(no subject)

[salinea]

Got to meet hamsterwoman and family yesterday as they were in vacations in Europe. That was pretty damn awesome and they were all absolutely adorable and I had a blast (they invited me to dinner). ♥ ♥ ♥


Very hot day today. So I finished watching Angel S5. I feel like the ending was pretty week actually, mostly because the plot made no sense (some lines/scenes were great though despite being horribly spoiled). Overall I thought S5 was solid, mostly thanks to a great number of very good and good standalone episodes. I thought the shift of setting to Wolfram & Hart was interesting and rife with potential, but the treatment of the into the belly of the beast / corporate evil was extremely uneven and inconsistent; and as always with AtS, I thought the show was very much weakened by how literally they take the topic of Good vs Evil (especially because of how weak the world building is... the Day Watch series for example manages to make literal manicheism interesting because it actually follows through logically from there in term of world building and de construct it, ME just tends to throw in whatever cool scene or metaphor they wanted this week) and because the villains were really weak : neither Eve nor Hamilton have much to provide in terms of antagonism, and Lindsey... well I've yet to figure what Lindsey was trying to accomplish or why in S5, which made him quite the lacklustre villain as well despite my fondness for the character. I eventually came to appreciate Spike's addition to the show thanks to the great chemistry he has with Angel. Weasley was entertaining as ever though he did go a bit too much into the wangsty at the end. Illyria was fun for the little we saw her. Harmony was a blast. Gunn's storyline was quite disappointing, and I was never particularly fond of Lorne in the first place so whatever.

And that's it. Now I'm all finished with the Buffyverse (errr, do I want to continue reading the comics? The only one I liked was the one about Faith and all the spoilers tend to discourage me more than anything). I guess I could read some fanfics like Masq's The Destroyer though.


I feel like I should have more to tell, but now I can't think of what? I guess, my date went well thanks for the well wishes. And I need to read those FMA reactions posts now! Yay!

Comments

[ambyr.livejournal.com]

My girlfriend read all the Buffy comics and gave me a condensed summary of the ending; I am now intensely grateful I gave up halfway through. Seriously, I can name about fifty pieces of post-series fanfiction that make more sense.

(I did kinda like the Spike miniseries, though.)

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

hahaha, i'm not surprised.

oooh i didn't even know there was a spike miniseries!

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

End of Angel S5 was not helped by the fact that actually, it was written on the fly. Joss was told maybe two-thirds of the way through the series that Angel was going to be cancelled at the end of S5 and he cobbled together an ending out of spare parts.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

yeah I heard so, but as a season metaplot as well, I am not impressed.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

Everything I have heard about the Buffy comics makes them sound kind of "on crack". I have not read them, because after the first couple issues, I had too much difficulty understanding the comic medium and following the story.

I kept track of them through friend's posts, and now they don't sound particularly appealing at all.

I have started reading the Angel: After the Fall comics. Those are also supposed to be "canonical", at least up to a point where the title of the comics series changes to Angel: something else?? I have not finished those yet, but they are pretty good, for the most part. The writer of the comics introduces elements that are tied to some of his own non-Buffyverse comics series which I find distracting.

As for The Destroyer, I do reveal the aftermath of the events in the alley at the end of Season 5 of Angel, but not right away. The first part of Season 1 of TD is really to establish Connor in his own milieu before resolving what happened on AtS, although there is an explanation of what happened before then.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

they really are much more... comic book pulpy than the series (which was already seriously on crack at times), it really breaks the immersion for me.

thanks for the link! it sounds interesting and i'm curious, though with how little fics i've been reading lately i'm not sure if I'll be able to read it, concentration-wise.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

And I take back something I said. Actually, what happened to Angel, et al, is a mystery until mid-"season".

And my fic isn't going anywhere, if you start to read and then wander off somewhere else.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

I think that Season 8 went on too long, and there's stuff in there that doesn't need to be, but overall I like it and appreciate it. I go out and by the issues brand new, whenever they come out. Now that the season is ending, they're also doing a pretty good job of tying all the loose ends together.

Angel: After the Fall is more tightly-plotted (and thus far shorter) than Buffy Season 8, but I dislike the art a bit more.

[werthead.livejournal.com]

I liked the Butch-and-Sundance aspect of the ending, with the team going out all guns blazing, so to speak. The resolution of the story as seen in the comics was not particularly appealing.

Whedon has this recurring issue with keeping characters around way past their natural lifetime purely because he likes the actor/actress and wants to give them a paycheque. Laudable idea, yes, but you're not doing them or their careers any good if you're not providing them with stuff to do. Lorne is a good example of it, but so are Anya, Tara and Oz on BUFFY (I still don't know why Oz was a regular on BUFFY S3, he did pretty much nothing for the entire season).

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I would have appreciated the Bolivian Army Ending if not for the fact the army being made of LotR rejects had me pointing and laughing at the screen. I never liked AtS's most fantasy-aspect, it was always so cheesy.

Good point about Whedon's anti-Dark Lord tendancy. ara and Oz certainly had a lot of time just being there instead of having use, and while I typically appreciated Anya's voice more, she was really just hanging around during S7 after Selfless, it was annoying. And yeah, Lorne. Shouldn't have been a regular.

[modillian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the half-assed end of the series was partly because the network gave them literally one or two final eps before sudden cancellation in 2004. I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR MANGLING THE END OF ANGEL, FOX NETWORK!!1

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

hah, Fox and their cancelling scheme heh >_>;

[hamsterwoman]

♥ ♥ ♥

:DD

(You were quite adorable yourself! :)

[savepureness.livejournal.com]

I still need to finish S5, which I left unattended right in the middle for 2 years now. I should proceed tomorrow, but somehow I feel like I will start with the beginning if I try >.>