If it weren't for the New Orleans decadent food and endless fabulous sex and the hot tubs and martinis and general bath of erotic romantic lovingness of it all, I'd say that going on my honeymoon was a horrid, horrid mistake. I fucking hate the new-and-improved network system I came back to just exactly that much. Hate.

Forget about the dumb system, and go concentrate on your wonderful "If" instead!

Oh, I don't and never could regret the honeymoon.

drifts into reverie

returns wreathed in smiles

But I do thoroughly despise the PTB taking advantage of that marvelous lush week in my life to take away my ugly but serviceable and highly personalized old workhorse and replace it with a bright shiny cog in a department-wide machine that reduces me to merely a logged-in user at a terminal. It's my space, my computer, and it cheeses me off no end that I can't so much as add a pretty calligraphy font to my version of Word without going cap-in-hand to beg the Big Important Crisis-Fixing Man for help.

They're all teeny little irksome issues, which means they will never be high priority for the big folks and will never, never be fixed. I miss my Rackham and Abbadon fonts. I miss Big Lou. I miss knowing what all the applications on my hard drive were and why they were there, and being able to spot an interloper and kill it dead without having to do the dance of bureaucracy to do it.

Also, I'd really like to see that Willow vid.

That's terrible jz -- I don't get why they want that level of control over things like -- how you view what documents are on your computer. So bizarre.

But I have so much more fun as Vortex! Damn.

But not as much fun as I do when I commit crimes pretending to by you. MWAH HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ooooh, Vonnie, I see you've hacked into Vortex's user id, now. Brava!

Look! You can have an insano Spike Action Figure!

The only problem with turning friends on to Buffy is when they turn out to be the kind of Buffy fan you don't really like. I mean, you hook them on the show, which is awesome, but then they try to start up conversations about how "Buffy is so mean to Spike, what is her problem? It's the last episode, THEY SHOULD DATE, it could totally work! It works in my brain!"

Who cares????!?!??!

I mean, sure, Spuffy provided a lot of important elements to the stories over the years, and it all needed to be dealt with and whatnot, and I have no problem with it, but I just know that the one thing this girl is going to bring out of 7 seasons of Buffy watched in about 4 months is that Buffy was mean to Spike, the cute little cuddly kitten-vamp. It's Dawson's Creek to her.

I just wish everybody saw it as more.

Perhaps if Marti Noxon had, there wouldn't have been as much of a problem...

Well, I mean, in pre-Spuffy days all she cared about was BuffyNAngle4EVAR! and whatnot. Same thing, this was just a particular rant about tonight's conversation as she finishes off the series.

As she finishes off the series—as in the season 7 finale?

Oy.

All right, I can see where some of the UST and the RST in S6, maybe made your friend forget what we learned in Crush. But you mean your friend has gotten through Spike telling Buffy in Dead Things, that killing one person (Katrina--which granted, Buffy didn't, but at the time, they both thought Buffy had) is somehow wiped away, because of the other people Buffy has saved (cf Faith's excuse after killing the Deputy Mayor in S2); that it's wiped away As You Were; Entropy's, "Well it was good enough for Buffy..."; and Seeing Red's rape attempt. She has seen all seven seasons, and still feels that way?

I mean, I will not pretend that the cocked head, abs, cheekbones, and pretty blue eyes left me cold, either. And although I consider Angel feeding off Buffy in Graduation Day, one of film's most erotic moments, the scene with walls crumbling upon and around Buffy and Spike in Smashed, is surely in the top five. And granted, Season 5's Intervention, particularly the beating Spike took from Glory, for Dawn's sake, increased my sympathy for him.

But those Spuffalicious moments did not happen in a vacuum. ijs.

I can't even blame this on Marti, Matt. We got it, after all, as did a preponderance of Bronzers. Now, sure, some of us maybe never liked Spike, or stopped enjoying the character after season 3. Some folks don't care for JM, for that matter. But above and beyond them, there are plenty of us who did, who still got it. I don't think I can blame Marti for the extreme brand of Spuffyism that's made Spike a woobie, and Buffy a bitch.