largely the tone of that season, which was a shift from what we'd been doing on the WB. It seemed appropriate at the time. I think Joss was a little surprised that there were so much pushback, but he never regretted it or thought we made a mistake. He always knew it needed to be that way. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry is a cranky teenager. I told Joss that in season six Buffy is Harry. He needed to go through that. It's part of the ritual of growing up into adulthood. It's going through the process of being an asshole who hates everybody, because no one understands them. He agreed that's sort of what Buffy was meant to be in season six. - David Fury
We had talked about the Spike-Buffy romance toward the end of season five. Joss and I were like « You know, this is what has to happen. We've got to take this seriously, because he is by far the most sort of screwed-up guy around ». We just felt like that's whom she'd be drawn to under the circumstances. Also, you know, he's not unsexy. So we wanted to take advantage of that - Marti Noxon
It became, « Does Buffy need a love interest? ». Of course, it eventually came around to Spike, which was an unusual choice. It was one many of the fans embraced. I was a little less enthusiastic since I knew the vampires were demons essentially. The demons possess someone once they die. So the idea that Spike could love genuinely or Buffy could fall for Spike in any way was tricky for me. We were able to get there once Buffy came back from the dead and she was all messed up. Then she could become Spike's love interest, because it was self-destructive. A lot of people still romanticize that. I myself had to come around to is as I eventually started writing episodes about the relationship and I had to believe in it. Those were the challenges that came when we removed Angel. Joss loved those challenges more than he would have loved keeping them together and keeping everything safe and letting the fans dictate « Oh, don't ever break them up; we love them ». He was all about pain. - David Fury
I'll stop there for now but there are a lot of interesting quotes about s6. I'll post more later.
thetopher
Really great stuff. Interesting that David Fury says that 'Buffy was Spike's love interest', not the other way around. Very telling.
Mylie
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Continuing with s6...
There was a lot of discussion of how we could get Buffy and Spike to the next phase of their relationship. We had talked about lots of realistic ways it could happen, and Joss was like, "It just has to be epic. It can't be a little thing," The whole notion there was that it was going to come out of the dramatic dynamic they had, which is as much about violence as it is about anything else. In my mind, Spike was always self-centered in his goodness. It's always about his wants and needs. He's not a moral guy and he is good when it serves him to be good. But I don't know if we put enough emphasis on that. He was a little less ambiguous and a little bit more the hero. But he's not a hero. People came to think of him as this softer, more righteous guy, but at least in my mind at his core, he did not have a soul. We still thought of him as a sociopath in the sense that he acts the way he thinks people want him to act in order to get what he wants. But if you've lived in the Buffy universe for years, the dude is just bad. It was the chip that kept him from being really bad. - Marti Noxon
It was the beginning of the most divisive story line we've ever had, which is Buffy and Spike boning. I've never seen such a strong reaction on both sides, people either loved it or hated it. To this day, people either truly believe that Spike is completely redeemed and he should be treated a lot better or they truly believe that Buffy was a fool for trusting someone who's been so evil and how could she be so unheroic to let herself be caught up in this really sordid romance? So, you had the total Buffy-Spike shippers or the people who are like, I just don't respect Buffy anymore. And it was fascinating to see. You know, I slept with bad guys all through college and it was really hot. There were certainly a number of people who were like this who were really hot. I don't even care who's doing it or why. And neither of them are all good or all bad. It wasn't black and white. I've taken a lot of heat from Internet folks, especially because I said stuff like , "You know that that relationship can't work" or "with/without things changing" and other things that make them feel like we're not responsible - or we're sort of comparing it to the Angel-Buffy romance and saying that that romance was really idolized, and this one isn't. But to me, it's much more real. It's like, if these two crazy kids could make it work, it'd be a lot more interesting than kind of a perfect romance with obstacles not of their own making. At the end of the year, Spike went and did something radical, but the violence of it upset people. It's hard to say you're the most feminist show ever and have people beating each other up all the time. - Marti Noxon
I was just terrified. Like, when you do a movie or a play you can read the script beforehand and decide if you want to put yourself through that or if you want to show that part of yourself or if you want to put yourself through the rigors of filming that. Or you can pass. You can say, "I don't want to do that". When you do a TV show, normally once you film one episode, you know what's going to be asked of you, because most television shows are fairly repetitive, which is not a good thing. But when you work with Joss Whedon, all bets are off. You're contracted to do anything that he comes up with to anyone that he wants you to do it to and whatever he dreams up. I started to be terrified of the new script. I'm going to have to experience anything that is thought of. It was scary, but that worked, because I think that Spike was terrified by himself, and it all kind of works. But yeah, it was a horrible realization that all bets were off. - James Marsters
