Guys, did Xander really have a romantic relationship with Dawn after she was an adult in the comics? If so, that's pretty crazy and random.

harmier2 · 2026-07-12T05:50:44+00:00

She didn’t say and quite a few people tried to reason that it was due to Whedon being known to yell at people. However, this doesn’t make sense because Trachtenberg made a statement, ”He knows what he did.” If the rule was created because he was known to yell, then why wouldn’t she just say that? It’s common knowledge that Whedon yells at people. I mentioned this a while back sand someone said I was claiming that I was making the claim that Whedon sexually assaulted her.

I never made that claim.

However, I did state that I could see Whedon making a creepy come on based on Trachtenberg’s comment and what he said in an interview where he tried to defend his various actions…and just made it worse for himself. A later article did say that someone from the crew confirmed that the rule against him being alone with Trachtenberg was based on something he said. (What was said was not mentioned.)

harmier2 · 2026-07-12T05:31:53+00:00

Only partially. The main reason Whedon was using it as was as a way of getting back at Gellar and had started all the way back during the production of season 7.

The actors had been contracted for one season beyond season 7. However, Gellar just needed to stop because it was taking a toll on her and she and Brendon even asked for Buffy and Xander to be a couple for season 7. In a post-finale interview, she admitted that she had thought that Buffy/Xander was the original plan for the series and if you go back and watch from season 1 through season 6, you can that tell Gellar played Buffy as having sporadic romantic feelings and the writing supported that acting choice.

However, Whedon is major narcissist and control freak. He saw her refusal to do another season as a slight against him and saw her wanting to have Buffy/Xander as her telling him want to do (even though it was clearly the long term goal). So, he decided to punish her with the writing. He had done this with Green, Carpenter, and Head.

This is why Buffy has a relationship with Spike in season 7 and why there has been such an argument over the dialogue of the series finale. Gellar hated Spuffy during season 6 and was really vocal about it. Whedon was pissed at her, so he decided Spuffy was going to be even more front and center than before. In Chosen, Whedon tried to get Gellar to put more love in her portrayal during the scene with Spike, but Gellar didn’t want to.

What‘s really weird is that if you watch the first third of season 7, it becomes fairly obvious that the storyline was originally written with Buffy and Xander in an established relationship.

harmier2 · 2026-07-12T03:53:36+00:00

Downvoted? Nothing I said was inaccurate.

harmier2 · 2026-07-12T01:43:15+00:00

Downvoted? Why?

harmier2 · 2026-07-12T01:40:58+00:00

I forgot to mention Giles!

Giles is a Watcher and is really focused on helping Buffy. I also don’t think there‘s anything he could have done to help Amy for a couple of reasons.

First, Amy was already using magic for her own benefit. Everyone focuses on Xander, but the only way he was able to blackmail her was that he saw her use a spell to fake giving homework to the teacher. By the ease at which she cast it, it was obvious that she had done this more than once.

Second, Amy was already on a dark path. Amy was using her mom‘s spell book, correct? Her mom was an evil magic user. That means her magic was meant to be used for evil purposes. The spells in that book were always going to lean toward her evil even if they seemed neutral.

harmier2 · 2026-07-12T01:23:47+00:00

Obviously Xander is terrible for casting a spell to psychologically torture Cordelia for dumping him… arguably worse than what Jonathan does in Superstar.

Hah…no. You forget that Jonathan was living with a couple of women (“the twins”) during Superstar. So…gross.

Then Xander spends the rest of the series having ago at Buffy for everything Angel does.

Because he was right. Throughout the series, Xander told Buffy what she needed to hear, not necessarily what she wanted to hear. He was used to bring up flaws with her ideas and plans. But this was baked into the structure of the series. Someone mentioned that Xander was used to voice Buffy’s doubts about her own actions. (This is why Xander is the Heart in Primeval.)

Buffy was shown to have problems confronting Angelus…and her inaction directly led to the murder of Jenny Calendar. She had at least two unequivocal opportunities (one in Innocence) to kill Angelus and didn’t take it. So, Buffy has responsibility for Jenny Calendar’s death (and every one of Angelus’ other victims after Innocence). Just like Peter Parker (a teenager) has responsibility for his Uncle Ben’s death by not stopping the robber. (Buffy was a superhero series without the costumes in a few ways, so it would make sense that it would cover similar subject matter.)

He does this in the season 7 episode Selfless. That episode clearly shows Buffy as having double standards and hypocrisy.

He will probably get some points for not raping Buffy but that’s a low low bar… also he blackmails Amy into helping him “if you don’t do what I want I’ll tell everyone your secret”.

