half of what i say is meaningless

So long-time flisters might remember that back in the day visualthinker11  and I wrote a cracky series called The Very Secret Diaries...on the Hellmouth!  They live at hellmouth_vsds , and new readers ought to begin with Angel's Very Secret Diary, Days of Our Unlives.  

But the reason for this post is that the Strangely Literal podcast did a reading of Buffy's Very Secret Diary, Slayers Rule, Vampires Drool.  You can read the diary here and/or listen to the podcast here.  V. exciting!

The podcast actually went up last month, but I keep forgetting to tell people about it.  Now I'm taking a break from work to post about it (and listen to it again).  Thanks, sl_podcast !

Continuing with the "30 Days of Awesome Women" list that I began yesterday, here are 11-20.  You can read the first part here.

Fandoms include: Doctor Who, The Simpsons, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Alien, His Dark Materials, The Hunger Games, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Poisonwood Bible, Howl's Moving Castle, Discworld, Pushing Daisies, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dexter, Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Farscape, Lost, Angel, and Bionic Woman.

( 26 awesome women )

Alright folks, I'll see you tomorrow with the third and final part!

Day 25: Favourite Buffyverse Saying

What does this mean?  What constitutes a saying?  Anything they say?  Or something they say repeatedly?  Or something they say which I have turned into a saying?  I'm gonna go with the last one.  And for that, I have to say "Well you're certainly a font of nothing."  For some reason, I find this line hilarious.  Every time, without fail.  It's the best line in the pilot.  And my sister and I say it to each other all the time.  Others...hmm..."What's her childhood trauma?" is an old favorite.  "This is all making the kind of sense that is not."  "That's insane troll logic."  "All monkeys are French."  "The Earth is definitely doomed."  Okay, now I'm just quoting things.  And if we are talking about Ats too, I'd have to include "If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do" because that succinctly sums up my life philosophy.

Day 26: Favourite Scooby Moment

For this, I really have to go with the "plan" scene from Graduation Day Part 2--you know, where Buffy unveils her plan to this response.

Willow: Crazy is such a strong word.
Giles: Let's not rule it out though.
Buffy: You don't think it can be done?
Giles: I didn't say that.  I might, but...I haven't yet.
Cordelia: Well I personally don't think it would be possible to come up with a crazier plan.
Oz: We attack the mayor with hummus.

Do I really have to go on?  It's brilliant.  Back in the day, I had the whole scene memorized.

Day 27: Cutest Moment

These superlatives are really hard for me.  But I will semi-arbitrarily go with the "extra flamey" scene from the end of New Moon Rising.  



The Willow/Oz farewell makes me teary (and I totally have an abandoned WIP on my hard drive called "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" about a reunion) but then Tara and Willow are so cute.  I just love them. 

and came back to a million things to read.  Yay!  I love it when that happens.

Also, I just watched Community. ( let's be ironic )

Meme-age.

Day 19: Character You Like That Everyone Else Hates

Sadly, there are FAR TOO MANY possible answers.  I HAVE TO USE CAPSLOCK. 

First, we have Dawn Summers.

Now, I'll admit that was pretty annoying in seasons 5 and 6.  But she matured and turned out to be awesome in season 7.  She doesn't deserve all the fandom hate.  And I'm such a contrarian that I feel the need to tell everyone I LIKE DAWN SUMMERS.

Next up: Riley Finn

So yeah, he's no Angel and he and Buffy were never going to get their happily ever after, but you know what?  Riley Finn is a good guy.  And he made Buffy smile.  Everyone complains about him being boring (Captain Cardboard and all that) and okay, so I may have thought the same at one point in time, but every time I watch him in seasons 4 and 5 I remember that I actually don't find him boring at all.  And I like him.  So there.

But the winner for this category is Buffy Summers:

Yes Buffy, I'm confused too.  Not confused that I like you--I love you!  I said you were my favorite character from the show!  No, I'm confused that you are eligible for the category of "character you like that everyone else hates."  Now that is confusing.  Also did I mention that I am dressing as Buffy for Halloween this year?  I am super excited because I whittled my own stake.

