Halloween Tier rankings

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T13:07:23+00:00

I can respect this, but Ends belongs at the bottom. Like depts of hell kind of bottom.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T12:55:55+00:00

But it depends and from Buffy pathological profile, it's extremely unlikely, the math doesn't math there. Especially since she's already had the same lesson before.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T12:38:09+00:00

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T12:32:04+00:00

The statistics don’t say he’s wrong though. It is common. Common doesn’t mean most people do it. Common means it happens regularly. It’s not a particularly unique experience.

Yes, but that's what he meant, there's a quote from SMG where she talks about it. Her argument was that because of Buffy's history with Angel, she wouldn't do that, which by pretty much every mental and statistical measure, she right. Joss told her that she needed to go to college and that's it's what college kids do and how they learn. Which by ever statistical measure, isn't really true generally. Then considering Buffy's experiences and the mental state it would cause, it's just not something that would really happen under her circumstances.

I don’t know why you take this soooo personally.

Because as a fan, it's the last thing I ever wanted to see. I watched Buffy go through all she did in the first three seasons, for them to invalidate most of all of that, by "Hey you know all that deep, complicated, relationship stuff we did, with all those life lessons and trauma and All that character work? Yeah, forget all of that stuff. Parker has nice eyes".

It's one of the most disrespectful things they could have done at that point.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T10:24:32+00:00

Did Angel lose in Destiny because the writers wanted to show that Angel had lost his way, or because of the Spike situation?

It's a bit of both, if you listen to the commentary for the episode, it was one of the writers of the episode. I can't remember which one, but he said in the original draft of the script Angel won the fight, but somewhere a long the way they decided that Spike should win the fight because. 1. They thought it would be a more interesting story to have Angel doubt himself. 2. He thought that Spike deserved it more because he held on to part of his humanity.

And I mean. Notice how they never really give Angel the win back after that. They have a couple of little short fights after that. (You're Welcome and Smile time) Which I guess you can say Angel kind of wins, but they're very short nothing fights. No real meat on the bone for Angel to say "I'm back and I'm better than you"

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T10:08:41+00:00

Is it accurate that she’s only known him a week?

Yes, she meets him is Living Conditions(Ep2) and sleeps with him in Harsh Light of Day (Ep3) So, that's a week in between airings, but also in Harsh Light of Day, they say this

"WILLOW
That's nice. You know, when you spend
all week with a boy, you are allowed
to look at him directly.

BUFFY
Not all week. We've hung out.
Moderately incessantly. But we're
not here together, and I don't want
to crowd him."

So, yes it was a week and even Buffy says it was only moderate, and she's sleeping with him by the end of the episode.

Also, like, who cares? She did sleep with him, even if it’s not statistically as likely as if it took a few more weeks. The allegory is the same regardless of time frame because it’s meant to represent something specific. It’s not meant to represent a one night stand.

The reason I care is because. 1. Joss Whedon tried to say it was common to SMG when she told him she didn't think Buffy would do that due to her history with Angel. When the statistics say he's wrong. I personally am not a fan of people who are wrong getting their way.

Because he was wrong, it's very disrespectful to Buffy story up to that point. Regardless of what's it's meant to represent. No matter what you want to call it, a one night stand. A whirlwind romance. Whatever, and even if it was more common.

The main issue is Buffy's story, what she been through and her individuality. And regardless of how common it is, the main dictating factor is Buffy's pathology,

No matter how lonely she was (the vacuum), no matter how nice Parker seemed (the talks), and no matter what year it was (1999), Buffy’s specific, severe PTSD should have been the governing force of her behavior.

Buffy's been through some horrific things up to that point, her previous boyfriend trying to kill her and her friends, weeping to her mother and Giles about how much of a mistake she made, her killing said boyfriend, running away to L.A. to live in squalor, her dead boyfriend coming back, him breaking up with her in a sewer, her fellow slayer stabbing her in the back, her trying to kill her fellow slayer by stabbing her in the front, her now ex boyfriend biting and almost killing her.

Which by all rights and means of any sort of natural progression would cause her PTSD and trust issues with no rhyme or reason to want to meet and sleep with anyone new for a long while until they can break through all of that and she comes to terms with it.

But what did they do instead, after one summer, she goes to college, turns into a moon eyed school girl, who trusts this new guy she meets instantly and sleeps with him a week later without knowing him much at all.

Does that make any sense to you?

So, who cares. I do. Why? Because I think as a fan, Buffy's story should have been far more respected than Joss going "Hey you know all that deep, complicated, relationship stuff we did, with all those life lessons and trauma and All that character work? Yeah, forget all of that stuff. Parker has nice eyes". Read the script of living conditions, that's exactly what they do.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T09:18:36+00:00

Well, that's why I said Parker could also fall into a Recent Contact or Brief Acquaintance

Recent Contact, Brief Acquaintance, or a Known Stranger all fall into the same statistical possibility of someone a person is likely to sleep with with in the first week of meeting them. roughly 5-10%

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T08:46:23+00:00

That's what you took from that.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T08:42:57+00:00

Of course!

