At least they are trading cards and not action figures. Is there any way to erase that scene from the S6 DVD's or is it too late?

Bad taste in marketing

Bad taste? Bad taste? Jssdfsdfsl Chrsdslsss! The Card's label reads "The Big Bad." WTF? Who is responsible for licensing at FOX? I've half a mind to send Tony Soprano over there, to have a little chat about the power of the image, and the written word.

Oh, wow. I can't believe I'm riled up over a trading card. (But I am.)

...

I understand that everyone is on a different place in the journey but, for me, my empowerment is fine and the only reason I watched those storylines was because I liked the show.

I'm reading here—and that very well may not be your intention, which is why I'm noting that here—the implication that enjoyment or defense of the show's mission statement somehow indicates where a given person is in her/his journey, or how (un???-"un" isn't said, but it's strongly implied)empowered that person is. I respect that you didn't like the execution of the mission statement. I respect that you might not even like the mission statement of the show, itself (and so therefore, the storylines that evolved from it). But this journey/empowerment statement is where I got really uncomfortable in this conversation. The comments about the Willow-anvil do strike me as ironic, given you'd just expressed desire for a Xander-comes-out story.

Granted, Willow's "gay now" Tourettes-like outbursts sometimes took me out of the story. I don't see that as an anvil, so much as I see it as one part clunky execution/one part interesting characterization (in other words, I waffle; I can see Willow being unsettled enough, and so strongly desirous of making Tara happy, and so uncertain of her feelings, that she actully would act like that).

In all, I appreciated the W/T part of Willow's arc. I respect that you didn't. I know I didn't expect to. When I first saw Hush, I already knew Seth Green was leaving, I had no doubt Tara and Willow would end up involved, but at the beginning, it felt forced, and out of character with this character they'd show us up 'til then. Then they let us get to know Tara, and it just seemed logical to me that these two people would fall in love. I will be eternally grateful we didn't get a "how Willow got gay" story, and instead, were treated to what rivals B/A as the (for me) most involving love story on the show (and much more love filled, warts and all). I thought Willow's magicks=drugs storyline was the real clunker, with all the subtlety of an anvil—much more so than her love story ever could have been. We didn't see Tara and Willow kiss on screen until how long after they were together? I wish they'd been able to treat her character as bisexual, but I fully understand why they decided against doing so, in the end.

Well, there's girl power, then there's "the only people who have any significant role to play in the last two years of the story are female--or dead." Being a guy in Sunnydale definitely seemed like a boring thing to be. The whole Slayer-empowerment montage in "Chosen" was one painful anvil after another. I saw Willow being gay as just another anvil labelled "Guys are occasionally fun to have around, but fairly irrelevant to our lives".

How do you see/deal with the fact of Spike, while formulating the "the only people who have any significant role to play in the last two years of the story are female--or dead" theory? What non-females were dead? Where does Xander's saving the world fit in? His engagement? His wedding? His blinding? Where does the Trio fit in? Caleb? Where does McHottie fit in? Don't get me wrong, I wish we'd had more Xander; actually I wish we'd had more Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander—together—in the final two seasons, and less of Dawn, Tara, Anya, Spike, yada yada yada. But I can't make your thesis jibe with what we saw onscreen. I adore the Spike character, but have to cop to the fact that he garnered the lion's share of the storyline. Even when the stories we watched weren't specifically about him (and they often were), they were frequently about Buffy's relationship with him.

I do think in the end, the Xander character got shoved aside, but not by Willow's "gay now" or even by any empowerment storyline. He was mostly shoved in a corner by Anya, who—ironically—was brought on to enhance his storyline. Didn't the Willow-Gay-Now stuff calm down by the end of season 5 (with the breast gal comment being the only one I can remember in season 6)? Giles left a gaping hole, granted, but I accepted it, because ASH had a desire to live his real life with his real family. I'm grateful they didn't try to replace him, just to keep some sort of artificial boy-girl balance on the show.

Cindy, not only does you brain work far better than mine, but it does so at such an hour that "fire bad, tree pretty" is an intellectual post.

As for the card, pretty lame move on the marketing department or whoever decided that it should be one of the images immortalized for all time in a printed medium. Not only does that scene get more difficult each time I watch it, but it seems even less necessary to the Spike getting a soul story line.

Cindy=amazing, insightful commentary.

Me=kinda lazy with mostly muddled thoughts, but very happy that I can read, at least.

In all, I appreciated the W/T part of Willow's arc. I respect that you didn't.

I thought Wilow and Tara were the sweetest, cutest thing I'd seen on TV in a long time. I'd have appreciated it a lot more if we hadn't had "gay now" repeated so often. Kennedy needed dropped down a well because of inherent annoyance factor.

The only thing I regret about this whole thing is that I ever mentioned the word empowerment. I wasn't aware it was still a hot-button word.

Xander became irrelevant, Giles became irrelevant, Spike was relevant only in terms of Buffy. This saddened me.

Let me see if I can say it unequivocally--My utterly subjective, utterly personal reaction was that the last two seasons of the show were, to me, in my personal opinion, damaged by a focus on the female characters to the diminishment of the male characters. The wedding storyline and its, in my utterly subjective, personal opinion, soap opera twist, were not sufficient to justify having Xander around. Him talking Willow down at the end, with purely human, non-superpowered love, redeemed about half of the season, and that's pretty damned good.