I bucked on doing Fool For Love. I had an opportunity to do the episode, but because I couldn't buy into it, it went to Doug Petrie and he did an amazing job. He sort of almost kind of convinced me, because he did such a great job with that episode. I went "Gee, I wish I'd done it after all" It still kind of weirded me out that Spike, a soulless creature, could fall in love. I kept saying, it's just an infatuation. It's only external, it's only this, he can't possibly be in love, he has no heart, he has no soul. But I came around, they beat it out of me. - David Fury
Yeah, that was something that Joss and David Fury just got all excited about and I was just like, "Ewwww!" It was disturbing to me... and still is. It just shows you that even I have my limits. - Marti Noxon (about the Buffy-Spike stuff in Gone)
I remember one time we were blocking a scene in Buffy's house and Xander was bleeding out in the corner, having been mauled by some demon or something. The cast was gathered around him, gnashing teeth and wailing and keening. I was over in the corner, up against the wall looking bored. The director came up to me and goes, "James, you gotta go over there and care. I know it's early in the morning, but you're a cast member, he's a cast member, he might die. You gotta go over there and express concern." I was like, "No, I don't" And he was like, "Don't you care about Xander?" "Nope, don't care at all. Could live or die - check with Joss. I don't care at all." He was like, "Really? What about the rest of them?" I was like, "Buffy, definitely. Buffy's mother, yes. But the rest of them, no, not at all". So yeah, if you were Buffy or if you were part of her immediate family, then I cared about you. If you weren't, then you were on your own. Dawn was effectively Buffy's daughter, I think. As far as Buffy's journey, you know... her mother dies, and very quickly she gets this little sister whom she now has to take care of. So she's just quickly a single mom. Since I love Buffy, Dawn becomes my stepdaughter, emotionally speaking. I kind of approached it that way. - James Marsters
More soon... I feel like s6 is going on forever but there's A LOT of stuff said about it...
Just to give a general idea :
s3 : 20 pages
s4 : 17 pages
s5 : 22 pages
s6 : 44 pages
s7 : 31 pages
There was a lot of discussion of how we could get Buffy and Spike to the next phase of their relationship. We had talked about lots of realistic ways it could happen, and Joss was like, "It just has to be epic. It can't be a little thing," The whole notion there was that it was going to come out of the dramatic dynamic they had, which is as much about violence as it is about anything else. In my mind, Spike was always self-centered in his goodness. It's always about his wants and needs. He's not a moral guy and he is good when it serves him to be good. But I don't know if we put enough emphasis on that. He was a little less ambiguous and a little bit more the hero. But he's not a hero. People came to think of him as this softer, more righteous guy, but at least in my mind at his core, he did not have a soul. We still thought of him as a sociopath in the sense that he acts the way he thinks people want him to act in order to get what he wants. But if you've lived in the Buffy universe for years, the dude is just bad. It was the chip that kept him from being really bad. - Marti Noxon
It was the beginning of the most divisive story line we've ever had, which is Buffy and Spike boning. I've never seen such a strong reaction on both sides, people either loved it or hated it. To this day, people either truly believe that Spike is completely redeemed and he should be treated a lot better or they truly believe that Buffy was a fool for trusting someone who's been so evil and how could she be so unheroic to let herself be caught up in this really sordid romance? So, you had the total Buffy-Spike shippers or the people who are like, I just don't respect Buffy anymore. And it was fascinating to see. You know, I slept with bad guys all through college and it was really hot. There were certainly a number of people who were like this who were really hot. I don't even care who's doing it or why. And neither of them are all good or all bad. It wasn't black and white. I've taken a lot of heat from Internet folks, especially because I said stuff like , "You know that that relationship can't work" or "with/without things changing" and other things that make them feel like we're not responsible - or we're sort of comparing it to the Angel-Buffy romance and saying that that romance was really idolized, and this one isn't. But to me, it's much more real. It's like, if these two crazy kids could make it work, it'd be a lot more interesting than kind of a perfect romance with obstacles not of their own making. At the end of the year, Spike went and did something radical, but the violence of it upset people. It's hard to say you're the most feminist show ever and have people beating each other up all the time. - Marti Noxon
I was just terrified. Like, when you do a movie or a play you can read the script beforehand and decide if you want to put yourself through that or if you want to show that part of yourself or if you want to put yourself through the rigors of filming that. Or you can pass. You can say, "I don't want to do that". When you do a TV show, normally once you film one episode, you know what's going to be asked of you, because most television shows are fairly repetitive, which is not a good thing. But when you work with Joss Whedon, all bets are off. You're contracted to do anything that he comes up with to anyone that he wants you to do it to and whatever he dreams up. I started to be terrified of the new script. I'm going to have to experience anything that is thought of. It was scary, but that worked, because I think that Spike was terrified by himself, and it all kind of works. But yeah, it was a horrible realization that all bets were off. - James Marsters
