Shipper?

[TwistedGypsy]

Ahhh the days of shipperdom. It seems like so long ago we were everywhere, but due to the ridicules most have gone "underground". I still believe that the love affair will continue until they both kick the bucket, but thats it. No torrid affair like I used to believe.
Brit

[cliffdweller]

Originally Posted by hayley

EWWW!@! I will whip out my ship manifesto for Spike & Buffy and will spit on the grave of Buffy & Angel. :P

Spuffy 4-ever, Merf n' Hayley 4-ever, etc.

SPOILER BELOW:

































Hey, I heard a rumor that there might be a new show in the works with Spike as the main character! Have you heard anything about this?? Maybe it was just a rumor I'd love to see how they pull off his...um....resurrection.

[hayley]

Originally Posted by cliffdweller

SPOILER BELOW:

They're actually just talking about a movie... either straight to DVD or for the WB. Joss is interested in doing it.

Have you seen any of Angel? Spike joined in the fifth season, the first season after his "demise" on BtVS... they did bring him back. And then Angel ended with him still alive, at least for the time being.

I'm down with anything bringing back the pretty, pretty, pretty cheekbones.

ETA: Joss has also always talked about doing a Giles spin-off for the BBC called Ripper. At one point, they were talking about James Marsters joining that show as well. I guess they just get the power of the Spike and want it everywhere. Understandably.

[cliffdweller]

Originally Posted by hayley

They're actually just talking about a movie... either straight to DVD or for the WB. Joss is interested in doing it.

Have you seen any of Angel? Spike joined in the fifth season, the first season after his "demise" on BtVS... they did bring him back. And then Angel ended with him still alive, at least for the time being.

I'm down with anything bringing back the pretty, pretty, pretty cheekbones.

ETA: Joss has also always talked about doing a Giles spin-off for the BBC called Ripper. At one point, they were talking about James Marsters joining that show as well. I guess they just get the power of the Spike and want it everywhere. Understandably.

Ahhhh! No, I haven't yet started the Angel series. However, that might be a good one to start over the holidays while I have some time to devote to it. It's nice to know that Spike makes an appearance, however. Those two are my favorite Buffy crushes. HATE Reilly. HATE, HATE, HATE!

I hope the Giles spin-off (with Spike) comes to fruition. Those two? Hilarious together. Remember the Buffy episode where they lose their memory and Giles and Spike think they are father and son? OMG, that episode had me rolling in the aisles!

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by cliffdweller

Ahhhh! No, I haven't yet started the Angel series. However, that might be a good one to start over the holidays while I have some time to devote to it. It's nice to know that Spike makes an appearance, however.

Angel was a great series and really came into its own as something completely different from Buffy, though existing in the same universe. Though I haven't seen the fifth season yet either, as it first aired the last time I was in Germany for an extended period of time, and I still haven't picked up the DVDs.

Before you watch the first episode of Angel, though, rewatch the first episode of season four of Buffy ("The Freshman," I believe). There's a very minor, fleeting correlation between the two episodes, but it's really a nice one, I think. (Actually, the whole first season of Angel is really better watched in correlation with the fourth season of Buffy, as there are a lot of crossovers and mixed plotlines and such.)

[hayley]

Originally Posted by cliffdweller

It's nice to know that Spike makes an appearance, however. Those two are my favorite Buffy crushes. HATE Reilly. HATE, HATE, HATE!

Oh, Riley. OH, he's so gross. When I started watching Buffy, my boss was the one loaning me the sets and was all- Just wait til you get to Riley!(*@! He's so great!! He's my dream boyfriend!@&*!

So when I actually GOT to the Riley parts... my opinion of her dropped like -10,000.

I hope the Giles spin-off (with Spike) comes to fruition. Those two? Hilarious together. Remember the Buffy episode where they lose their memory and Giles and Spike think they are father and son? OMG, that episode had me rolling in the aisles!

It's one of those things they've talked about doing for so long and just hasn't gotten off the ground... the Spike movie thing seems like it may actually happen, just because they're actually talking to one of the writers of the show about writing and directing it and are talking story. I dunno. I just want more Spike!

I LOVE that episode, Tabula Rasa, when Spike thinks he's Giles' kid and that his name is Randy Giles. It's just too funny.

Originally Posted by Jyqm

Angel was a great series and really came into its own as something completely different from Buffy, though existing in the same universe. Though I haven't seen the fifth season yet either, as it first aired the last time I was in Germany for an extended period of time, and I still haven't picked up the DVDs.

I just finished Angel last week... and while I recognize it's a great show in its own right, I vastly prefer Buffy. Angel's just so damned broody, and I couldn't get over some of the crap they tried to perpetrate in the fourth season. I was amazed at just how much they made me LOVE Wesley. It's a good show- I just prefer the arcs of Buffy, I think.

Who am I kidding? I'm ragging on it because I'm PISSED that they blew the opportunity of having Spike sing for Lorne in the fifth season. All I wanted was some singing. A little "You Really Got Me"? A little "You Were Always On My Mind"? I would've died.

