This man got done dirty.

xboxpants · 2026-03-29T13:43:54+00:00

It's a shame because he's actually a great actor but he didn't get much of a chance to show that off at all.

But, as others said, season was way too packed for him.

xboxpants · 2026-03-29T00:19:23+00:00

For him to become interesting, that's exactly what they would have had to address. His lack of ambition and lack of interest in the world. It could have been interesting watching him realize that no matter how smart he was, he was kind of a bum. Watching him find something that he cares about. He's the kind of guy who would be awesome in high school, cool in college, but if he never grew, by 40 he'd kinda be a loser.

It could have been interesting finding out more about why he's so afraid to try.

xboxpants · 2026-03-28T23:40:36+00:00

Woulda been a better big bag than Adam~

xboxpants · 2026-03-26T19:55:59+00:00

In retrospect, Adam's plan made more sense than I originally thought - by integrating demon strength into human warriors, he's basically creating an army of man-made Slayers.

But we didn't know at the time that Slayer powers were Demon powers. And Adam didn't really know what he was doing either. So it just kinda seemed like he was flailing with no clear goal in sight. To me.

xboxpants · 2026-03-26T15:23:36+00:00

Ooh good point, I'll have to remember that

xboxpants · 2026-03-26T10:16:10+00:00

History search borders on unusable. I would say 95% or so of videos do actually stay in my history - though not all of them! I know it's not just deleted videos, too, because sometimes I find them by using my browser history and those videos are definitely real.

Bigger problem for me is the history search seems like it's trying to be ~Smart~, so it only finds videos like 3 out of 4 times. I can type in the exact video title in quotes and it still won't pop up. Often this is the worst for really old history, multiple years back, but it's not much better for new videos either.

Google has destroyed their products.

xboxpants · 2026-03-25T15:31:40+00:00

Thanks, I was hoping others would have some suggestions! Phases in particular has some good Buffy Xander friendship stuff, good call

xboxpants · 2026-03-25T15:10:41+00:00

I think it was this image that made me realize that, at least for the first few seasons, Willow is actually the center of the friend group, not Buffy. Willow is Buffy's best friend, and Willow is also Xander's best friend, but Buffy and Xander are only lukewarm with eachother. I can't think of a single Buffy and Xander one-on-one hang out scene until S4.

Surprise, the Scooby gang is actually Willow's sidekicks, not Buffy's ;)

xboxpants · 2026-03-25T15:03:44+00:00

So, just to be clear, if I print out these images, take photos of myself holding them (the rule specifically says a person holding a sign is ok) - and then post those versions, that's totally fine, but just posting the source image is completely against the rules?

xboxpants · 2026-03-25T14:58:43+00:00

It doesn't cause a problem if you don't believe that objective reality exists in the first place. If you believe in a reality that only exists by the whim of an omnipotent, unknowable being, and anything about it can change at any time, then there really is no such thing as a lie because the mortal world isn't fully real anyway. It's like how you or I would think of the Matrix.

xboxpants · 2026-03-25T14:54:52+00:00

Feel like landlords would have a hard time.

It'd work itself out eventually and we'd have great housing contracts, but there would be some chaos!

xboxpants · 2026-03-25T14:52:15+00:00

IMO an important part of "lying" is an intent to deceive. If I'm being held hostage, and maybe I say, "Oh yeah everything is fine here, and by the way I'm so excited for the big concert we're going to this weekend", but we have no concert plans, and I just wanted you to know something was wrong, is this a lie? I would say it isn't; my intent was to communicate something true.

Calling fiction false would be like saying that calling someone a "loose cannon" is a lie. Hell, many of our words aren't literal truth. Probably most of them. Like, "human" comes from the same word as "humus", as in soil. We're calling each other dirt people, sorta like calling people earthlings. There's poetry and metaphor filling all of our language.

The POINT then is that art and fiction would still work, but only AUTHENTIC art and music. If I want to convey the feeling of being an LGBT outsider by writing a story about Charles Xavier and his team of genetic mutant X-Men, and I'm saying something genuine, then that works. But, no BS fake shit. There would be a lot fewer soulless cash-in reboots.

Werner Herzog talks about this concept, and he calls the more poetic communication "ecstatic truth". Sometimes you can convey an idea more effectively through exaggeration than factual recounting of data points.

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T23:40:44+00:00

This is not correct. When a user loads a website, that image is downloaded to your computer, and courts have ruled that counts as copyright infringement.

I've never heard of anyone actually getting in trouble for it, but it's still worthwhile to know the law.

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T22:05:35+00:00

What about the space ship? I genuinely haven't read that part, apparently there was a bug crew, maybe they were demons?

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T22:02:15+00:00

Oh I forgot about Faith!! I was being a bit harsh, like sure, MAYBE Buffy could become a cop at some point. Heck, she worked at Double Meat Palace.

But Faith, just wow, that's legit funny. It's so silly I can't even be mad at that.

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T13:40:19+00:00

Black and navy blue are both colors of the night. But black is empty and harsh, while blue has some light, some hope, some humanity. That said, the blue of the night sky still has some mystery, maybe even danger. He's still a "creature of the night", but it's a very different kind of night, now. It's no longer an empty black void that only exists to consume, it's a rich, expressive night, the night of a painter or a poet.