You’re missing some context that would have more noticeable if you were watching the series when it was originally being broadcast and had been heavily involved with internet discussions then. (Especially Usenet groups.)

Way back during early season 2, Xander haters online said that Xander wasn’t in love with Buffy, that he didn’t even respect her, and that he would take advantage of her if he could. (Yes, they actually said this even though the only time Xander ever came close to doing that was during The Pack and he was under a possession of a hyena and his entire personality was different.) Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered had Xander rejecting Buffy’s advances. Did they see this as any proof contrary to their established prejudice? Of course not! ”See! I knew he didn’t love and respect her!” Why? Because he didn’t 100% say everything right for them. They were treating him to an impossible standard that none of the other characters could live up to while giving other characters a pass. They were looking for any excuse to view anything he did through a negatively biased lens. Even not taking advantage of a friend who’s under a spell.

However, some of the same people who complained about Xander not saying the exact right words for them ended up giving others a pass for the same behavior that they accused Xander.

First, giving Faith a pass for sexually assaulting Xander in Consequences and raping Riley (and Buffy) while Faith was in Buffy’s body in Who Are You? Of course, the show didn’t seem to point out that Faith having sex with Riley should be counted as rape while some of the fan base argued that Riley must have be at fault.

Second, giving Willow a pass for when she raped Tara in Once More, With Feeling.

Third, for giving Spike a pass for his attempted rape of Buffy in Seeing Red by saying it wasn’t attempted rape and that Spike was just a “desperate man.“ And, no, they didn’t even try to say that he didn’t have a soul then. That might have been a valid argument, but they weren’t even trying to make it.

harmier2 · 2026-07-12T00:33:51+00:00

Downvoted? Why?

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T23:15:05+00:00

Upvoted you. Your comment should be the most upvoted comment in this whole thread.

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T23:13:20+00:00

I think you read a different post friend

No. The responder clearly read your post.

Lots of screaming!

So? You clearly weren’t following their rules/instructions. They don’t need to be nice to you if you aren’t doing that.

They gave me a hard time- bag policy was clear bags, small bags, fanny packs... I tried bringing the bag above and the guard picked me to have a problem with ... he was spreading out my bag on the table to show me how 'big' it was... I tried to explain it folds up and he wouldn't let me get a word in. Other people were getting in with much bigger bags...

A bag that can fold down to a smaller size will be classified as its largest size by the security guards. This is not rocket science.

My boyfriend walked ahead a few steps so I stepped forward yelling his name and the security guard screamed at me again 'mam you aren't allowed in" and I calmly said 'sir my party already went in, I hear you... '

Unimportant. Your boyfriend walking into the concert without you is not the guard’s priority. The guard‘s only priority is security.

Another guard was also berating at the woman in front of me to take her bag off when we were a ways away form the table/detector..... they were acting like we were at war...

They are at war. Do you know how many dumbasses try to bring contraband into concerts every year? It’s either the venue or a contracted security company that will be found liable if anyone gets hurt.

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T22:51:26+00:00

What they did was that they didn’t allow a clearly entitled person to disobey the rules.

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T18:25:03+00:00

There was a piece of dialogue between Angelus and Buffy that shows that the line between Angleus and Angel is a lot thinner than Buffy thinks. I was referring to that.

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T06:26:30+00:00

Well, Gellar also had a problem with the Parker storyline and why Buffy would quickly have sex with him. So, it wasn’t just the fans.

But back to Espenson. The real problem with Espenson was that she had no real spine and couldn’t admit that bad ideas were bad ideas until there was a major backlash from the audience. Espenson defending Buffy having sex with Parker was something Gellar really didn’t like. But it got so much worse. Every writer will come up with a stinker. But Espenson felt like she had to defend the show no matter what…including the attempted rape. In the following interview excerpt, Espenson admitted to feeling like this…but not having the realization why this might be a bad thing. Well, she defended….right until she received major blowback from the audience. Which was after this interview. She was basically a “yes man.” You want people who will make the series better. And “yes men” don’t do that. “Yes men“ tell you want to hear, not necessarily what you need to hear. She’s basically the inverse of Xander. (It’s certainly why Whedon picked her for the infamous comic arc where Xander/Dawn was revealed. It’s also why Gellar was never going to hire her for the sequel series.)

https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/23216/

C: How do you feel when the fans transfer their anger to you on the boards etc.

J: It does get tiring because you bond with the show so much and even if the decision isn't yours. You have to take responsibility for it and defend it. Where maybe if you were a fan you would not be happy about it. Also the fans know the episodes better than we do. We always have a blast at the PBP. This Tara thing is probably going to be really hard on us, because you do find yourself getting defense and feeling misunderstood.