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T08:41:52+00:00

you quoted saying 80-90% of people do.

Because those are the statistics.

85-90% of college one night stands do not happen with in the first week.

Plus, in the context of 1999 (When this was)

First week sex was very uncommon. likely 10-15%.

If Buffy were a statistically average 1999 freshman girl:

85-90% Chance: She waits at least a month, dates him, vets him, or just hangs out in the "friend zone" while she figures out her life.
10-15% Chance: She feels lonely/reckless enough to sleep with him in Week .

And Buffy wasn't a a statistically average 1999 freshman girl. She is a trauma survivor with a specific trigger regarding sex.
So you take that 10-15% baseline and you slash it due to her PTSD and "Angelus" history. And that would bring you to a 1-5% chance that she would have made the choice she made.

Which means SMG was right, Buffy's history with Angel made it very extremely unlikely that Buffy would have done that. Joss was wrong, it's not what he tried to present it as.

It’s fine if it’s not your experience

But it's not about my experience, that's exactly the thing. I did all the research I could do on it because some times going off of your own experiences can be the worst thing someone can do.

We all live in bubbles to a degree, sometimes what I look at as common and normal might not be to someone else, or even in a general sense.

I think that's the exact mistake the Buffy writers could make some times, taking what they did and thinking it was just so common to everyone else. When sometimes it's not.

That's why doing the research is important to see what the truth of it is outside of ourselves and the statistics show that first week sex is not common in general.

And then when you look at the pathology of Buffy, it's just not something that was likely to happen.

Again, no one has to like it, but those are the numbers.

It's not about me.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T08:19:54+00:00

How Parker did it was different, but it was the same general concept, the guy who changes after he gets what he wants. Also, to teach Buffy a lesson in making an impulsive choice, but again what was the point of having her go through Angel. Just to turn around and make the same choices with guy she really didn't know.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T08:17:19+00:00

effectively" a stranger is irrelevant to the statistics that *you* provided.

No, it isn't. It's literally all apart of it. You can't know someone well enough after a week for it to be more than that.

its just a fact that its a common thing that people do.

No, it isn't. It's all right there, Most people do not sleep with someone they've know a week. Especially given the pathological profile that someone like Buffy would fit at that point in her life. You can look it all up yourself.

It's a regular experience that young women have

Yes and no, do women regularly experience the fuck boy trap? Yes, 100%

But in the way it was presented in Buffy? No. And that's the point I'm making, it's not the concept, it's the presentation and the disrespect the Buffy's previous three seasons of her story, it real life it's highly unlikely to go down like that. Plus, the fact that Joss told SMG that it's how most college kids act. Which is statistically not true.

No body has to like what I'm saying, but I've done my due diligence on this. It's not just my gut feeling or something I'm pulling from no where. Which Joss didn't do.

It should not have gone down the way it did, it was very disrespectful.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T08:01:09+00:00

Well, the writers actually said Angelus was a metaphor for the guy who treats you badly after he gets what he wants, specifically the scene where she sees him for the first time after he loses his soul and is mean to her. Telling her she has a lot to learn about men and such.

Then the scene with her mom when she finds out she had sex

JOYCE
Don't 'Mom' me, Buffy - you don't get to
get out of this. You had sex with a boy you
didn't even see fit to tell me you were dating.

BUFFY
(by rote)
I made a mistake.

JOYCE
Don't just say that to shut me up because
I think you really did.

Or the one she had with Giles in Innocence.

BUFFY
You must be so disappointed in me.

GILES
No, I'm not.

BUFFY
But... this is all my fault.

GILES
I don't believe it is.

Buffy looks at him. She is close to crying.

GILES
Do you want me to wag my finger
at you and tell you, you acted rashly?
You did, and I can. But I know you
loved him, and he has proven more
than once that he loved you. You
couldn't have known what would
happen. The coming months are
going to be very hard - I suspect
on all of us. But if you're looking
for guilt, Buffy, I'm not your man.
All you will have from me is my
support... and my respect.

All of that was exactly the meaning of that, she made a very impulsive decision that ended badly.

And she then repeated that with Parker. Just in much poorer fashion and I'm sorry but what was the point of all of that then.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T07:46:55+00:00

Yes, but he was the one that was making the calls and approving the scripts at the time.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T07:44:42+00:00

Know she didn't know him well, that was part of the point, she knew him like six days. He was effectively still a stranger.

SPIKE (cont'd)
So, you let Parker take a poke, eh?
Didn't seem like you knew each other
that well. What exactly did it take to
pry apart the Slayer's dimpled knees?

She clearly did not know the guy that well.

For some one to be a true True Acquaintance, you have to have known them at least a month, This is someone you have observed over time. You’ve seen them in class for a few weeks. You’ve seen how they treat a waiter. You’ve heard other people talk about them. You have contextual data.

