I honestly didn't mean to open a whole can of spoiler conflict worms!

I don't see a wormy can o' conflict.

I see a bunch of people sharing their experiences and opinions :)

I never did the spoiler thing. Even when I had my buffyverse nadir, I just stopped watching for a while and then literally swallowed a bunch of episodes whole so that I couldn't focus on the details. And I'm glad I did that (off and on, in season sux and early seven) because it allowed me to approach the last dozen episodes with a "que sera sera"nity, that was hard to disappoint.

That was my way. Spoilers was yours. We both took the journey. We just didn't necessarily do it as poster candidates for Joss' peanut gallery. But that's okay with me. Television is a subjective entertainment. I got my jollies, you got yours, Joss gets his. We just don't get them from the same sales counter. Isn't that what makes the world go 'round?

God, I'm such a sap.

awww Susan, I was actually just thinking of you (I'm writing a Chosen "why it had to be a baseball metaphor" post for another board) and I opended the grrrr arrgh thread and there you were, flinging your sap around and affecting people's allergies.

Sap's good stuff, it is. I think it helps make the world go 'round too.

I'm writing a Chosen "why it had to be a baseball metaphor" post for another board

I'd love to see this if it'd be appropriate to post here.

Final thought before bed-elsewhere online I've seen complaints that the mood was too light considering the loss of Anya and Spike (and Amanda etc.). I can't agree. They are warriors who have been through many a war, and suffered many a loss. They have won a battle many of them expected to lose, and survived. There will be tears for all their losses. (Xander's underlying feelings for example were revealed in the way his voice caught for an instant talking to Andrew.) But it felt right to me that just then they would hold off their grief, and celebrate being alive, being victorious, having a future.

Like I want to tell the best stories I can, and love my husband with my whole heart, and be the best friend I know how to be, and make my voice heard on issues that matter to me, because that's my fight to make the world a better place, and to be who I was meant to be. My power may be small, but it's still a better world if I use it, than if I let it waste because it's not big enough to fix everything I see broken.

I heart Susan so much.

Ooh.. I can agree with ted, so I'm gonna...

elsewhere online I've seen complaints that the mood was too light considering the loss of Anya and Spike (and Amanda etc.). I can't agree.

I've seen the same. I've seen how can they talk about going to the mall after that? I've also seen it in the context of, it was forced and stilted and phoned in.

um.. no. For me, sure, it was forced. It was unnatural. But it was what you do. They'll lick their wounds, and they'll count their costs. And, sure, they'll "celebrate being alive, being victorious, having a future".

But right then, at that moment, they were coping by doing what they do. Isn't that what they've always done? And hasn't it always gotten them through before?

I was probably a little hard on Xander when I talked about it seeming to be a "perfunctory" Anya search. Others have written about that as his "moving and desparate cries for his lost girl". I think that no matter what happened, in the luxury of our viewing twenty twenty hindsight, we'd think it deserved more. Or it got too much!

That's the difference between this and The Gift. Imagine if we'd had to see Willow and Xander and Giles (literally) pick Buffy up, and carry her off and go about their business on the streets of Sunnydale. Nothing would have seemed apt. Nothing would have hit the right note. Their grief was jarring a whole summer later.

I don't doubt for a moment that they'll mourn those that fell, in the battle '03 or all the other battles that came before it. I could hear it in the quips about landmark preservation and sleeping for a week. The way it was only then beginning to (lower case) dawn on them just exactly what they had done. What that would mean. What they had chosen.

In seven years the one thing that's always rung true with this show is that life goes on. You can fight the good fight, you can cut and run, you can win or lose or draw. But you still have to get up tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow. Until you don't.

I'd love to see this if it'd be appropriate to post here.

I don't see why it wouldn't be appropriate. It was just in response to someone that said they couldn't get that image out of their mind. Much as you did now, and Steph (et and al) have done earlier. I'm the same. I find it odd (or you know, strangely moving :) that of all the things we saw over all those hours of television, my current image of the vampire slayer is an eleven year old girl, in a blue shirt, facing down the next delivery.

Which is all to say, I'll see how much it turns out to be an UnAm teaching Americans to suck eggs. And post accordingly :)

Edited because.. some spellings can't be blamed on excessive "u"s and creative zeds.

Julie, I also felt the notes, especially on Anya's death, were just right. I think I saw them as having just dealt with something so huge, everything was a part of that huge-wholeness, rather than an individual event.

I took it that way myself, and surprised myself; watching it during the actual finale, I was nodding and frowning and reacting, but at no point did I clutch up. I certainly didn't at Anya's death.

But watching it with Nic when he got home? I found myself with tears sliding down my cheeks, at Xander calling for her. If her eyes hadn't been open...

But still.

I heart Susan so much.

t hugs Deena and continues to be all sniffly

I tried to explain to DH this morning about always coming out of things like the finale or the Battle of Helm's Deep wishing I had a sword and a Buffy or an Aragorn to point me at the evil instead of having to be all metaphorical about it.

He knows that next time I can afford a new hobby, I intend to take up either fencing or kendo. Somehow he now finds this worrisome.

Of course, in real life I strongly doubt I'd show any physical courage whatsoever, at least not of the grandiose run back into burning buildings or leap in front of an assasin's bullet type. Big old death-fearing coward here. But still.

t turning into a pumpkin. Will look forward to reading Julie on baseball tomorrow.

On rewatch, I think there was a lot more going on in the scene with Xander and Andrew talking about Anya than just the surface discussion.

Xander's "That's my girl. Always doing the stupid thing." line might have sounded callous or flippant, but think about Anya's history as a vengeance demon and as an ex-demon who was more than a little selfish and whose attitude towards death was a mixture of callousness and horror. In the past, Anya wouldn't have considered laying her life down for anyone, (with the possible exception of Xander, depending on what kind of mood she was in that day).

Through the past two seasons, however, she's learned and changed enough so that in the end (according to Andrew's version of things) she was able to die fighting to protect a stupid human.

Xander will grieve for her, but at least he can do so knowing that Anya completed a very important personal journey before dying.

Contrast Anya in the Season 7 finale with her in Season 3. Then she ran, and she viewed Xander as being stupid for staying and fighting for his friends. ("Are you really gonna be that much help to them? You'll probably just get in the way.") In the Series finale she did the same "stupid" thing that he did. He knew he made the right choice then (and all the times before and since then) and he was acknowledging that she did too.

Re spoilers and Joss: I've thought about this a lot, understandably, being his arch nemesisises in the whole spoiler issue. I think he's kind of missing the point in his ideas about spoilerphiles, and Scrappy's point is closer. It's not so much that people find out what happens; and it's not even fully that people rush to judgment. It's that the Internet creates a culture where people become invested in ideas about characters and stories, and they are reluctant to change their minds. When you're around a group of people who reinforce your ideas about the story on a daily basis, and you create a community based on those ideas, then it's going to be difficult to move on from those ideas.

And that, I think, is what really bothers Joss. Because he is all about storytelling and conflict and change. His willingness to change the show's premises and characters is something I admire (and if I have to read about how revolutionary the Alias finale was one more time, I might take a baseball bat to my computer screen--it's not nearly as inventive as what Joss has done over 7 years). But the Internet promotes ideological inertia, not change or growth.