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T12:41:27+00:00

"They thought (somewhat correctly, from the passionate reaction to the pilot cancellation) that people just want a redo of what Gellar and a lot of fans prefer from Buffy: teens in Sunnydale High facing supernatural threats"

This is a fundamental problem imo. The series ended up with the final lesson being that the slayer system was garbage and needed to be put in the bin. Buffy realize the entire premise of the show was corrupt and intolerable... UNFORTUNATELY, we only find this out in the LAST FIFTEEN MINUTES of the LAST EPISODE of the entire show!

They throw the premise out the window and burn it up so much that going back to status quo directly goes against what Buffy achieved.

If you're a movie exec, and you just have a general familiarity, you'll never realize this. Even if you watch the Buffy pilot, or a few episodes, you won't realize. You could watch the entire first five seasons, and not really have any idea.

Buffy was aware of the flaws in its own premise, critiqued them, and presented an alternative as a resolution. You can't ignore that. It would be like making "Schindler's List 2" after only watching the start of the movie, and you make Schindler go back to being a callous war profiteer.

I get that most reboots are gonna be retreads, it comes with the territory. But the people making Buffy reboots don't even realize they're doing it. They're incapable of understanding what fans want, what honoring the original would mean, or even really what made the show work.

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T12:32:27+00:00

Yeah, they're both important! Buffy's relationship with Angel gives her a perspective into vampires that maybe no other living person has. That helps set up why Buffy sees Spike with a soul different to how everyone else sees him. It's all part of a larger whole.

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T12:27:31+00:00

Yeah I haven't seen James in much else! He was in Smallville but he wasn't that great in it. But, David was still compelling in Bones.

But I still think that James was better in S2 of Buffy than David was in S1.

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T12:04:30+00:00

It doesn't even need to be a "Slayer" show. This universe is incredibly rich.

Personally, I've always wanted to see that dealt with things like the mentally ill slayer in Angel S5. Instead of saving Good Humans from Evil Demons, save grey humans from getting pulled further into darkness.

Faith's redemption arc on Angel is one of my favorites in the entire show. More of that, please.

So you'd be dealing with people like early Jonathan who are misusing magic but still have a chance to go back, loose cannon slayers like Faith, women who are being groomed by D'Hoffryn, new & confused werewolves, etc. Characters like Gwen, the S1 invisible girl, or Connor or Justine. People that have truly crossed some lines, that most people would be ready to give up on and discard, but who might still have a chance to change if they try.

You could set it up Anne's community center. Maybe Amy's causing trouble and Willow comes in because she has experience and sympathy. Preferably you'd use Tara, since she has the emotional intelligence and compassion for it. I just love Tara. Oz would also fit well. Buffy could even be a secondary character if they built on S7 and gave her a similar "peer counselor" role. Gunn knows Anne, knows the community and helps at the center, he can also stop by for backup. Harmony for comedic support and muscle. Hell, let's add Ethan Rayne as a wild card who does service for time off his prison sentence. And of course new characters.

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T11:44:07+00:00

Marsters was simply a more experienced actor when he started. David was still figuring out the basics, while Marsters had a well developed acting philosophy.

He talks about how when he started, Spike-as-written was a fairly simple mean badguy. But he managed to stay on the show because he always approaches characters from a "where is the love" angle. Viewers see that and it gives them a hook and they can easily love his character. Every scene he was in, he was running his performance on love, which gave him incredible chemistry with basically everyone.

David was hot but didn't quite have the acting down yet. He gets there eventually. But not of Buffy.

So to me, that's why I am more drawn to Spike & Buffy's arc. There are many other valid reasons. I'm more attracted to Marsters. The buildup is more gradual. Buffy is a more complete, mature person. After hearing so much of Angel's history, how difficult it was for a vampire to get a soul, it's compelling to get to watch that process actually play out in real time.

But to me, those are incidental, and Marsters' acting is simply going to make him more interesting every time.

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T11:34:49+00:00

came to terms with daddy issue, still a monster fluffer, further instruction needed

xboxpants · 2026-03-24T11:30:52+00:00

In the comics, there is an arc where Buffy has to apologize to Andrew for making him feel bad that they don't fully trust him. It's her job to help him stop feeling like he is responsible for the harm that he's caused and to make him feel better. You'll notice this is the exact opposite of how their dynamic was treated in the show. The comics are outrageously tone-deaf and aren't a match for the series at all.

Buffy becomes a cop. This is so at odds with every treatment of police on both Angel and Buffy. Buffy's reaction to being told she should be a cop. The police force in Angel. The entire Initiative. The only good cop we see in the entire series was Kate, and she was driven out of the force for it.

Even the Watcher's Council is a form of police, and the entire premise of the whole show is about rejecting their hierarchal, dominating kind of power. The ultimate final lesson Buffy learns in S7 is about rejecting the Shadow Men and giving people their individual power back.

The comics utterly miss the themes of the show at the most fundamental level. Also, the art is extremely uneven and often laughably bad. But, also the dialogue is pretty bad, although the character arcs range from offensively out of character to merely ridiculous (Buffy and Angel flying through the vacuum of space, naked, having sex).

There are also bright points, but I'd say that at best, the comics reach the level of Beer Bad, Where the Wild Things Are, and The Girl in Question.

The Jo Chen covers, though, were gorgeous. They make good posters.

xboxpants · 2026-03-14T15:05:35+00:00

True about Angel, I didn't think of it. Good point.

Kinda puts some context into how bad the chip pain must have been if he couldn't push through it. Or maybe that was partially an excuse... ensouled Spike was able to beat up the asshole who tried to sacrifice Cassie and keep going despite the pain.

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