( 20&21: Spike and Willow )

Day 13: Favorite Potential Slayer

While Vi is certainly a contender, ultimately I have to go with mademoiselle Rona.  Observe: 


She was cynical and scared and cool.  Also she wore overalls.  I love overalls!

Day 14: Favorite Female Villain

Easy. 


Wait, wait, wait--that's not what I mean.


That's better!  Glory is a hell goddess.  And she's crazy.  The original one-eyed chicklet in the kingdom of the blind.  She's also a big reason that I love season 5.  I knew she was going to be great from "Can you fly?" 

Day 15: Favorite Male Villain

Also easy!


Mayor Richard Wilkins III.  He loves hygiene, root beer, and miniature golf, and wants Faith to drink her milk.  He also enjoys shredding, and after that episode I started to say "turn my frown upside down" all the time.  And his to-do list included "haircut" and "become invisible."  Honestly, who doesn't love the Mayor?  I even liked his aborted graduation speech.  Hell, it was far better than my high school graduation speaker.

( rest of the meme )

Yeah, so I'm already kinda tired of this meme so I'm gonna start doing a couple days at once.  Also I skipped a few...

Day 7: Least Favorite Male Character

For the sake of this meme, I'm not considering villains really, or else I'd have to say that my least favorite male character was either Caleb or Warren, but they're supposed to be despicable so that's kind of besides the point.  Same with Rack.  No, I'm going to go with Andrew.  Oh sure, he's entertaining and I enjoyed "Storyteller" quite a bit, but it's also kind of the Faith effect--if fandom worships a character that I feel sort of ambiguous about, I'm that much more likely to dislike them.  Talk about serial contrarians.  Anyway, I like Faith a lot more than I like Andrew, as he may be funny but he's also whiny, shallow, and immature, and in season 7 everyone's sort of quick to gloss over the fact that he A) almost raped a woman, B) contributed to her death, and C) murdered his only friend.  Yeah, real funny guy.  And sure, lots of other characters have done bad things on this show, but I liked them better in the first place, so...sorry Andrew.  You're alright, but just not that great.

Day 8: Favorite Friendship

Willow/Buffy!  Oh my gosh, I love them.  They are my friendshipspiration (I'm sorry, but I had to do it).  And not just mine.  I remember when I was 13, my friend's mother died and I didn't really know what to do.  My mother told me to ask myself, "What would Willow do?"  But theirs was also a two-way street.  So yeah, friendshipspiration.  

Day 9: Favorite Romance

Willow/Tara!  Willow is doing well today (no surprise).  I love Willow/Oz and Buffy/Angel too, but they don't really compare to my deep affection for Willow and Tara.  Some of it may be that I identified with these two characters more than any other, but a lot of it is just the loving, supportive nature of their relationship (er, sort of).  I had this whole treatise on W/T versus W/O once upon a time but I don't really remember it now.  I think the gist of it, though, was that Willow and Tara both grew and evolved separately and together throughout the course of their relationship, so that when they reunited in season 6 (*sob*) it was as equals.
( rest of the meme )

So I'm re-reading His Dark Materials for the millionth time, and I started mentally casting the BSG peeps in the Pullman roles.  Here's what I've got so far:

Lyra = Kara (obviously)
Will = Lee (the stuff with his mom is just too appropriate)
Roger = Helo (*sniff* poor Helo)
Lord Asriel = Lord Adama
Mrs. Coulter = Admiral Cain, or possibly Number Six.  She's a bit tricky.

And here's where I run into trouble.  I mean, Iorek is Iorek.  I just can't imagine any of the BSG characters as bears.  Perhaps Laura Roslin as Serafina?  Should she be Mary Malone?  Maybe Athena is Serafina and Laura is Mary.  And what about Lee Scoresby?  Or am I just crazy?

Now, Buffy meme!  I skipped a couple days so I'm gonna do two.

( favorite and least favorite female characters )

I have far too much RL stuff to do.  Oh well!

Day 2: Favorite Episode

I'm not actually going to talk about my favorite episode (ha! fooled you) since I did that before for the 30 Days of TV meme.  I talked about Graduation Day.  This time, I just want to talk about this episode...that is not my favorite episode by a longshot, although I do think it's great.  Mostly I just want to talk about it because it's not one of the 'big name' episodes so people don't talk about it very much.  But for me, it's kind of an important episode.  It is I Only Have Eyes For You, the episode that made genderswap canon in BtVS.