I bucked on doing Fool For Love. I had an opportunity to do the episode, but because I couldn't buy into it, it went to Doug Petrie and he did an amazing job. He sort of almost kind of convinced me, because he did such a great job with that episode. I went "Gee, I wish I'd done it after all" It still kind of weirded me out that Spike, a soulless creature, could fall in love. I kept saying, it's just an infatuation. It's only external, it's only this, he can't possibly be in love, he has no heart, he has no soul. But I came around, they beat it out of me. - David Fury
Yeah, that was something that Joss and David Fury just got all excited about and I was just like, "Ewwww!" It was disturbing to me... and still is. It just shows you that even I have my limits. - Marti Noxon (about the Buffy-Spike stuff in Gone)
I remember one time we were blocking a scene in Buffy's house and Xander was bleeding out in the corner, having been mauled by some demon or something. The cast was gathered around him, gnashing teeth and wailing and keening. I was over in the corner, up against the wall looking bored. The director came up to me and goes, "James, you gotta go over there and care. I know it's early in the morning, but you're a cast member, he's a cast member, he might die. You gotta go over there and express concern." I was like, "No, I don't" And he was like, "Don't you care about Xander?" "Nope, don't care at all. Could live or die - check with Joss. I don't care at all." He was like, "Really? What about the rest of them?" I was like, "Buffy, definitely. Buffy's mother, yes. But the rest of them, no, not at all". So yeah, if you were Buffy or if you were part of her immediate family, then I cared about you. If you weren't, then you were on your own. Dawn was effectively Buffy's daughter, I think. As far as Buffy's journey, you know... her mother dies, and very quickly she gets this little sister whom she now has to take care of. So she's just quickly a single mom. Since I love Buffy, Dawn becomes my stepdaughter, emotionally speaking. I kind of approached it that way. - James Marsters
More soon... I feel like s6 is going on forever but there's A LOT of stuff said about it...
Just to give a general idea :
s3 : 20 pages
s4 : 17 pages
s5 : 22 pages
s6 : 44 pages
s7 : 31 pages
thetopher
Member of the Church Of Faith
It's interesting that the writers seemed to have changed their minds between Season 6 and 7 (which many fans claim are almost like two halves of one big season) because here they say 'yeah, we wanted to show that Spike is basically evil' and yet in S7 they're on the record as trying to show that Spike was 'unique' among vampires because of some intrinsic humanity.
They don't seem to realize that you can't actually have BOTH those things. He's either like a vampire or somehow not.
It's why he's such a bad grey area character; Angel, Faith, Willow, Wesley- theses grey area characters work because the writers always seemed to know what they were trying to say, where they were going.
...
Anyways, fascinating stuff. 🙂
I think this quote goes to the heart of all that 'subtle' Spuffy writing, right?
lol JM understands Spike's character better than half the writers.
They don't seem to realize that you can't actually have BOTH those things. He's either like a vampire or somehow not.
It's why he's such a bad grey area character; Angel, Faith, Willow, Wesley- theses grey area characters work because the writers always seemed to know what they were trying to say, where they were going.
...
Anyways, fascinating stuff. 🙂
I think this quote goes to the heart of all that 'subtle' Spuffy writing, right?
lol JM understands Spike's character better than half the writers.
W
WillowFromBuffy
Guest
Poor Marti. She's a rock. It's almost as if Joss abandoned ship to let her be the scapegoat as the show sailed into controversial water.
Mylie
Scooby
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Yes. I feel like he has a very good grasp on the character. It feels like with all the changes his character went through, he needed to make sense of it all for the character to be able to play any of it. You can tell he spent a lot of time thinking about who Spike is.
W
WillowFromBuffy
Guest
I agree that James seems to know his character very well. If the other actors spent so much time thinking about their characters, they haven't taken the time to share those insights with us the audience, which may be a good thing, because we have a tendency to tear writer/actors to shreds over their statements 😛
However, I want to point out that writers and directors are different jobs. It is ultimately the writers that create each character. The director and actors make the writers work manifest and add to it, but they don't attend writers' meetings.
I assume James is talking about Michael E. Gershman, who is certainly a BtVS veteran, but he may not have been briefed sufficiently on where Spike was supposed to be at.
However, I want to point out that writers and directors are different jobs. It is ultimately the writers that create each character. The director and actors make the writers work manifest and add to it, but they don't attend writers' meetings.
I assume James is talking about Michael E. Gershman, who is certainly a BtVS veteran, but he may not have been briefed sufficiently on where Spike was supposed to be at.
Mylie
Scooby
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Continuing with s6...
It got so dark and so intense and then even darker still when Buffy just beats the hell out of Spike. Some people had a real hard time with that and I dig on that one. I understand where they're coming from. It was something that, you know, just went to a real dark place and this is where people started to feel like, « OK, like the episode, like the show, but what's going on? » You know, what's going on with Buffy? What's going on with Spike? I get that. She beats the crap out of him. I can understand why people were starting to wonder. I wouldn't say that we were floundering at all, but I would say that at that point in the relationship we didn't know where it was going and all we had was just her raw emotion. That's what got expressed: just complete confusion and the fact that she kept taking out her pain on him and that he would take it.
