Reflections of a stormy petrel

Years ago, I started on my idea of what Buffy season 8 should have been. I stopped after a while, as I always do with chaptered fics, alas. But one thing I had already established near the beginning was that Buffy was going to have an affair with Willow.

That did not go down so well. Buffy is not a lesbian, everyone informed me. She was even a bit squicked when Willow first told her (that was not my impression, but never mind). She is strictly boy-oriented. Some people told me so politely. Some did not.

So guess what Joss Whedon has just gone and done?

Not with Willow, mind you. But it comes to the same thing.

.1. This is one of my favorite things to ask. Do you have a hobby, tv show, book, or music interest that is so dorky/silly/immature that it is almost a dirty secret? (My example is that I sometimes enjoy to watch Charmed, and I used to watch Saved by the Bell.)

The dorkiest thing I do is not so much in being a fan of single things, as in getting so hot on certain characters that I keep collecting even stuff that is not part of the original run and is often not even very good. I have runs of many Marvel and DC characters of no value whateve, just because they had been done well by someone else; likewise fanfics of Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, or Buffy, and a dozen or more Buffy novels.

YOu may have said this at some time, but I can't remember. Do you have any siblings?

A brother and a sister, both slightly younger than me.

I know you liked to watch Buffy. Did you like Riley? (I did, for the record).

I liked all the characters in BUFFY, although to me Riley lost character when he was removed from the army and his black friend was murdered and brought back as a Frankenstein's monster. For that matter, a criticism of Buffy I always entertain is how quickly some characters with potential, especially female, are disposed of. Gwendolyn Post would have lasted me just about for ever; and Maggie Walsh, too, was murdered much too soon - though I will admit that the shock of her death was highly effective. The one thing I have that comes even close to a criticism is that if I did not know otherwise, I would swear Whedon must be gay: while he selects his actresses strictly for skills - of all the main female characters, only Anya and Mrs.Summers are genuninely beautiful - there does seem to be some prejudice towards beefcake in his selection of actors. DAvid Boreanaz, Mark Blucas, Nicky Brendon, even Anthony Stewart Head, are all tall, broad-shouldered and ridiculously handsome, which especially in Brendon's case works a bit against the character, who is supposed to be this ordinary-type dork. All of them can act - Tony Head is frequently brilliant - but there does seem to be a slight element of too much eye candy, which we are more used to seeing on the female side of Hollywood.

Does your flat have hardwood floors, or carpet?

Practically everyone in England has carpeted floors - more comfortable in winter - and I am a comformist.

How are your allergies doing?

Sorry, I could not decipher this last one under the marks of a dozen successive sneezes.

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Anyone wanting me to ask them five questions can do so by posting a comment here.

I don't suppose they've waited for me to mention this, but...

I always knew that the Buffy writers knew nothing whatever about the past. What I did not however know that they were prophetic about the future. In one of the last episodes of Season Five, they had Anya (Joss Whedon's brilliant rethinking of the dumb blonde stereotype) spout caricatural Republican drivel from a very stupid version of the Wall Street Journal - the kind of thing one imagines George W. Bush speaking when he does not have his advisers telling him what to say via wire - and then concluding (years before the invasion of Iraq and the break with Paris): "You know what else is UnAmerican? French people."

All that was missing was "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."