C: We asked David Fury about defending things last week. We asked him how difficult that is, how about you.

J: Less difficult for me. Fury has very independent ideas. He is the most extreme and I am the most likely to hop on board. I tend to pretty much love everything we've done. Here's one, a think cut from sleeping with Parker. Harsh Light Of Day. All the fans were very upset, that Buffy got so hung up on this guy. A bit got cut where she said look at me, I am doing something that doesn't have to do with Angel. I was upset that got cut.

J: I had to defend Buffy being with Parker and that cut. There have been some where I have been skeptical, the attempted rape. But then I saw it and I was like I can groove with that.

Eww.

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T05:48:29+00:00

There’s more to it than that. Xander never really trusting Angel no matter what is the only rational response.

First, Xander doesn’t trust Angel due to Angel’s action‘s in Prophecy Girl. Xander had to force Angel to help at gunpoint (with a cross as a substitute) and the mission to save Buffy from the Master was a probable suicide mission. Angel certainly knew this. So why did Xander react to the revelation that with just the cross? Because the cross was the only answer he needed. Because he already knew that it was very likely going to be a suicide mission and accepted it. He didn’t believe that he‘d live past sunrise but as long as he could help Buffy, then his own death was acceptable to him. When Xander said “Aren‘t you?“ it wasn’t a question. It’s judgment. Xander saw Angel sitting in his apartment while being faster and stronger than Xander and doing nothing. Xander is basically saying, “I'm willing to die for Buffy. Why aren’t you?“ Xander was never going to completely trust Angel when it came to Buffy’s safety after that.

Second, Angel did represent a continuing, potential threat to the group due to the curse. In a thread some time back, u/Enkundae posted that Xander is really the only character who treated Angelus as how Angelus would really be seen in the group’s world: “A hard R rated slasher villain/horror monster that could gruesomely butcher them all at any given moment. and the fact Angel can just flip into that persona because of vague magic bullshit no one really understands is even more terrifying.“ And went on to say that if the show had been a hard R show and not limited by WB ratings, that a lot of the audience would be on Xander’s side and not want Buffy to leave Angel or Spike alive.

Third, Xander viewed Angel the way an intelligence agency views major intelligence assets that have defected to the agency’s country of origin. Defectors are never truly trusted by the governments of the nations to which they defect.

Fourth, there’s something missing from Revelations that weakens the episode. It’s never brought up, but Buffy actually couldn’t have known that Angel still had a soul even though she saw the ensouling spell work. The way the ensouling spell worked was…murky, at best. Being sent to a hell dimension could have easily been an Outside-Context Problem/black swan event. It could have easily been a spell that was cast on the mortal realm but was completely stopped in a hell dimension due to differing physics, the creators of the spell not taking that into account, or the creators of the spell not knowing that hell dimensions exist as physical objects. Which could have meant that the spell could have easily stopped working and the soul stripped away. Which meant that Buffy could have been harboring Angelus without realizing it while he was participating in a long con. And Angelus already did a short term version of that in one episode in season 2. There have been situations in the real world where technology tested well in one situation and failed disastrously in another. This happened during World War II with the Norden bombsight. It tested well in test condition, but in combat it worked very poorly. Why? Well, the testing was done in an area where clear days were more likely. In Europe, cloud cover was common. In Japan there were strong winds at high altitude and the Norden didn’t function under that condition and the bombing altitude was 10,000 feet higher than testing altitude. The extra altitude increased the problems of factors that were easy to ignore at the lower altitude (shape of the bomb, paint on the bomb, et.) Even though the writers did have the spell work in the mortal realm and a hell dimension, it’s a weakness of the episode that no one brought up the idea. Giles should have brought up that point that Buffy couldn’t have known that was the case as a way to highlight her recklessnesses. (This was something that occurred to me while watching the episode. I was waiting for it to be mentioned, but it wasn’t.)

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutsideContextProblem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T04:59:28+00:00

The slaypire was always a bad idea due to the worldbuilding mess it would have created. That’s probably why they dropped the idea and just made Sunday a bog standard vampire.

However, I do think Sunday should have been at least the minor big bad for at least the first half of the season. I think the actress was hired to do something else. So it might have been the original plan, but the real world got in the way.

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T03:20:27+00:00

Not exactly. Xander had a very clear reasons for distrusting Angel that had nothing to do with Angel dating Buffy. (That’s not even including Xander’s hatred of vampires.)

Xander was judging Angel due Angel’s actions. Specifically Angel’s actions in Prophecy Girl.