- Marti Noxon
Every year, I felt like I was playing a new character. I started as the boy toy for Dru. I was cannon fodder and I was going to be done away with and Dru was the main thing. Then I graduated to villain. Then I guess I was the wacky neighbor for a while. Then I was the forlorn man in the corner loving the woman who didn't give anything back. Then I was the lover. Then I was the unhealthy boyfriend. - James Marster
I believe that Spike was a monster even when he was convinced he loved Buffy. He was still a vampire. Yes, he had a chip in his head which kept him from killing, but I think ultimately the vampire's a monster. Unless they have a soul like Angel they can't be anything else. Spike is a demon. There's this demon inside him, so the attempted rape of Buffy. As frightening and awful as that may seem, people were still romanticizing Spike and Buffy, and that was the problem I was having. I don't think their relationship should have been rooted for at that time. At that time, I thought this is a wrong, twisted thing. - David Fury
This is a monstrous person who is now obsessed with our hero who is in a very vulnerable place. But don't forget: he is a monster. They went, Spike is so funny, and he quips, and he can't kill anybody; he's so sweet and cute and I want [him] and Buffy to get together. The attempted rape was Steve DeKnight's episode, so blame him for it, by the way. It was an attempt to remind the audience Spike is bad; don't root for this relationship. The people who were for the relationship felt betrayed by Joss and us. It was very specific, because we'd say you shouldn't be rooting for him. It's the typical thing of a girl attracted to a bad boy. An awful wife beater, a guy who is a scumbag and some women go for him and we're not supposed to root for that. That's what this was, so I didn't have the problem everyone had. The people with the problems were the Spike-Buffy shippers who really wanted them to get together. - David Fury
In Grave, the episode where Spike is in Africa going through this test and it's revealed so he can get his soul back, because he knew he was a monster after what he did to Buffy and realized the only way he can love her is if he stops being a monster and gets his soul back. I totally bought into it. I understand it from a story standpoint. I'm offended that they were rooting for the relationship before that. Maybe we made a mistake in some cases by making Spike so sympathetic at times. But even the worst human being can be sympathetic sometimes. Except Donald Trump. So the rape was very controversial and I just don't agree with the interpretation people saw in it. We were not supposed to like Spike's relationship. When he got his soul back, some people didn't like him. I had lots of arguments on the fan boards about it. I said the fact that he got his soul back makes a difference. They didn't see that it did. And they said it's overrated, why do you need a soul? We had these weird arguments talking in theological theory. If we're saying that love comes from the soul, then that's really the only way that Spike can... experience real love. People to this day probably still curse my name for making that argument. Most people didn't care about it like I did. I was the one who was not a shipper of Spike and Buffy, because of the soulless thing. So when he got the soul, for me, I could embrace it now. But what was nice is when we introduce him, he's still pretty ****ed up. He's not « Oh, I've got a soul now I'm a well adjusted vampire. » He's a guy who is pretty messed up and we did that with Angel as well. When we got to do flashbacks or at least part of the lore, it wasn't like Angel got a soul and he's like « I'm better now, I'll fight for good. » It was him living on the streets eating rats and stuff. He was pretty messed up, so it takes a while to make that adjustment from going from soulless vampire to soulful vampire. For me, it at least allowed me to root for Buffy to love him as imperfect and flawed as he was. Then he was someone whose love was more genuine. I always kind of rationalized it that he was more fixated on Buffy than he actually loved her. But with his soul, I went « It was genuine ». It just made it that much more painful, of course. - David Fury
I have to admit I was playing it with a soul from the beginning. Then it was terrifying to get a soul, because I had nothing left. I was like « What else do I do? I've been doing a soul the whole time. I don't know what I'm going to add now » Luckily, the writing filled all that in. I didn't talk about it. I did not alert anyone to that one. That was going against the show. I didn't feel like I had a choice, though. - James Marsters
What I came to justify to myself is that Spike is an anomaly; that somehow that poet that's in him... retained a small part of his soul. A romantic part of his soul. And that is from being a very bad poet; someone who was full of all those emotions that allowed him to retain some part of himself that could love Buffy. That's how I rationalized it. I bought it, and I had to buy it because I wrote him in the relationship episodes and eventually in Lies My Parents Told Me telling the backstory of his mother and he's just an anomaly. He's the only vampire who could love even though he is almost entirely soulless. I argued that the chip that was in his head was conditioning somewhat and was messing with him. There's so many ways to rationalize it. - David Fury
The thing is, I didn't know Spike was getting a soul. Even filming the scene where it happens, there were three different versions of that scene I had to memorize and the one we finally filmed was a fourth. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I didn't know why I went to Africa. I didn't know if I was going to get something to kill [Buffy] with. I had no idea. [Spike] kept saying « I'm going to give her what she deserves » So Joss completely fooled me. I didn't even have the line « I will give you back your soul » and they're rolling. It was cut and move on and I'm like... James looks around in complete confusion. « Angel 2, yeah! » But that was the immediate problem is you cannot go where Angel has gone. You don't follow up the banjo act with a banjo act. - James Marsters
Thoughts :
I really wish the author of the book had included the references for every quote, it would have been great to know when those quotes were said, especially in cases where, like with David Fury, there are contradictions.
