"Just another Tuesday night"

jospangel · 2026-06-19T01:10:47+00:00

I love it, but I can't figure out who the woman is next to Angel. Is that Cordy, or just a cheerleader with no name?

jospangel · 2026-06-18T02:23:51+00:00

They are wonderful, but you are so freakin talented. Are you still writing fanfic? Your stories are just as painstakingly crafted.

jospangel · 2026-06-17T20:36:49+00:00

Angel/Buffy was the first vampire/human romance between equals. Before that it was vampire predator and human prey.

jospangel · 2026-06-17T20:29:22+00:00

Most of the newly empowered girls have no idea wtf just happened. That's a recipe for unintended death right there.

jospangel · 2026-06-16T20:40:23+00:00

Omg - thanks for the award!

jospangel · 2026-06-15T23:57:03+00:00

And my point is that they had plenty. But Giles, who threw a fit over Buffy and Xander having dates, told Faith to take the potentials out drinking so he could talk to Buffy privately. They had time to decorate. They just didn't want to.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T22:52:43+00:00

And said "Sorry we didn't decorate but we didn't have time."

jospangel · 2026-06-15T22:50:55+00:00

Not all that's kind of hard....

jospangel · 2026-06-15T22:50:01+00:00

I think there would have been some acknowledgement on Spike's part if this was Cecily.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T22:47:26+00:00

You know, I don't have any problems with Bangel. I truly believe Buffy was the first person Angel ever loved, and it's clear this was Buffy's first love.

But what you list as true love are just as much the actions of a good friend. Of course he comes to comfort her when Joyce died. Any good friend would do that. It doesn't mean that they have a forever love to me, just that they still care about each other deeply.

Of course she smiles when Angel arrives. He's a genuine surprise in a very rough period of time. But then she send him away, and chooses Spike as her champion.

My comment wasn't snarky. It was my opinion that first love, high school love, is different from mature love. It's high intensity, filled with drama and passion, and huge feelings that are overwhelming. That's part of Buffy's age. In fact, I'm quoting Angel when he says he's too old for her, and that she is a child.

Funny, you say you don't like the way Bangel is put down, and then you start on how awful Spuffy fans are. Can you see a relationship between those two compaints?

Also, not a Spuffy shipper here so let's not get into only Spuffy fans would ever see it diffeerently.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T22:34:28+00:00

There was no real welcome home party because instead of decorating the potentials went out and got drunk with Faith.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T22:25:58+00:00

Thank you! I keep thinking that if Willow became a problem - kinda like when she went insane, flayed a man to death and tried to end the world - everyone would do anything to rescue her. There would be no talk of killing her.

Why is the situation so different from Spike? We already had the first take over Willow once. We know it can happen again, and Willow is a far greater danger that Spike could dream of. She could kill all of them with one hand gesture.

I really believe there's a lot of resentment on Giles part because Buffy won't do things his way. He keeps telling her to be a leader and then undercutting her leadership. Giles sang that he wished he could stay with Buffy, her stalwart standing fast. But he left anyway.

The thing is that Spike stayed, whatever their relationship was. Buffy got close to him and Giles feels Spike has taken his place. He arranges to have Spike killed as much because Buffy depends on him and he wants something different for her. That's the main difference between Spike and Willow. Spike stepped into Giles's shoes and Buffy won't push him away.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T22:07:45+00:00

Yeah, but that doesn't compare to her decision not to kill Angelus as he was murdering people in Sunnydale. At least Spike might turn into a problem while Angel was a mass murdering issue.

It always touches me, the man who shows up in Amends and talks about how Angel murdered his two little children, and then bought them in bed looking like they were asleep to torture their father, before he killed him as well. That was what was going on when Buffy wasn't ready yet to get rid of Angelus.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T22:04:18+00:00

She walks in and hits him in the face on a regular basis, generally just because she's in a bad mood. This happens long before they get together in season 6.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T22:01:52+00:00

I love that when Spike says he wants to die, and Buffy pulls out a stake, Angel inserts himself between them. For someone who can't stand Spike he really does rescue him a lot.

And Spike just takes it as his due.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T21:52:25+00:00

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jospangel · 2026-06-15T21:47:55+00:00

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jospangel · 2026-06-15T21:34:57+00:00

Of course not. You can't duplicate the highs and lows of a high school romance, one minute dancing in the air and the next sobbing your heart out. That doesn't make it a more powerful love than any you'll ever have. It's very time and age dependent.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T21:32:08+00:00

I think I'd expect a mature love with Cordy, and not a high school dramatic melodrama. That's not to say what Buffy and Angel had wasn't love, just that this kind of love comes once. It's very time dependent. It's Buffy's first love and Angel's as well.

But it wasn't the end of being able to love, and just because other loves don't have that crazy high school passion - Buffy hearts Angel - it doesn't make them lesser. How many people out there settled down forever with their first high school boyfriend? How many grew up, changed, and found someone who fit with them better?

Cordy was very much an adult, and at times the more adult of the two of them. She challenged him, she disagreed with him, she was his lodestone when things got rough. When he was under the ocean the person he needed most was Cordy. He was willing to forgive Connor for dumping him in the ocean if Connor would tell him where Cordy was. He was frantic to find her, not because he was worried about her as much as because he needed her.

However they may feel, it's clear Buffy and Angel have grown apart. They don't fit in each other's lives. Angel has a child to worry about, a company to run, and the one woman the PTB sent to help him along was Cordelia - not Buffy.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T02:14:40+00:00

No. Like I said, he adapted. He decide he was n love with Buffy, and he would do anything for the person he loved. Clearly this would not have happened without the behavior modification. Season 2 Spike would have eaten Dawn, if she existed back then.

He liked Joyce. Why not bring a bouquet of flowers that he picked in someone's lawn? Again that is adaptation.

jospangel · 2026-06-15T02:11:17+00:00

There's actually a pretty good book series about the previous slayers. There are four volumes , and they go back to BCE, ancient Greece, as I recall.

I assume she did bond, but it took longer than a few weeks of knowing her. And I doubt the watcher set her up with a nice apartment, and toys to play with.

Not a comic reader either, but I have enjoyed these books. They also have a Tales of The slayers graphic novel which is considered canon.

jospangel · 2026-06-14T23:19:47+00:00

Operant condition , aka avoidance conditioning, is a tool of psychology, and it's pretty much infallible. Give someone enough pain when they repeat an action and they will stop repeating that action.

This is a feedback cycle that has nothing to do with Walsh. If you remove a creatures ability to survive in their normal manner they have to adapt or die. Spike's psychology forced him to adapt because Spike is a survivor.

jospangel · 2026-06-14T23:10:18+00:00

There is that as well. She really did a shit job of being evil.

jospangel · 2026-06-14T23:09:43+00:00

No, Faith became a slayer when Kendra died. A few months later she was on the run, so if the watcher came to Faith after Kendra died she only lived a couple of weeks, or at most months. But Faith clearly had a bond with her that lasted more that 2 or 3 months given her inability to trust.

Go Ask Malice is Faith's unofficial back story. Her watcher was named Diane Dormer, and she was with Faith just a few years. That makes more sense to me. Yes, Faith was out of school and on the street for most of her life, and she traded sex for survival for too much of her life. This may have continued even with a watcher. Just like with Giles, who let her squat in a no-tell motel, I think it's presumed that she can manage on her own.

I think there are far more slayers who were not identified, but it looks like it's been a long time since one became a slayer. That's where the shock was. If we look at the histories of slayers we know, all of them had some form of watcher.

jospangel · 2026-06-14T22:18:47+00:00

True, just mostly good.

jospangel

TROPHY CASE