The entire Potentials storyline was--again, in my purely personal opinion--disappointing. Caleb was a misogynistic cartoon, Xander was perplexing background filler, Andrew was a tremendously amusing, practically neuter cyper, Giles was merely baffling, and Spike--I'm still not sure what they were trying to do with Spike. The wisewoman there in the crypt was from an organization we've heard absolutely nothing about until we needed some sort of positive spin on the whole Watchers thing, and she apparently existed only so Caleb could kill her in another show of cartoonish hatred.

If I go on, I'll only get more people upset. To summarize: I am only responsible for my own opinion. I am not responsible for anyone's reaction to my opinion, that's up the person reacting. And in a semi-public forum of which I've been a member for quite a while now, I shall continue to express my opinion, hopefully at all times respectfully. My responsibility is to be respectful of others' stands, which I hope it's clear that I am. This does not mean that I have to share those stands. It doesn't mean that you have to share mine. Heaven forbid that the only reason we're here is to nod in agreement with each other, never seeing viewpoints other than our own.

For the first time I see the usefulness of this phrase: namaste.

I thought Wilow and Tara were the sweetest, cutest thing I'd seen on TV in a long time. I'd have appreciated it a lot more if we hadn't had "gay now" repeated so often. Kennedy needed dropped down a well because of inherent annoyance factor.

I'm not going to disagree about Kennedy. I found the actor's performance grating, and couldn't ever make myself care about the character. Let's look at the Gay-Now Tourette's Syndrome. Sometimes these things seem worse in memory, than they really were at the time. I'm curious to see how often it (or an equivalent) was said.

Triangle:

Hello, gay now!

Checkpoint:

We're in love. Lovers. We're gay lesbian-type lovers.

Tabula Rasa:

I think I'm kind of gay (Amnesia!Willow said this)

Hell's Bells:

It's a good thing I realized I was gay. 'Cause otherwise, hey, you, me and formal wear...

Normal Again:

Hi, um... Tara. How are you? I was wondering... do you want to go out sometime? For coffee? Or food? Or kisses and gay love? (Willow actually only says this to herself, while psyching herself up to say this to Tara)

Entropy:

Well... let's put it this way. If I wasn't gay before...(Willow said this to Tara while describing the dickhead monster from i Doublemeat Palace; that one made me chuckle)

To me (your opinion may vary) the lines from Checkpoint, Hell's Bells, Entropy, and Normal Again, were very cute, Willowy things to say, given the context. The only time she actually said, "Gay now," that I can find, is in Triangle. She did make the, "I'm a breast girl myself. But then you all know that," comment in Life Serial. That one grated with me and seemed out of character. I thought the Tabula Rasa comment was a nice shout-out to Dopplegangland.

The only thing I regret about this whole thing is that I ever mentioned the word empowerment. I wasn't aware it was still a hot-button word.

Why do you say it's a hot-button word?

Why do you say it's a hot-button word?

Because of the number of times it's been brought up in posts reacting to my initial statement--even if those references do not go into the nature of empowerment. It's not a debate I want to have, because empowerment is like religion or politics. It's different for everyone, and no one can rightfully define it for anyone else.

Because of the number of times it's been brought up in posts reacting to my initial statement--even if those references do not go into the nature of empowerment. It's not a debate I want to have, because empowerment is like religion or politics. It's different for everyone, and no one can rightfully define it for anyone else.

Oh, thanks. The word doesn't push my buttons. In this case, what pushed my buttons was your comment, "My empowerment's fine," and only because of what I mentioned before.

I still don't see that the focus was on the female characters to the diminishment of the male characters. ASH wasn't available. Xander's diminishment really started in season 4. Spike got as much focus as any character-who-isn't-Buffy ever got, the last two seasons. I can understand you don't like the treatment the male characters received, but there was still plenty going on with male characters, and even male characters were added. (The only exception is Xander, whose last shining moments as an important and equal Scooby were in S3, imo.)

I can understand you don't like the treatment the male characters received, but there was still plenty going on with male characters, and even male characters were added.

Which pretty much summarizes my disappointment those last two years. There may have been plenty going on, but I didn't find it that interesting. And despite my proven proclivities, I don't think Spike and Xander suddenly declaring their clandestine passion and snogging in the living room in front of the Potentials (pause for moment of thoughtfulness) would have improved matters that much.

I think there were too many new faces that last year. Potentials died, and I went, "Now, who was that again? Did they even bother to give her a name?" Half the number of Potentials would have improved storytelling, because I would have had more time to become invested in their fates, instead of going "Good lord, it's every slumber party/dormitory horror story come true." Instead of worrying about hte First, I was thinking things like "I wonder how long it took all their cycles to synchronize."

It would have been cool if the First Evil's chosen representative had been a woman, maybe someone who had been in line to be a Slayer but who never got called, someone whom the Council had told was a Chosen One maybe, someone who was ready and eager to be a destined warrior but who never got the chance.

Where I think they really fell down was that the First itself could take on Buffy's form, yet only appeared as her to Loopy!Spike and Caleb. Just think about how much sabotage and corruption it could have sown among the potentials, the Scoobies, and the Watchers' Council if it had employed that strategic advantage in secret.

Hell, for that matter they could have had a demoralized Rona or Xander say "please, spare us the zillionth 'inspirational' speech, they're depressing!" and had Buffy reply "speech? What are you talking about?" Hours, days, weeks of agonizing viewing would have been rendered worthwhile and fiendishly clever in one stroke.