Back on topic- STEVIE & LINDSEY FOREVER, etc.

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by hayley

EWWW!@! I will whip out my ship manifesto for Spike & Buffy and will spit on the grave of Buffy & Angel. :P

Spuffy 4-ever, Merf n' Hayley 4-ever, etc.

Spuffy ROCKS! ALWAYS...

What about Anya and Giles!

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by Jyqm

Angel was a great series and really came into its own as something completely different from Buffy, though existing in the same universe. Though I haven't seen the fifth season yet either, as it first aired the last time I was in Germany for an extended period of time, and I still haven't picked up the DVDs.

Before you watch the first episode of Angel, though, rewatch the first episode of season four of Buffy ("The Freshman," I believe). There's a very minor, fleeting correlation between the two episodes, but it's really a nice one, I think. (Actually, the whole first season of Angel is really better watched in correlation with the fourth season of Buffy, as there are a lot of crossovers and mixed plotlines and such.)

Yea I agree with watching them hand in hand. They were both still with the WB at the time so they did a crossover like every chance they could!

GOD I miss those shows...

after seeing Angel walking out in the sunlight...
Cordy: Oh my GOD!.....You got an umbrella!

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by cliffdweller

HATE Reilly. HATE, HATE, HATE!

You and me both! UGH!

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by hayley

I LOVE that episode, Tabula Rasa, when Spike thinks he's Giles' kid and that his name is Randy Giles. It's just too funny.

"Randy Giles?! Why not just name me Horny Giles?! Or Desperately-Needs-A-Shag Giles?!"

I just finished Angel last week... and while I recognize it's a great show in its own right, I vastly prefer Buffy. Angel's just so damned broody, and I couldn't get over some of the crap they tried to perpetrate in the fourth season. I was amazed at just how much they made me LOVE Wesley. It's a good show- I just prefer the arcs of Buffy, I think.

I think I might be in the minority, but I really enjoyed the whole arc of Angel season 4. I'm not sure if it plays out quite so well watching it on DVD all at once, but week by week, I thought it was really exciting and a lot of fun. Though it was a shame that Charisma Carpenter's role got so diminished. (What exactly happened there? I know there were rumours at the time about contract disputes and such.)

At any rate, I vastly preferred it to the arc of the seventh season of Buffy. [DON'T READ BEYOND THIS SENTENCE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW.] That started out really strong, but very quickly fell apart, I thought. The "Look at all the Slayers!" thing got boring pretty quickly, as none of those characters were terribly interesting. And while it was nice to have lots of old guest stars back in the mix, I didn't think they used the First Evil as a villain (or Spike as a brainwashed minion) as well as they could have. In the plus column, though: I like that they brought back the high school, and I enjoyed Principal Wood's character (though his lineage felt a little forced and contrived to me). And it was great to have Andrew back.

But overall, I think Buffy's seventh season suffered from the same thing that plagued the latter half of season six: It felt like Joss wasn't as involved or paying as much attention, and both the major plot arcs and the writing often became clumsy or overwrought or just plain ridiculous. ("Smashed" is my cut-off point. After that, the show just seemed to adopt a very odd change in tone and take a rapid nose dive, from which it never fully recovered, at least not consistently.)

[snowman]

Originally Posted by joshywashy377

what is a shipper? im curious i hear (or see in this case) people talk about them but i dont know what one is!

I thought a shipper was just a larger version of a boater... rim shot

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by Jyqm

But overall, I think Buffy's seventh season suffered from the same thing that plagued the latter half of season six: It felt like Joss wasn't as involved or paying as much attention, and both the major plot arcs and the writing often became clumsy or overwrought or just plain ridiculous. ("Smashed" is my cut-off point. After that, the show just seemed to adopt a very odd change in tone and take a rapid nose dive, from which it never fully recovered, at least not consistently.)

Yea I tend to agree with you on this. Most of the beginning of season six I honestly did enjoy...especially more of the quirky ones like "Live Serial"...but as the season went on it just took a turn for the, dare I say, too serious...it seemed like every time you turned around something else tragic was happening. Although there were still some pretty awesome episodes..."Hell's Bells" was amazing...Anya's "walk" at the end had me in tears. "Entropy" was also a favorite of mine..."What the hell kind of lesbians are you? If you love men so much...go love men!"

[hayley]

Originally Posted by Jyqm

I think I might be in the minority, but I really enjoyed the whole arc of Angel season 4. I'm not sure if it plays out quite so well watching it on DVD all at once, but week by week, I thought it was really exciting and a lot of fun. Though it was a shame that Charisma Carpenter's role got so diminished. (What exactly happened there? I know there were rumours at the time about contract disputes and such.)