There are two scenes in this episode that really 'make' the episode.

Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
At its best, Buffy was a show about growing up that could, in some ways, help others do the same.  Maybe that's why I still consider it to be my favorite show, the one most important to me, even if I don't think it is necessarily the best show that I have seen (that might be Dexter, possibly).  I don't know if I can explain it, but there was something incredibly powerful about being twelve years old and hearing those words: "To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy.  It's not done because people deserve it.  It's done because they need it."  Let me tell you, that sort of thing stays with you.  So there you have it.  "I Only Have Eyes For You" has never been one of my favorites, but it still delivered one of the most powerful moments of my formative years. 


( the rest of the meme )

I was reading a couple interesting posts about Kara/Sam earlier this week, and of course there were the inevitable comparisons to Kara/Lee.  It got me thinking about my shipping ways, and why I suspect I may be in the minority with this particular approach.

Simply put, I usually don't ship a certain pairing because I think they are in any way superior or better for each other than the competition.  I ship them because I believe they canonically love each other.  And that's it.*

What this means: I don't care if you like Spike better than Angel; Buffy loves Angel, ergo I ship Buffy/Angel.  I don't care if you think Sam's more laidback, accepting attitude is better for Kara than Lee and all the issues that come with him.  I believe that Kara loves Lee more than she will ever love Sam, and that's just the way it is.  I do like Lee more than Sam, but I like Sam too.  And honestly, if canon had ever convinced me that Kara loved Sam and not Lee, I'd be all over that ship since as Kara goes, so goes my nation.

I don't ship one because I have anything against the other.  And after reading those posts the other day, I realized that I don't even see much point in discussing in what ways Lee is superior to Sam or vice versa.  I kind of think it's irrelevant. 

So anyway, that was my fandom/shipping epiphany.

Now, back to my poor, neglected fics...


*The exception being my crazy crossover ships, because how could I possibly believe that Kara genuinely loves Mal when they exist in different universes?  No, when it comes to crossovers I mostly just like to smush my favorite characters together without any rhyme or reason.

Day 26. OMG WTF? Season finale

For this category, we have a tie for first place.  You can't talk about "OMG WTF?" without talking about Lost.  That's kind of their specialty.  Here be spoilers for Lost season 4.
( lost )
The other "OMG WTF?" season finale is the series finale of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles.  ( t:scc spoilers )Day 27. Favorite series finale

Do we still need spoiler alerts for something that aired seven years ago?  Anyway, look away if you don't want spoilers for the series finale of Buffy.


Honestly, I think "Chosen" is as close to perfection as possible.  Joss has so much love for these characters, and this episode is suffused with that love.  I love it from beginning to end, from Buffy slicing and dicing Caleb to the good old "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign tumbling into the crater.  The episode is chock full of that brilliant combination of funny and heartwarming.  I mean, it's got "Oh my god, are you twelve?" and "I'm drowning in footwear" and the cannon fodder and "What would be the surprise?"  And that's only, like, the first 15 minutes.  I mean, seriously, they play D&D in this episode on the night before stopping ultimate evil.  Not to mention Anya and Andrew being hilarious and awesome, and Willow going all white witch and Spike with the amulet, et cetera et cetera.  

But more than all that, there are two things I really love about this series finale:
1. "The Earth is definitely doomed."  This callback to the very beginning was so perfectly executed.  As soon as Giles opened his mouth, I knew what he was going to say.  I think I cheered.  It just showed so much care, so much respect.  Like this was the perfect bookend to a frakking amazing show.
2. Well, you know.  "Are you ready to be strong?"  Joss has said that he knew where he wanted to go from early on in the series, and it shows.  Instead of just saving the world, they changed it.  Buffy is one of the few shows I've really cared about that ended on its own terms, with no threat of cancellation.  It was such a graceful ending that a part of me almost wishes they'd never resurrected the series in comic book form.  I've been reading season 8, but I might not read season 9.  I just don't think they'll ever be able to top this series finale.  It's the only ending I ever wanted for the show.  And even though I was heartbroken that the show was ending, I felt nothing but complete satisfaction with the way it ended.