I think I've finished the parts about Spike (it's been very Spike heavy for awhile) for s6. There are still 20 pages left for that season! 🙂
It got so dark and so intense and then even darker still when Buffy just beats the hell out of Spike. Some people had a real hard time with that and I dig on that one. I understand where they're coming from. It was something that, you know, just went to a real dark place and this is where people started to feel like, « OK, like the episode, like the show, but what's going on? » You know, what's going on with Buffy? What's going on with Spike? I get that. She beats the crap out of him. I can understand why people were starting to wonder. I wouldn't say that we were floundering at all, but I would say that at that point in the relationship we didn't know where it was going and all we had was just her raw emotion. That's what got expressed: just complete confusion and the fact that she kept taking out her pain on him and that he would take it.
- Marti Noxon
Every year, I felt like I was playing a new character. I started as the boy toy for Dru. I was cannon fodder and I was going to be done away with and Dru was the main thing. Then I graduated to villain. Then I guess I was the wacky neighbor for a while. Then I was the forlorn man in the corner loving the woman who didn't give anything back. Then I was the lover. Then I was the unhealthy boyfriend. - James Marster
I believe that Spike was a monster even when he was convinced he loved Buffy. He was still a vampire. Yes, he had a chip in his head which kept him from killing, but I think ultimately the vampire's a monster. Unless they have a soul like Angel they can't be anything else. Spike is a demon. There's this demon inside him, so the attempted rape of Buffy. As frightening and awful as that may seem, people were still romanticizing Spike and Buffy, and that was the problem I was having. I don't think their relationship should have been rooted for at that time. At that time, I thought this is a wrong, twisted thing. - David Fury
This is a monstrous person who is now obsessed with our hero who is in a very vulnerable place. But don't forget: he is a monster. They went, Spike is so funny, and he quips, and he can't kill anybody; he's so sweet and cute and I want [him] and Buffy to get together. The attempted rape was Steve DeKnight's episode, so blame him for it, by the way. It was an attempt to remind the audience Spike is bad; don't root for this relationship. The people who were for the relationship felt betrayed by Joss and us. It was very specific, because we'd say you shouldn't be rooting for him. It's the typical thing of a girl attracted to a bad boy. An awful wife beater, a guy who is a scumbag and some women go for him and we're not supposed to root for that. That's what this was, so I didn't have the problem everyone had. The people with the problems were the Spike-Buffy shippers who really wanted them to get together. - David Fury
In Grave, the episode where Spike is in Africa going through this test and it's revealed so he can get his soul back, because he knew he was a monster after what he did to Buffy and realized the only way he can love her is if he stops being a monster and gets his soul back. I totally bought into it. I understand it from a story standpoint. I'm offended that they were rooting for the relationship before that. Maybe we made a mistake in some cases by making Spike so sympathetic at times. But even the worst human being can be sympathetic sometimes. Except Donald Trump. So the rape was very controversial and I just don't agree with the interpretation people saw in it. We were not supposed to like Spike's relationship. When he got his soul back, some people didn't like him. I had lots of arguments on the fan boards about it. I said the fact that he got his soul back makes a difference. They didn't see that it did. And they said it's overrated, why do you need a soul? We had these weird arguments talking in theological theory. If we're saying that love comes from the soul, then that's really the only way that Spike can... experience real love. People to this day probably still curse my name for making that argument. Most people didn't care about it like I did. I was the one who was not a shipper of Spike and Buffy, because of the soulless thing. So when he got the soul, for me, I could embrace it now. But what was nice is when we introduce him, he's still pretty ****ed up. He's not « Oh, I've got a soul now I'm a well adjusted vampire. » He's a guy who is pretty messed up and we did that with Angel as well. When we got to do flashbacks or at least part of the lore, it wasn't like Angel got a soul and he's like « I'm better now, I'll fight for good. » It was him living on the streets eating rats and stuff. He was pretty messed up, so it takes a while to make that adjustment from going from soulless vampire to soulful vampire. For me, it at least allowed me to root for Buffy to love him as imperfect and flawed as he was. Then he was someone whose love was more genuine. I always kind of rationalized it that he was more fixated on Buffy than he actually loved her. But with his soul, I went « It was genuine ». It just made it that much more painful, of course. - David Fury
I have to admit I was playing it with a soul from the beginning. Then it was terrifying to get a soul, because I had nothing left. I was like « What else do I do? I've been doing a soul the whole time. I don't know what I'm going to add now » Luckily, the writing filled all that in. I didn't talk about it. I did not alert anyone to that one. That was going against the show. I didn't feel like I had a choice, though. - James Marsters
What I came to justify to myself is that Spike is an anomaly; that somehow that poet that's in him... retained a small part of his soul. A romantic part of his soul. And that is from being a very bad poet; someone who was full of all those emotions that allowed him to retain some part of himself that could love Buffy. That's how I rationalized it. I bought it, and I had to buy it because I wrote him in the relationship episodes and eventually in Lies My Parents Told Me telling the backstory of his mother and he's just an anomaly. He's the only vampire who could love even though he is almost entirely soulless. I argued that the chip that was in his head was conditioning somewhat and was messing with him. There's so many ways to rationalize it. - David Fury
The thing is, I didn't know Spike was getting a soul. Even filming the scene where it happens, there were three different versions of that scene I had to memorize and the one we finally filmed was a fourth. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I didn't know why I went to Africa. I didn't know if I was going to get something to kill [Buffy] with. I had no idea. [Spike] kept saying « I'm going to give her what she deserves » So Joss completely fooled me. I didn't even have the line « I will give you back your soul » and they're rolling. It was cut and move on and I'm like... James looks around in complete confusion. « Angel 2, yeah! » But that was the immediate problem is you cannot go where Angel has gone. You don't follow up the banjo act with a banjo act. - James Marsters
Thoughts :
I really wish the author of the book had included the references for every quote, it would have been great to know when those quotes were said, especially in cases where, like with David Fury, there are contradictions.
