Remove ads

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series; Ideas, discussion & fanfic recs!

Sir Rabby

Sir Rabby

I noticed SV doesn't a thread for Buffy & Angel related talkies so I made one! It should be obvious that we'd use this thread to recommend interesting fanfics, just discuss the intricacies of the Buffy-verse and talk about why the Watcher's Council are such ginormous dicks.

First topic: Who here doesn't acknowledge that Angel is clearly the superior show? Come on; you can tell me...you won't be...disappeared!

Which means that yes; the episode with Fred dying in Wesley's arms is just as powerful, if not more, an episode as Joyce kicking the bucket. Anya's little rant however will always have a special place in my heart <3
 
Last edited:
Angel has its ups and downs. As does Buffy. Personally, from an overall perspective, I would say Buffy edges Angel out. Somewhat.

Angel's big downsides come from issues like Season 2's complete whiplash where they were building one way the whole damn season and then shifted gears midway into random stupidity(no matter how awesome Fred was, that entire bit was stupid.)

For closing seasons, overall, Angel had the better final season though. Angel S5 owns Buffy S7, which was a huge mess(not as bad as Season Six with its hamhanded drug metaphor), but still a pretty big mess. The only episode that really stands out to me from Season 7 remains Lies My Parents Told Me and that's because Spike stuff was always some of the more interesting parts for me, even way back in Season 2. Fool For Love from Season 5 remains about one of the best constructed episodes they did, hands down.
 
I enjoy the ambiguity created by Angel the Series in the demon community. In Buffy (except for very few instances like Clem) its a straightforward: demons are bad. In Angel they establish those demonic communities that a) don't give a fuck about humans, b) don't eat them, c) almost fully integrate themselves into human society.

It somehow just strikes me as a more mature show despite S4's general weirdness (Seriously...remove Angels soul to talk to Angelus while a little MDMA could have done the same trick a 1000% safer?).
 
Overall, I'd say Buffy had better highs, but also far deeper lows. As bad as Season 4 of Angel was, it still made more sense then Season 7 of Buffy, and was less of a hopeless grind then Buffy Season 6. At the same time, it never quite got quite to the level of Buffy Season 2 or 3. Actually, I'm pretty sure some critical talent went from Buffy to Angel when the latter started up, Buffy just was never the same after.

Ultimately, they were very different shows, for all they were in the same verse. Buffy ran its arcs season by season, Angel was more or less one long arc you could chop into separate sections, but they weren't all that linked to seasons. Buffy tended to put out better individual episodes, but also lost most character development plans after season 3; A lot of times it felt like they didn't know what to do or where to go with the characters they had. We never saw anymore arcs like Faith or Angelus. Whereas Angel... the most static character was probably Angel himself, everyone else was measurably different by the end. Sometimes, they were completely different characters! :p

So while I like Buffy better, I'd hasten to add I liked Buffy better when it was at its best. Angel has it pretty well beat out for consistent quality, not the strange spiky pattern Buffy settled into after season 3.
 
Kylar said:
Overall, I'd say Buffy had better highs, but also far deeper lows. As bad as Season 4 of Angel was, it still made more sense then Season 7 of Buffy, and was less of a hopeless grind then Buffy Season 6. At the same time, it never quite got quite to the level of Buffy Season 2 or 3. Actually, I'm pretty sure some critical talent went from Buffy to Angel when the latter started up, Buffy just was never the same after.

Ultimately, they were very different shows, for all they were in the same verse. Buffy ran its arcs season by season, Angel was more or less one long arc you could chop into separate sections, but they weren't all that linked to seasons. Buffy tended to put out better individual episodes, but also lost most character development plans after season 3; A lot of times it felt like they didn't know what to do or where to go with the characters they had. We never saw anymore arcs like Faith or Angelus. Whereas Angel... the most static character was probably Angel himself, everyone else was measurably different by the end. Sometimes, they were completely different characters! :p

So while I like Buffy better, I'd hasten to add I liked Buffy better when it was at its best. Angel has it pretty well beat out for consistent quality, not the strange spiky pattern Buffy settled into after season 3.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I can agree here.

After Season 3 of Buffy, Charisma Carpenter(Cordelia) and Alexis Denisof(Wesley), along with, of course, David Boreanaz(Angel) left for Angel. Of the three, Cordelia was probably the biggest hit. Wesley was just sort of there, Angel, well, I was tired of him back in Season 1(and regardless of how well-crafted the story was... SMG and DB just didn't have the same sort of chemistry as some of(okay, only one of) her other paramours. SMG and JM just had waaaaay more chemistry(maybe because they were so combative?).