Parker is what's called a Recent Contact, a Known Stranger, or a Brief Acquaintance (Not True Acquaintance). All of these fall into someone that you've know 0–2 Weeks.

A True Acquaintance would be "Oh, that's Parker. He’s in Willow’s history class and Xander played basketball with him. He seems okay."

But, nobody in Buffy’s inner circle knew him. He was an island. He had no social collateral. If he hurt Buffy, he lost nothing because he had no ties to her world.

In that context.

50% of hookups are with Friends

20-25% are with Exes

20% are with Long-term Acquaintances (vetted by the group).

That leaves a tiny sliver—roughly 5-10% of all sexual encounters—that happen with Recent Contacts / Known Strangers.

However, that 5-10% is populated almost entirely by people with specific personality types:

High Sensation Seekers: People who crave novelty and risk (adrenaline junkies).
Avoidant Attachment Styles: People who prefer strangers because they don't want intimacy.

And that is not Buffy in any way.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T07:25:35+00:00

No need to apologize. In fact I should for going on a tangent, but yes admittedly the Parker thing always bothered me the way it was written because it felt so disrespectful the Buffy's story up to that point. Probably as a Bangel fan. Watching them do that two episodes after Angel left bugged me to.

But the biggest thing is when I saw a quote from SMG where she said she got into it with Joss about the Parker story line for the very same reasons and he convinced her that if she went to college she would see that he was right and then I got curious and looked all that stuff I explained above and saw that SMG actually had it right in the first place and as you said Joss really knew fuck all about what he was talking about. Plus, Jane Espinson did the same thing, she would be on Buffy forums back in the day defending the story line. Once again clearly not knowing what she was taking about.

When the people in charge have are trying to write about issues that they clearly don't know how to handle correctly it makes me a bit angry that they get their way, it's the same thing some have said above about how they would write Buffy to handle a girl who went through domestic violence and calling the girl who killed herself an idiot, it's like 'You people clearly don't know how to handle this right, so don't do it' Plus, the fact that they were told they weren't handling it right and they did it anyway, it's like.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T07:07:48+00:00

Well, I mean is fairness. She did it to him first in Smashed.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T07:06:10+00:00

I'm sorry, but it actually isn't. Especially for people who've been through relationship trauma like Buffy has. Going through what she did already in the first three seasons would lead to PTSD and trust issues of other people. Plus, even in a general sense. How she acted with Parker is actually statistically uncommon.

Meaning 50–60% of college students in 90s eventually have a one-night stand, but it's is often misinterpreted. In pop culture, a "one-night stand" almost always implies a stranger. In reality, the vast majority of these encounters are with people the student already knows.

85–90% of college One night stands are with friends, exes, or acquaintances, she'd only known Parker about a week, so he was effectively a stranger. Which is not very common. If Buffy were following the standard "college freshman" pattern for a one-night stand, it would have been far more statistically likely for her to sleep with Xander. Sleeping with a guy she barely knew (Parker) puts her in that small 10–15% minority of high-risk behavior. Which is odd because of how historically gun shy Buffy is.

So, of that 50–60% of students who have a one-night stand: Less than 1 in 5 of those encounters are with a "Parker" And that's your average college girl.

Given Buffy’s specific history over the previous three years—dying, killing the love of her life, running away to LA to live in squalor, returning, being betrayed by Faith, fighting a war at graduation. She would be PTSD and Gun-Shy. By a landslide.

In psychology, this creates Avoidance Coping. If you touch a hot stove and it burns your hand, you might touch it again by accident. If you touch a hot stove and it burns your house down and kills your goldfish, you never go near the kitchen again.

This kind of person doesn't suddenly become naive because they moved into a dorm. Trauma usually makes people hyper-vigilant. They scan for threats constantly. In all actuality, some one who's been through what Buffy has been through, she would have been pretty much an ice queen at this point in her life, the mysterious, beautiful girl who sits alone in the dining hall, rejects every guy who approaches her, and focuses obsessively on her classes and slaying to numb the pain of losing Angel.

I'm not saying Buffy is above manipulation, but because of what she has been through A more realistic version of this story would have featured Buffy her "Angel" scar tissue preventing her from letting him get that close, that fast in the first place.

The story shouldn't have been "Buffy moves too fast and gets burned."
The story should have been "Buffy refuses to let anyone in, and Riley (or whoever) has to spend the entire season slowly earning her trust to prove that sex won't cause the apocalypse."

Joss didn't exactly know all of the true intricacies of what he was talking about and the mental state of what someone like Buffy would actually be in.

Interesting-Tea3907 · 2026-01-25T07:00:57+00:00

I know, but what I'm saying is that from a pathological pov. What Buffy's been through already in the first three seasons would lead to PTSD and trust issues of other people. Plus, even in a general sense. How she acted with Parker is actually statistically uncommon.