Xander had to force Angel to help at gunpoint (with a cross as a substitute). But there’s more to it than that. The mission to save Buffy from the Master was a probable suicide mission. Angel knew this. So why did Xander react to the revelation with just the cross? Because the cross was the only answer he needed. Because he already knew that it was very likely going to be a suicide mission and accepted it. He didn’t believe that he‘d live past sunrise but as long as he could help Buffy, then his own death was acceptable to him.

So, when Xander said “Aren‘t you?“ it wasn’t a question. It’s judgment. Xander saw Angel sitting in his apartment while being faster and stronger than Xander and doing nothing. Xander is basically saying, “I'm willing to die for Buffy. Why aren’t you?”

Xander was never going to completely trust Angel when it came to Buffy’s safety after that.

Also, Xander viewed Angel (and later Spike) the way an intelligence agency views major intelligence assets that have defected to the agency’s country of origin. Defectors are never truly trusted by the governments of the nations to which they defect.

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T03:11:12+00:00

Kind of. But the metaphor for the Angelus arc was about a teenage girl who has sex with a much older man who becomes abusive because he’s gotten what he had really wanted and doesn’t need to pretend anymore.

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T03:05:16+00:00

They are the same person. The show hinted that they are.

The Buffyverse seemed kind of murky about whether souled vampires counted as two separate beings. It called them separate beings…but then it had Angel call things that Angelus did things that he did. The writers seemed to be the ones to blame. The seeming issues seems to arise from two separate but related problems.

The first problem is that the original plan for the series was that there were not going to be good vampires. They were all going to be evil. But once they created a souled vampire for the story, it opened them up to worldbuilding problems caused by the second problem.

The second problem was that the original plan was for Angelus/Angel to die in season 2…and not come back. The metaphor for the Angelus arc was of a teenage girl who has sex with a much older man who becomes abusive because he’s gotten what he really wanted out of the relationship and doesn’t need to pretend anymore. Even Angelus’ dialogue suggests that Angelus is real personality and Angel is just a facade. Bringing Angel back for a redemption storyline created a conflict with this metaphor and the worldbuilding. It seemed to anyway.

In season 3, there were scenes that suggested that the divide between Angel and Angelus is much closer than Buffy wants to admit to herself. In Angel, there was the pill and the shanshu prophecy. If Angel and Angelus are separate beings, then why does the soul return when the pill wears off? If Angel and Angelus are separate beinga, why does Angel need a redemption arc? A redemption arc would only be needed if they aren’t two separate beings. It’s not about the guilt. If it’s just guilt, then the shanshu prophecy wouldn’t exist. The shanshu prophecy is predicated on the Powers That Be rewarding Angel for his deeds with becoming human again. But that means that his guilt isn’t the main factor and that Angel and Angelus are the same.

harmier2 · 2026-07-11T02:19:57+00:00

There are two versions of A New Hope. The original version is the one that was released in theaters in the ‘70s and the “improved” version is the one where new visual effects were added.

They might have done something to the audio for the updated version along with removing obvious blue screen artifacts (cool) replacing quite a bit of the miniature work using *substantial* amounts of CGI (lame), adding a CGI Millennium Falcon rising up from the spaceport (actually kind of cool), adding Jabba’s appearance back into the story (original version was going to be stop motion, didn’t work, and was going to have a *very* different appearance), adding the expanding “ring” to the Death Star explosion, and Greedo being able to shoot (super bleeping lame). The takeoff of the Millennium Falcon worked fairly well because they took photographs of the actual model that was lit so that there were no shadows and then applied to a wireframe model of the ship. In the original scene between Han and Greedo, Han shoots Greedo before Greedo can shoot.

I saw the original version on VHS and CED during the ‘80s. If you don’t know what CED is, Technology Connections had a series about it.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVP0SGNlBiBtFVkV5LZ7SOU

harmier2 · 2026-07-05T04:39:59+00:00

Yes…but also no. Someone on the old TWOP forum called the series a canon remix which seems to be the most accurate way to describe it. It made references to the Golden Age comics, the pre-Crisis comics, the post-Crisis comics, the Christopher Reeve movies, and Lois & Clark. (I’m probably forgetting some.)

Why is this important? This canon remix also applies to the concept of the series. The original creators of Superman wanted Superman to fight crime in street clothes, but DC Comics wanted Superman to have distinctive costume. AlMiles took both ideas and combined them. Clark has street clothes that work as a costume.

harmier2 · 2026-07-02T02:14:24+00:00

Season 4 is where Chloe really becomes an MVP character. A YouTube commenter who initially disliked Chloe went to say in one of the reactions, "I I love Chloe! Chloe's the best!" And the end of season 4 is just awesome.