I think I've finished the parts about Spike (it's been very Spike heavy for awhile) for s6. There are still 20 pages left for that season! 🙂
The depression was realistic and even the bad sex it's a lot of people's favourite season because it speaks to their depression.
I disagree with Fury on this that it was always black and white - the comments of The Judge, of Angel in relation to vamp Willow show that the person influences the vampire, Spike was a romantic that remained throughout his life and unlike he didn't have agape as unsouled vampire the ability to care about people because they're people and it's why he couldn't understand Buffy unsouled. Fury's view is half right it's Spike's heart that survived not his soul.
thetopher
Hard disagree about them always knowing what to do with all of the other grey area chracters except Spike. Faith was originally supposed to kill herself in Consequences, it has been stated DB impressed with acting in I Only Have Eyes for You so if he hadn't he may well have been killed in Becoming for good. Also the writers on Angel admitted that they learnt how to write him as the show went on and were constantly de and reconstructing him. I think TV changes as it goes along its what great and terrible about it.
TriBel
Scooby
If what Fury says is true then they should have edited the line "Why does everybody in this house think I'm still in love with Spike? And, if Fury's entitled to reconsider his opinion of Spike and read "against the grain", why isn't the viewer?
As it is, I think 6/7 are coupled but it's only in terms of story we see a continuity with a forward trajectory. From the perspective of discourse (broadly, the way the story's told) there's a fold and the discourse goes "backwards" as it where. "The fold is Deleuze’s form of connection. One could contrast it with Althusser’s use of articulation, which is how he sometimes describes the connection between relatively autonomous levels of society (they articulate & dis-articulate)..." Thus S7 can be said to dis-articulate S6 (and earlier seasons. See Buffy's comment above, which "unsays" some of S6). "The fold is the form of connection that follows the general principles of a Deleuzian concept: open-ended & inexhaustive, non-exclusive and unlimited, exterior & infinite".
This sounds way more complicated than it is. The fold's there in Lessons (which Whedon wrote).
"And that's where we're going...right back to the beginning. Not the Bang... not the Word... the true beginning. The next few months are going to be quite a ride. And I think we're all going to learn something about ourselves in the process". As are the connections:
WILLOW: It's all connected. The root systems, the molecules...the energy. Everything's connected.
GILES: Everything's connected. You're connected to a great power, whether you feel it or not.
WILLOW: I felt the Earth. It's all connected. It is, but it's not all good and pure and rootsy. There's deep, deep black.
"open-ended & inexhaustive, non-exclusive and unlimited, exterior & infinite", is a perfect description of what happens at the end of Chosen (written and directed by Whedon).
What Fury's saying flies in the face of much literary, film and television theory.
As it is, I think 6/7 are coupled but it's only in terms of story we see a continuity with a forward trajectory. From the perspective of discourse (broadly, the way the story's told) there's a fold and the discourse goes "backwards" as it where. "The fold is Deleuze’s form of connection. One could contrast it with Althusser’s use of articulation, which is how he sometimes describes the connection between relatively autonomous levels of society (they articulate & dis-articulate)..." Thus S7 can be said to dis-articulate S6 (and earlier seasons. See Buffy's comment above, which "unsays" some of S6). "The fold is the form of connection that follows the general principles of a Deleuzian concept: open-ended & inexhaustive, non-exclusive and unlimited, exterior & infinite".
This sounds way more complicated than it is. The fold's there in Lessons (which Whedon wrote).
"And that's where we're going...right back to the beginning. Not the Bang... not the Word... the true beginning. The next few months are going to be quite a ride. And I think we're all going to learn something about ourselves in the process". As are the connections:
WILLOW: It's all connected. The root systems, the molecules...the energy. Everything's connected.
