BUFFY #5 - spoilery specs

[moscow_watcher]

"I imagine this issue of Buffy will leave fans talking, and some of it is gonna be unhappy..." (Scott Allie in the lettercol). Boy, was he right. "Some of it" was so unhappy that Whedonesque issued a new rule: people who don't like comics are not allowed to post in comics threads. "Post again and you're banned from this site forever. All this at

Comments

[boot_the_grime]

Well there is a difference between using "maximum pain" plotlines that make sense from the character and storytelling perspective, and throwing completely random OOC stuff just to shock people.

I don't consider the idea of a vampire being the father at all seriously. And Angel being the father is just hilariously craptastic and nonsensical. Mystical elephant pregnancy by a vampire, LOL. So is there going to be 3 more years since she gives birth, if it took her over 7 months to find out she's preggers? :D Add to this the fact that he isn't going to be appearing in season 9 and has a whole separate story.

I am very relieved that Spike's out of running for the father because of being a vampire. The last thing I want for the two of them is to have had drunken off-panel sex Buffy didn't even remember or didn't want to remember (and their interactions in season 9, from "not this year" to their behavior since, absolutely don't support this idea) and to get back together after she finds out she's pregnant by him, which would always leave the question if they only hooked up because he knocked her up. Ugh.

On the other hand, I have a dreadful feeling that they might go with "Buffy and Xander had sex earlier and the whole party thing was just a distraction", even though that doesn't make sense for the characters and is totally OOC and would ruin the well written development for Xander and closure that B/X got in "Turbulence", and would make absolutely no sense for Buffy's character (the idea of Buffy sleeping with her sister's boyfriend is already OOC, and additionally, she's ashamed for possibly coming onto a married man, but she's not ashamed of sleeping with her sister's serious boyfriend? WTF? Does anyone believe that?!)... This would be the worst, most character-assassinating and implausible plot point ever (season 8 at least had the glow and Twilight's influence) and the only reason I'm not discounting it that I've lost my trust in Whedon's storytelling choices. The cumulative effect of The Girl in Question (which he thought at the time was a good closure for Buffy's character), season 8's Twilight and the current marketing from Dark Horse leaves me with the impression that he thinks it's great writing if he drags Buffy through the mud as much as possible or piles all sorts of random trouble and torture on her and annoys the fans/subverts their expectations, whether what he makes her do makes sense or not (TGIQ didn't, but he must have thought at the time it was a good idea, even though he seemed to have come to his senses a few years later). And it's not like great closure for a storyline/character development from a previous season hasn't been ruined before just to have characters act like arseholes in a barely plausible story (hello, Willow/Xander in season 3!) though this would be several orders of magnitude worse and would definitely assassinate both of those characters.

I've just stopped being optimistic when it comes to Whedon's storytelling choices.

[moscow_watcher]

That's why I think it may be either Heinrich (and Buffy doesn't remember what happened between them) or space-frak consequences. Because other options demand OOC behavior from Buffy or her potential partner (s).

But iа it's the tresult of space-frak, there will be some rules-bending but no OOC behavior.

I've just stopped being optimistic when it comes to Whedon's storytelling choices.

*shrugs* Pregnancy is one of the most popular tropes in soap-opera - and BtVS is a supernatural soap, at least formally. More complex and tragic that an average soap-opera, but still.

[boot_the_grime]

Pregnancy could be a good or a bad storyline, depending on the execution. But setting up a "who's the daddy" controversy for the fandom to obsess over, with a "who did she sleep with when she was drunk?" issue and a pregnancy reveal at the end of another issue, without it having been established who, if anyone, she had had sex lately? That's starting to smack of a below average soap opera.

[moscow_watcher]

We'll see if they'll reveal the daddy's identity soon. But I suspect that they'll keep the secret as long as possible to make the fandom wonder and theorize.

[a2zmom]

I haven't had any character problems with season 8 or 9 up until 9, but if Buffy slept with Xander I wil be incredibly pissed.

Way, way, way back in season 2, Xander had the opportunity to take advantage of a "spell-drunk" Willow in BB+B and he wouldn't do it. For Xander to cheat on Dawn with Buffy would be character assasination imo.

[moscow_watcher]

Agree. If Buffy slept with Xander, it's not the Buffy I know and not the Xander I know.