My problem with it is more a general hatred of Connor. I also felt Charisma's performances while she was the big bad were lacking. She just didn't get me. It had no impact on me whatsoever that Cordy, a character I really loved and was invested in, had gone evil like that. I just wasn't feeling it. I LIKED the Jasmine thing, aside from the fact that she was Connor & Cordy's kid. I thought the ep "Shiny Happy People" where Jasmine first starts taking over the world with her joy was great.

I think my favorite arc on Angel was the fall of Wesley, and the Wesley/Lilah relationship. I loved seeing Wesley's darker side there.

At any rate, I vastly preferred it to the arc of the seventh season of Buffy. [DON'T READ BEYOND THIS SENTENCE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW.] That started out really strong, but very quickly fell apart, I thought. The "Look at all the Slayers!" thing got boring pretty quickly, as none of those characters were terribly interesting. And while it was nice to have lots of old guest stars back in the mix, I didn't think they used the First Evil as a villain (or Spike as a brainwashed minion) as well as they could have. In the plus column, though: I like that they brought back the high school, and I enjoyed Principal Wood's character (though his lineage felt a little forced and contrived to me). And it was great to have Andrew back.

I really feel like the sixth and seventh season had so many missed opportunities, so many weird characterizations, and so many other problems, but it didn't really bother me as much as most- probably because I came to the show late and didn't have to suffer through it as it was playing in real time. I love certain things about those seasons- episodes like Fool for Love, Conversations with Dead People, Once More With Feeling, Tabula Rasa, Storyteller. I loved the Trio. I loved the IDEA of the First Evil, I just hated the execution and the screwups. I loved the idea of turning all the Potentials into actual Slayers, despite how much I HATED the Potentials that were living in the house. It was a mixed bag.

I will also be ambivalent until the end of days about giving Spike a soul, but still having Buffy treat him like a subhuman. Either let him keep his soul (and his balls) and never have Buffy, or give him his soul, take his balls, and let him be a man Buffy can and will be with. Don't neuter him and then not even reward him in the end. It ticks me off a little.

Anyhow, long post short- I agree with you about the writing on 6 & 7- it's frustrating because I can see what they were trying to do, it just didn't work. Watching the carefully constructed metaphors in the show devolve into just having everything spelled out was the worst. I mean, think of the scene in Season 3 where Angel feeds off Buffy- at the time, that whole scene as a metaphor for sex felt overpowering and a bit heavy-handed to me. Skip to Season 6, and Spike & Buffy are having sex and the house caves in around them. Hello, anvil. It's frustrating.

I'm glad to hear you like Andrew, Jyqm. So many hate him, and I love him.

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by Brwn_eyes0511

Yea I tend to agree with you on this. Most of the beginning of season six I honestly did enjoy...especially more of the quirky ones like "Live Serial"...but as the season went on it just took a turn for the, dare I say, too serious...it seemed like every time you turned around something else tragic was happening. Although there were still some pretty awesome episodes..."Hell's Bells" was amazing...Anya's "walk" at the end had me in tears. "Entropy" was also a favorite of mine..."What the hell kind of lesbians are you? If you love men so much...go love men!"

My problem with the latter half of season six wasn't so much the "seriousness" - because the show had certainly been plenty serious before that, and to great effect - as much as the ponderousness and the clunkiness of the writing. A lot of that came from the whole "magic = drugs" thing, which not only was a horrible metaphor, but they just beat us over the head with it week after week. Before "Wrecked," Willow's arc was really going somewhere interesting. Her increasing use of and dependency on magic was shown as being indicative of her exploring the darker parts of her nature, becoming obsessed with her newfound power and confidence (two things she never had much earlier in the show), and becoming increasingly averse to dealing with problems in her life in a normal way. Then suddenly it was as though the writers decided that was all just too subtle and complex for them, and in the span of a single episode, they completely changed her character arc and turned her into this helpless junkie, then proceeded to make the whole plotline as heavy-handed as possible.

And the same thing happened with Buffy's plotline. I loved the idea of having her become increasingly cold and depressed after her botched resurrection. I loved that she was using the idea that she somehow "came back wrong" as an excuse to indulge in her darker nature as well by taking up with Spike, only to find out that she was actually completely "normal." But again, after a certain point, the writers seemed to abandon the subtlety and ocmplexity that was there, and it just became the "Let's do something really obvious to make Buffy feel bad about herself" show. The absolute nadir, of course, being "As You Were." Before Riley left, they had finally managed to make his character complex and interesting at the beginning of season five; bringing him back as this happy-go-lucky paragon who was there only to make Buffy feel bad about herself in comparison made me want to throw rocks at my television (and I'm not a Riley hater otherwise).

Yes, things picked up a little towards the end. "Entropy" was a very good episode, and I loved "Normal Again" and "Seeing Red," but the last three episodes seemed to slip back towards that heavy-handedness.

That said, I think most the first nine episodes of that season are right up there with some of the best, and even the ones that aren't great still have that air about them that was just lost after "Wrecked."

[sparky]

I never, ever got the genesis of the word "shipper" before. It never occured to me that it was derived from relation"ship". One more mystery solved.