GILES: Everything's connected. You're connected to a great power, whether you feel it or not.
WILLOW: I felt the Earth. It's all connected. It is, but it's not all good and pure and rootsy. There's deep, deep black.
"open-ended & inexhaustive, non-exclusive and unlimited, exterior & infinite", is a perfect description of what happens at the end of Chosen (written and directed by Whedon).
What Fury's saying flies in the face of much literary, film and television theory.
The way I see canon is it's like if you've ever been taught science at more than one level - you're intially told it's like so as it's the best way to understand it and as your understanding deepens you understand that the initial model you are presented with was very oversimplified but it was the best they could teach you without the background in the subject or related fields of study.
From the historian's perspective the first soul canon we have it from an outsider's perspective that of the watchers council who aren't seeing the demon world from the inside. Both play a distorting perspective since it's presented the way it is to convince a watcher or for a watcher to convince a slayer to give no quarter to anyone they know personally who has to turned into a vampire. It's not in their interests and beyond their understanding to make it more nuanced than that.
From the historian's perspective the first soul canon we have it from an outsider's perspective that of the watchers council who aren't seeing the demon world from the inside. Both play a distorting perspective since it's presented the way it is to convince a watcher or for a watcher to convince a slayer to give no quarter to anyone they know personally who has to turned into a vampire. It's not in their interests and beyond their understanding to make it more nuanced than that.
Mylie
I like this perspective. I think it allows both povs presented on the show to co-exist.
Mylie
Scooby
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I finished my rewatch of s6 so it's time for more quotes...
Doublemeat Palace is one of the craziest episodes we've ever done. It's just insane. The monster looks like a penis and we knew that. We had to paint it, because initially it was penis colored. It wasn't even a metaphor: it was just a big giant penis. And then we had to paint it brown and ... it looked like a brown penis, and we just kind of went with it, because the whole episode was so crazy. It was so weird, and I personally really liked it. I just think it's just out there. It was let's try to just have a little fun in a crazy season. And it just got baroque. We tried to go with the feeling of a Coen brothers movie. It was weird and to some degree it succeeded; others not so much. But we got the giant penis. - Marti Noxon
I have very fond memories of season six. I know a lot of those are centered around that one episode "Dead Things", which in a side story is one of the fastest episodes. It was the week before Thanksgiving and it started out I was in the room with the writers and then one writer went back east. Then another writer peeled off. By the end of that week leading up to Thanksgiving, literally, I was sitting in a room by myself. Everybody had left. The story wasn't broken. I went down the hallway and knocked on Joss's door and he was in there with Marti talking about the season. He pops it open and I go "Uh, everybody's gone. What do you want me to do?" He goes, "What do you mean everybody's gone?" I go, "They all left for Thanksgiving" He says, "All right, come in. Let's talk about it." We went in and talked about it for like a half hour and had a very loose break. He said, "Ok, go off and write it. We need it by monday". Literally, I spent I think it was like three and a half days, no sleep, just kind of feeling my way through this episode that it didn't really have an outline on. Came back in Monday all ragged. Joss read it, and, in one of the best compliments he ever could have given me, he said, "You know what? I should have you locked up in a room and every now and then just slide food under the door for you" It turned out to be my personal favorite episode that I wrote, in that kind of fever dream, Thanksgiving crucible. I had a blast on that season. I enjoyed working on it. - Steven S. DeKnight
Dead Things was one of our more chilling, frightening episodes of the season actually. To me, it had some classic Buffy good stuff, which was, you know, playing the whole joke of turning Katrina into a sex slave and then that turning out to be no joke at all and not funny. And not funny to make girls your sex slave. In the Buffy universe, that's not a big joke. To play it for comedy and then just turn it on its head, I thought was really inspired. That was, again, a Joss pitch. - Marti Noxon
I was talking to a friend about how to write Andrew and one of the other writers on staff was just like "Go into Doug Petrie and Drew Greenberg's office, because they love to talk about this kind of stuff" I can talk about The Partridge Family and Three's Company and Archie comics, so I'd have to wander down to their office and go "What would you say here?" and they'd say something about Han Solo. - Marti Noxon
There's no way she ruined Buffy. I look at that season and there are great episodes. I love the arc of where it goes. Joss was in and out. I've got to be honest, even with Angel, it was run by somebody else because Joss couldn't physically be there, but he's always there. I remember when I was on Angel, literally going to the set of Serenity to talk to Joss about an episode and get notes. Even if he's not there, he's there to some extent. - Steven S. DeKnight
Still 10 pages left for s6...