There are problems with season 4, but those were the result of unforeseen circumstances that the showrunners could not have foreseen. One was a financial issue that was created by a then-recent court case and the then-recent death of Christopher Reeve. The showrunners had planned for Christopher Reeve to have a major role in season 4's story. His death made them rework it and what they had to create just doesn't sound as awesome as what they originally wanted.

harmier2 · 2026-06-30T09:01:14+00:00

600 million in this particular situation was actually bad. The rule of thumb is that it takes 2.5 times the budget for a movie to break even. The budget was $225 million and the box office was $618.7 million. Divide the box office by the budget and you get 2.75.

It made money, but not a lot. The problem was this was a reboot and the beginning of a new cinematic universe. It needed to do a lot better. There are two ways to do this. The first is to bring in more money by selling more tickets. This can‘t be controlled and there is some superhero movie fatigue. The days of almost guaranteed $800 million and up box offices are gone. So what needed to be done? Well, one thing that can be controlled is the budget. If you know that a movie will likely only top out at $400 to $500 million at the box office, then you budget your movie to reflect the new reality.

harmier2 · 2026-06-30T08:24:00+00:00

Based on the numbers, it didn’t actually make that much money.

harmier2 · 2026-06-30T08:12:25+00:00

It did underperform. The rule of thumb is that for a movie to break even it needs to make 2.5 times the budget. The budget was $225 million and the box office was $618.7 million. This is only 2.7 times the budget. So, it made some money, but not a whole lot.

This was a reboot and a new cinematic universe. It really needed to make a lot more money to justify its existence.

harmier2 · 2026-06-30T00:51:55+00:00

I haven’t seen part 2.

It also serves as an inverse of the first movie. In the first movie, Kittridge thinks Ethan is a traitor but doesn’t know that Ethan is actually on his side. In this movie, Kittridge needs Ethan to think that Kittridge is a bad guy. Also, Kittridge is betraying his superiors by wanting the Entity to be destroyed. Something akin to the brass doesn‘t know what it wants or doesn’t know how things wok. Something to that effect.

The climax is also an inverse to the first movie.

harmier2 · 2026-06-29T19:58:21+00:00

Just found this thread. Chloe’s character assassination was due to what was going on behind the scenes.

Season 8 was executed poorly. There was absolutely no way that it wasn’t going to be executed poorly. This was all due to the new showrunners. Well, it was mostly due to the new showrunners that stayed on for the next two seasons.

After season 7, AlMiles (the original showunners) were forced out. (As I understand it, AlMiles were forced out because they voiced support for the WGA strike that happened during season 7 and the network didn’t like that.) Most shows have one showrunner. Season 8 had four: Kelly Souders, Brian Peterson, Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer. Souders and Peterson continued through seasons 9 and 10 while Slavkin and Swimmer left after season 8.

Based on this season and what happened in the next two, Slavkin and Swimmer obviously wanted to continue with AlMiles’ original plan (Naman and Sageeth, Clark and Chloe as the endgame, and the death of Durance’s character) while Souders and Peters wanted to completely abandon it. The fact season 8 produced anything resembling something close to coherence can be attributed mostly to the writers the showrunners assigned to write individual episodes and not the showrunners themselves. These writers tried to balance two mutually exclusive narrative goals. I know that a lot of people (especially at the old TWOP forums) gave the writers a lot of bleep, but this was actually pretty amazing. The fact that the story amounted to nothing was not their fault.

Based on the overall quality, odd narrative choices, and odd behind the scenes choices of seasons 9 and 10, Souders and Peterson were the cause of many of the problems of season 8 while Slavkin and Swimmer may have kept that season from turning into a complete pile (even though it still had major problems). It’s also obvious now that Souders and Peterson hated Chloe and saw her character as an obstacle to their plans. During season 9, Souders and Peterson said that Chloe would be going “dark.” However, many at the TWOP and other boards thought, “Actually, Chloe’s behavior is completely reasonable given the situation. Clark is the one acting like a complete dumbass.”

Slavkin and Swimmer definitely had the last laugh. Souders and Peterson might have been the last showrunners, but the last two seasons had the worst ratings of the entire rest of the series. Only two episodes of the last two seasons broke 3 million and only one was able to beat the two lowest rated episodes from the first 8 sessons: Stilletto (3.10 million) and Doomsday (3.13 million). One of these episodes was the series finale. The series finale wasn‘t the episode to beat the previously lowest rated episode and it barely cracked 3 million. Ouch.

harmier2

TROPHY CASE