Wow. I'm tired enough that that made sense.

I must be tired as well because it made perfect sense to me. Goodnight.

Hmmm, more from the original script for The Pack. This is interesting because so much of it is different from what was aired. Like, originally there were five pack members before Xander joined. Anyway, this is telling (something):

Willow and Giles look up from their research startled and anxious. BUFFY enters, dragging an unconscious XANDER.

BUFFY
Hurry -- we've gotta lock him up somehow, before he comes to.

Willow turns off the Video she's been studying.

WILLOW
Ohmigod, Xander -- is he alright?

BUFFY
Oh fine. He's just enjoying a little brick-induced coma designed to prevent felony sexual assault.

Buffy HEAVES Xander into a steel-mesh book-return cage. She slams the door and locks it. Hangs the keys on a nearby book.

GILES
Oh Buffy, the Hyena in him didn't --

BUFFY
No, but it's safe to say that in his current state, his idea of wooing somebody doesn't include a Yanni CD and a bottle of Chianti.
(thumbs behind her)
And there's five more of them out there. What've you found?

That "Welcome to the Jungle" line wasn't in the actual episode, right?

I would have remembered something that awful and cheesy, I'm sure.

Can I give Plei a kiss? I adore her.

I do love "Chosen" still, and rewatched it last night, along with breaking out the S3 DVDs to revel in "Band Candy" and "Lovers Walk." And I love the big activation of potentials moment. But I still hate all the screentime a bunch of random girls stole from all the characters whose stories I'd followed for years and years.

So, if I were in charge of rewriting S7, we'd still have the potentials storyline, but they wouldn't take over the Summers house. For most of the year, we'd have four at most, with Giles or Willow discovering a bunch more just before the finale and bringing them in. Or, we'd have them, but they'd house them in an unused dorm at UC-Sunnydale or something, and within the exception of a few that we'd get to know closely, they'd have almost no screentime.

And you know, the one thing we never saw from the potentials that would've made them more sympathetic to me? Some kind of outside life they left behind. Parents looking for runaways, or girls calling home to reassure Mom and Dad that everything was just dandy at Professor Giles's School for the Gifted.

I dunno if I've said this here or at another board. Mutant Enemy tends to use rape as The Worst Possible Crime in a few episodes, in order to reinforce Bad!Guyism.

In The Pack, it's used to reinforce just how unXander Xander has become, in Bargaining II the motorcyce demons threaten to rape the women (graphically describing how their anatomy will shed the women) and this is what shocks Buffy into action, in Firefly the Reavers rape people to death, in Go Fish it's used twice; once in the car and Buffy is not believed by Snyder, and it is used as a threat by the coach as he's tossing Buffy into the water. It's implied in Helpless when Buffy is weak, and is harassed on her way home by some dudes and she chooses to hurry and stay quiet instead of snark and kick ass.

I'm not sure what all this means in regards to Spike's crime and how it was subsequently not dealt with at all, except that this was hardly the first time rape was used as a plot device to connote the Worst of the Worst...along with smoking.

I'm not sure what all this means in regards to Spike's crime and how it was subsequently not dealt with at all, except that this was hardly the first time rape was used as a plot device to connote the Worst of the Worst...along with smoking.

Maybe it means their device piles are alphabetized. The asspull pile is just to the right of the anvils.

Don't know what it means either. But up until the AR, it was not done in such a way it had to be dealt with as a long term issue. I mean having Spike try to rape Buffy, and then having her get over it enough to trust him and be attracted to him - that really required a lot more than they gave it to get from point A to B.

I tend to agree with those who think it would have been better to have him attempt to vamp her. Yes it would have been out of character where the AR was completely in character for Spike. (Mind you I think it could have been explained by rage leading to total reversion to slavering irrational non-verbal beast - that vamp side totallly overcoming the man.) But I think the reactions,, the seeking of a soul, the recovery of trust would have rung much more true. Not that vamping is actually better than rape, but that converting someone to vampire is not something that can actually be done, and thus the forgiveness and continued attraction and so forth would have been emotionally easier for the audience. In short, it would not actually have made more sense, but it would have been better story telling.

(Mind you I think it could have been explained by rage leading to total reversion to slavering irrational non-verbal beast - that vamp side totallly overcoming the man.)

Yes to this, and just a changed line or two from Spike, could have served that. You know, the addition of something like his other comments about her belonging in the dark, or knowing she has darkness in her, just like he does, would have done it.

I agree with Hec that Spike wouldn't have been happy with a vamped Buffy. I don't necessarily buy that Spike would have made that connection, consciously. Like our other verse character, he learns best, the hard way. I think in season 5, he learned he needed the whole Buffy, not just little Buffy-sunshine, with the Buffy-bot storyline. I think in season 6, he learned he needed the whole Buffy, when he was dissatisfied that she was only coming to him for sex.

I do agree he'd have been miserable with Buffy as a vampire. But it's pretty well established that Spike makes great plans, then gets bored and acts on impulse, abandoning his plan. He was fed up enough with her in Normal Again, that I think one or two well-placed lines in Seeing Red could have sold us on him trying to bite/sire her, without weaking her character (and hobbling the writers so) for season 7.

I just don't see the vamping at all. That would've struck me as totally false. Completely gutless story telling after what they'd done in S6. I would have been very disappointed. It had to be about sex.

Though I always wondered why they never used that narrative line - they never really vamped a regular character. It would've been intense if Jenny Calendar had been vamped. Plus Sexy! I think that storyline worked fine as it was. But there were a lot of secondary characters where it still would've packed a punch. All we got was Zombie!Forrester.