BTW, I've just realised how Moorcockian the ending is. I've mentioned the link before - I swear Joss read all the Eternal Champion books as a boy - but there's a Moorcock essay about how the perfect hero is one who gives away his power - who shares it out, so everyone in the world has it. It's his argument of how you can have a Hero who isn't fascistic. Plus, of course Buffy and Angel are instances of the Champion, and Spike is Jerry Cornelius...

Hey, all. I'm finally caught up here...

I liked this ep as a series finale, but not as a season finale. Other people(especially ZeusGirl) have explained my reasoning better than I could, so I'll leave it at that.

I'm gonna miss Amanda, oddly enough.

But obviously YTakeonDeathMV.

If a story hits the right spot on my truth-o-meter (and 90% of BtVS tragedy does), I react as if it were real. I mean, I know the difference; I'm not at that level of delusionosity (yet), but my feelings are just as real and strong, as if it happened to me in real life. I was spoiled against my will for Joyce's death though, and was angry as hell about that, at the time. I was at the threaded WB Bronze, and someone made it a thread title: JOYCE DIES IN EP. #15 - asscaps and all.

Now in this finale, Spike's death was a little flat for me because of being spoiled, but I would have been okay with Spike's death, anyhow - even though I've enjoyed him. I also would have been okay with Anya's death. I actually had no confidence she was really going to be killed, because there were a few convincing foilers, that Andrew might die instead. Still, I just needed to know Buffy, Xander, Giles and Willow (and oddly enough - Dawn - but I think that was for Buffy's sake) got through it okay. Had one of them been killed, and I'd been unprepared for it, it's likely I would have shut off the tv in disgust.

I went full-hog on the spoilers when indications that something would happen to Xander in Dirty Girls started leaking out. Given it still kills me when they show the eye-gouge in the previouslies, I'm glad I was spoiled for that, too. Given that nobody I adored died in the finale, and there was no graphic B/S sex, I would probably have been happier unspoiled, but I was still pretty damned happy.

The Buffy and Philosophy book is generally excellent, except for the essay Brownskirts, which treats BTVS as a fascist paradigm. The problem isn't that it is highly critical of the show, the problem is it is ridiculous. It isn't that you can't read the show that way (the author demonstrates you can read almost anything into the Buffyverse) but that clearly isn't the show's intent, nor is it how most viewers see the show, so it is hard to come up with any purpose to such an intentional misreading.

The author basically makes the vamps and demons the Jews of the Buffyverse, victims of Buffy's genocidal crusade. This is wrong on many levels, the most obvious being that in the Buffyverse demons aren't scapegoats, they are active agents of death and destruction. Equally important, whereas the Nazis genocide was determined to kill ALL Jews just for being Jews, Buffy makes ethical distinctions among demons. Buffy would not only not kill Clem (or Angel, Lorne) simply for being a demon, but would not even kill a still-evil Spike who the chip rendered unable to attack others or defend himself.

So, buy the book, skip the chapter.

I had no clue that Tara was going to die. I like to know casting information in advance, but never plot points. I love surprise!

I did ask Plei to provide me with some Angel spoilers this year because my interest was waning and I needed to get enthused. I had to know there was hope for the future. It helped. I was very successful at avoiding Buffy spoilers and was thrilled. Now I am very enthusiastic about Angel next year and will bolt from the Spoiler thread when real info starts to happen.

I understand the creators views, but it is a personal preference really.

As for it being less effort to be unspoiled. You do have to be careful with your browsing, but that is not much effort. When I was spoiled I spent way more time searching searching for details. It's like crack.

It's least effort to be "eh, whatever". I'm the sort of viewer who likes to be surprised when Giles shows up, not how, so I don't count how many shows ASH is signed for. But other people do, well meaningly, and stuff gets mentioned even here (which is where most of my spoilage comes from, though it wasn't much). I'd have to turn off the computer to stay honestly unspoiled.

I'm like Cindy in that the emotions I feel with any great art (which Buffy certainly is imo) are as real for me as the emotions I feel in real life. (The scoobies are far more real to me than say, an obviously fictional character like George W. Bush.) But for that reason I don't want to be spoiled on major events-I want to feel the shock and pain the other characters are feeling when Joyce or Tara dies, because that (speaking only for myself) is part of "living" the Buffyverse.

I find that, because I'm (shoot me and remind me to start watching TV like a normal person, and not like I've been doing it for the last few years) watching TV more for analysis than entertainment, spoilers help me look at an episode in terms of how it is setting the ground for events. Now, in things like that weird OOC Angel in End of Days, this sort of sucks, because I know that yep, that's Really Actually Angel and Not a Trick. But that also means I'm not pissed when it turns out to have just been less-than-perfect writing rather than a huge plot point, and that I wasn't falling for the cheap Spike misdirect at the end. So there are trade offs.

I was totally spoiled for both shows this year. It made Angel much better for me (knowing where they were going, the path made sense, if that makes sense), Buffy, not as much (knowing where they were going, the path made no sense and required more logic leaps for me than Angel did.)

For me, being unspoiled was work. I had to pick and choose where I was looking and what I was reading. Non-fandom TV viewers don't understand this whole "spoiler" concept, and would say things like "man, I can't wait for Faith to come back!"

I have to know if someone I love is going to die. It will ruin the show for me if I don't know.

Cindy is very much me in this regard. Oddly enough, if I know that something horrible is going to happen to a character I love, I can actually enjoy the pain in a sort of cathartic manner. The death (or maiming) becomes an element of tragedy rather than shock.

I don't think of those official-release things as spoilers either (I mean I know they are spoilers *here*, but they're not spoilers as I define them).

Exactly. I figure that a)ME, generally speaking, dislikes spoilers. b)ME routinely releases actor information. c)Therefore, actor information is not spoilerage.

Besides, I've never been able to successfully predict a plot by knowing who's involved.