Doublemeat Palace is one of the craziest episodes we've ever done. It's just insane. The monster looks like a penis and we knew that. We had to paint it, because initially it was penis colored. It wasn't even a metaphor: it was just a big giant penis. And then we had to paint it brown and ... it looked like a brown penis, and we just kind of went with it, because the whole episode was so crazy. It was so weird, and I personally really liked it. I just think it's just out there. It was let's try to just have a little fun in a crazy season. And it just got baroque. We tried to go with the feeling of a Coen brothers movie. It was weird and to some degree it succeeded; others not so much. But we got the giant penis. - Marti Noxon
I have very fond memories of season six. I know a lot of those are centered around that one episode "Dead Things", which in a side story is one of the fastest episodes. It was the week before Thanksgiving and it started out I was in the room with the writers and then one writer went back east. Then another writer peeled off. By the end of that week leading up to Thanksgiving, literally, I was sitting in a room by myself. Everybody had left. The story wasn't broken. I went down the hallway and knocked on Joss's door and he was in there with Marti talking about the season. He pops it open and I go "Uh, everybody's gone. What do you want me to do?" He goes, "What do you mean everybody's gone?" I go, "They all left for Thanksgiving" He says, "All right, come in. Let's talk about it." We went in and talked about it for like a half hour and had a very loose break. He said, "Ok, go off and write it. We need it by monday". Literally, I spent I think it was like three and a half days, no sleep, just kind of feeling my way through this episode that it didn't really have an outline on. Came back in Monday all ragged. Joss read it, and, in one of the best compliments he ever could have given me, he said, "You know what? I should have you locked up in a room and every now and then just slide food under the door for you" It turned out to be my personal favorite episode that I wrote, in that kind of fever dream, Thanksgiving crucible. I had a blast on that season. I enjoyed working on it. - Steven S. DeKnight
Dead Things was one of our more chilling, frightening episodes of the season actually. To me, it had some classic Buffy good stuff, which was, you know, playing the whole joke of turning Katrina into a sex slave and then that turning out to be no joke at all and not funny. And not funny to make girls your sex slave. In the Buffy universe, that's not a big joke. To play it for comedy and then just turn it on its head, I thought was really inspired. That was, again, a Joss pitch. - Marti Noxon
I was talking to a friend about how to write Andrew and one of the other writers on staff was just like "Go into Doug Petrie and Drew Greenberg's office, because they love to talk about this kind of stuff" I can talk about The Partridge Family and Three's Company and Archie comics, so I'd have to wander down to their office and go "What would you say here?" and they'd say something about Han Solo. - Marti Noxon
There's no way she ruined Buffy. I look at that season and there are great episodes. I love the arc of where it goes. Joss was in and out. I've got to be honest, even with Angel, it was run by somebody else because Joss couldn't physically be there, but he's always there. I remember when I was on Angel, literally going to the set of Serenity to talk to Joss about an episode and get notes. Even if he's not there, he's there to some extent. - Steven S. DeKnight
Still 10 pages left for s6...
Thump that tub. Spuffy writing is subtle it about someone realising that the will hurt the person they care about if they don't share their values they will destroy them and ultimately themselves.
I think mythology done well is like science - you're told it's one way and then you find out that the original model was oversimplified. Also soul theory was taught by watchers who are outside of vamp systems and need to tell their slayers and watchers to kill someone they know who's been turned.
I understand Fury's issues and to an extent yours but you yeah you can have both a vamp is a through a glass darkly version of the person they were. Spike is unusual but so are his circumstances with the initiative, with Angelus going and then coming back and both put him on the path to ensoulment. It's not soul residue its heart residue. If you're actually interested you can look at my comments on Sam Lawson in that thread and what I believe caused his problems as a vamp.
thetopher
Member of the Church Of Faith
Real nice tone, typical Spikette.
No it ain't; its actually just kinda contrived storytelling imo. Confused shouldn't be mistaken for subtle.
Either vampires are irredeemable or their not; Buffy should kill them because of this or not. Watchers didn't make up the fact that vampires kill and slaughter and spread like a plague. We are shown time and again that vampires are soulless, evil things that are- like many monsters on the show- a metaphor for something.
We are told by the writers that Spike-one of the worst vampires on record- is different; he has 'soul-residue' and therefore more 'capacity for good' and ability to make moral choices. This clearly makes him MORE responsible than any other vampire for the crimes he commited against his victimes, especially Buffy, and yet it can be argues that he cares the least out of all the 'souled' vampires we see.
one eyed chicklet
Scooby
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2019
- Messages
- 754
He does? I didn't know that. I thought his 'good' actions were just because he was in love with Buffy.
thetopher
Member of the Church Of Faith
But he does good things for Joyce and Dawn as well. And helps the gang out when there isn't much in it for him. The writers had said that they wanted to illustrate that 'Spike was different'- that was their intent in S7. See how he's portrayed in flashback in 'LMPTM' and how tender he is with him Mum compared with his attitude in S5 'FFL' (parts of which are set right after) and we see that Spike killing his Mummy really messed him up because he was, y'know, so special.
He was special for all those hundred and twenty plus years and murder and such (but that wasn't really his fault, that was Angel's fault...)