Fannish5: pain or gain?

[selenak]

Five characters that replaced departing characters, and whether you considered each a gain or a loss.

Right then. I think we'll have to exclude Doctor Who for obvious reasons, such as the freakin' format of the show since decades. So, let's see:

1) Anya in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, who essentially filled the Cordelia-shaped gap from season 4

Comments

[shati]

(With one caveat: Xander/Cordelia sparring had a quite different vibe from Xander's early arguments with Anya because Cordelia always gave as good as she got, and quite often was the attacker. Whereas there was a naivete about Anya that made Xander look insensitive instead of quippy.

I agree, and I wish it didn't work out like that. On the side of dubious pluses, it makes me feel better about the outcome of "Hell's Bells," because I mostly think Xander and Anya are in love, but not exactly good for each other.

Also, wow, I totally never thought about early Wesley's reception on AtS! In my mind he is an eternal object of fannish devotion. That's kind of hilarious.

[selenak]

On the side of dubious pluses, it makes me feel better about the outcome of "Hell's Bells," because I mostly think Xander and Anya are in love, but not exactly good for each other.

Agreed. Early on when Anya says "I'm marrying my best friend!" my heart broke a little for her, because while Xander was that to her, she wasn't to him. Don't get me wrong, I think Xander loved Anya, would have died for her without hesitation, and that he left her at the end of Hell's Bells because he was afraid of hurting her (that look to his parents really worked for me) - but until s7, he wasn't her friend, and even then, he'd always be closer to Willow and Buffy. Maybe even Dawn.

Early Wesley: check it out, if you can find posts going that far back.*g* It's true, I swear. I think people started to come around ca. Five by Five (torture will do it for fangirls, it appears), but there still were holdouts until Wesley assumed leadership in s2, and the utter and complete devotion phase definitely has to be dated with Loyalty in s3.

[shati]

Yep. And the flip side of that is, Anya doesn't have any good friends. I think it's partly a weird side effect of the character starting off comic relief and becoming One of the Gang -- they began with a hilariously off-putting and abrasive character who doesn't think it's wrong to kill people, but it had to turn into a serious portrait of a character who ... doesn't have any friends, and still doesn't really seem to get that it's wrong to kill people. (I do love "Selfless," but I wish there'd been any follow-up at all that wasn't focused on Xander/Anya.)

I just might! It's especially funny to me because I love early Wesley (way early -- BtVS through S1 of AtS) best.

[misachan]

I admit, I never really forgave Lyta for not being Talia. I didn't like her in the pilot and was relieved when I saw she'd been replaced (which was the exact opposite of my reaction to the doctor switch; I'd really liked the Pilot doctor and it took me forever to warm up to Franklin). She had this strange, intense neediness that turned me off; I was much more interested the relationship between Kosh and Sheridan and for a while I was rolling my eyes ever time she came on screen. I did start to come around during the Kosh II arc, but then when the whole Mind War thing started I found myself wondering again what this would look like with Talia. That might be my fierce Byron hate coloring things though.

[selenak]

Well, I hated Byron, too, but at this point I was also relieved Ivanova had gone because I had heard that if she hadn't, she'd have been the one to hook up with him, so it wasn't a Lyta versus Talia situation in my mind. And Byron in the end did trigger the Dark Phoenix phase in Lyta, which I enjoyed watching; as I said, I can't imagine how this whole plot would have developed with Talia because Talia was much more integrated with the command crew than Lyta ever was, and the female telepath being an outsider was one of the preconditions.

"Strange, intense neediness" is a good description, though. She replaced the Corps with the Vorlons, and then when they disappointed her as well she fell for Byron; only then was that finally burned out of her, but at a price.

[londonkds]

What I think is weird about Lyta in the pilot is how incredibly 1980s they make her look, with that haircut and the square-shouldered jacket.

[selenak]

Wesley in season 3: I experienced both ends of the scale, emotionally. At first I was all "poor Wesley!" during the three relevant episodes and subsequently; then, starting with A New World, I started to fall for Connor, and the Connor-Angel relationship did much to revive my flagging AtS love (s3 still is my least favourite of the seasons), and then came season 4, and then, after crying over Home, when I went back to rewatch some s3 episodes, I was all "Wesley, you idiot!" (Not that it's not possible to feel for Wes and Angel both in that situation, of course. But the emphasis of my sympathy had definitely shifted.)

He was hilarious in Expecting. Though the scene that most sticks to mind for me is the last, when he's so happy Angel invites him to stay and shares breakfeast with him and Cordelia. That was when I went from my sympathy for the fannish underdog (i.e. season 3 of BTVS Wesley, set up to fail) to falling in love with the character

P.S. Re: mood icon

[selenak]

That's one of many funny and touching scenes with the Tenth Doctor and Donna, whom I just adore together.

[likeadeuce]

Anya replacing Cordy really was a win-win, wasn't it? (Other than the point about the Xander relationships, as you mentioned). As somebody who started watching Buffy in the late seasons -- and really didn't see Angel until I had gone back and watched all of Buffy -- I was so attached to Anya for a long time that I didn't give Cordy a chance. But then I watched and loved her on Angel (well, seasons 1 & 2 of Angel, anyway) and I was able to appreciate her role on Buffy more, as well. Now when i rewatch the early seasons, Cordy's scenes are always among my favorites.

[selenak]

It so was a win-win, yes. (And those early scenes are why in my SFU crossover the Scoobies had to be there, btw; Cordelia belonged to them as much as to Los Angeles.*g*)

[kattahj]

Yes to pretty much everything you said about Anya and Wesley (have only seen up to season 3 of Farscape and the others not at all, so I can't comment on those). I loved Wesley to the end, but I remember feeling this pang of irritation when everyone started fawning: "Oh, he's good enough for you!" *grin*

And yeah, Anya/Xander was Not Good in a way Cordy/Xander, for all its hate/love, never was.

I think one reason Anya was so much readily accepted than Wesley, apart from the VERY different ways of departure for Cordy and Doyle, was that she had already started making a place for herself in the series by the time Cordy left. Wes was a previously known character, but from BtVS, not Angel. If he had been recurring in the early eps, like Kate was, I think it would have been at least slightly easier to take than "Here's your new regular, enjoy!"

[selenak]

I remember feeling this pang of irritation when everyone started fawning: "Oh, he's good enough for you!" *grin*

It's irritating, isn't it? But it's there, and it happened to me a couple of times with characters. Every now and then I'm thinking of making an icon of that insect creature from the season 4 episode who goes on about Jasmine: "We loved her first." *g*