Anyway. Season 2 was superb. Season 3 was excellent, but I really didn't like it as much as Season 2, myself. Season 4 was just sort of there. Season 5 had its high and low notes, including the best flashback episode in both series, hands down. Its final arc is high-reaching... but it just lacks something.

Season 6... well, it's a huge mess that starts out good and falls apart very quickly with ham-handed metaphors and poorly handled relationships, complete with them bringing a character no one wanted to see again back with his seemingly perfect wife to try and justify their ham-handedness.

Season 7... is interesting. A lot of potential.. but The First was never very impressive as a villain and as much as I am entertained by him... Nathan Fillion hammed it up a bit too much to take seriously. Claire Kramer as Glory was more credible a villain. So it has a few good episodes scattered(notably, again, one of its better ones being a Flashback episode into Spike's past)

As to Angel... S1 I barely remember, Season 2 suffered creative issues. Season 3 was what again? Oh, Connor and Cordelia 'ascending' set up for Season 4, basically. Season 4 was Jasmine, I think and Season 5 was W&H and Illyria. Season 5 as a conclusion story was definitely less incoherent than Season 7 Buffy(or Season 5 Buffy, but S5 Buffy was more coherent than S7 Buffy)

Probably the biggest issue for Season 5 was James Marsters becoming a regular cast member. Like/dislike Spike, but let's face it, JM runs circles around DB as an actor and in terms of presence.
 
Angel is a bit trickier to remember, I find, just because it was far more arc based then Buffy. Buffy's arcs were fairly self contained on a per season level, Angels were a multi-season things with distinct points within. Generally how I break it up is by arc:

Season 1: Before Doyle's death and after Doyle's death. Special note for the Faith mini-arc. Also had the start of the Darla lives again arc.

Season 2: continues along with the Darla being alive again arc. That one ends when she is re-vampirized by Drusilla, kicking off the Angel as a vigilante arc. That one ended, dealt with the fallout, and then moved into the Pylelya arc, conveniently just in time for Angel and crew to not be available to help with the end of Buffy season 5. Apparently there were plans for a big multipart movie finish for Season 5, with Angel and co teaming up with the Scoobies, Willow going dark there instead of next season (it would have been her cutting Dawn on the tower to save Tarra, instead of random demon mage) and other assorted fun. It was to be the big final of Buffy, but then it got a sixth season and they had to make new plans. Oh well, what could have been.

Anyways, Season 3: This one had the Darla is Pregnant arc. Ends with her death, which marks the start of the Conner arc, and I guess you could really call it the Holtz arc as well. That lasts till the end of the season.

Season 4: Man, I don't even know. Fastest way seems to be to divide it into three parts: before the Beast shows up, after he shows up through to Angel getting re-ensouled, and then the whole Jasmine bullshit through to the end.

Season 5... season 5 felt a bit rushed, like they had to cram a few seasons worth of content into one. Its nature as the one season that they were running Wolfram and Hart makes it easy to remember though.
 
I recommend...

uhm, basically everything written by Liz Marcs, Christina Kalamakar, Jedibuttercup, Mhalachai, Phouka, Beatrice Otter, BastardSnow, Diane Castle, and Annakovsky.

Also most of the stuff by energybeing, faithunbreakable, jaded, and Shieldage.


i've read a lot of buffy fic...
 
Sir Rabby said:
This was the best part for me! The banter between Spike and Angel simply made the fifth season amazing! :D
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Oh, I'm not saying it wasn't amazing, but it did highlight that(all in my subjective opinion, of course) JM was a better actor than DB and having them constantly opposite each other only drew more attention to the fact that Spike was the more charismatic of the two. It had some good moments, I'll admit and they could have done more with the differences in the two as far as their background. (It was only touched on once, iirc, how irritated Angel was over Spike getting a soul too. Irish Catholic background vs Victorian London. That Spike came to terms more or less within weeks/months when Angel spent a century+ stumbling around as a bum really irked Captain Forehead.
 
chibipoe said:
Oh, I'm not saying it wasn't amazing, but it did highlight that(all in my subjective opinion, of course) JM was a better actor than DB and having them constantly opposite each other only drew more attention to the fact that Spike was the more charismatic of the two. It had some good moments, I'll admit and they could have done more with the differences in the two as far as their background. (It was only touched on once, iirc, how irritated Angel was over Spike getting a soul too. Irish Catholic background vs Victorian London. That Spike came to terms more or less within weeks/months when Angel spent a century+ stumbling around as a bum really irked Captain Forehead.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You're right. I still maintain though that the fifth season of Angel was terrific. The first time I watched it I was filled with horror about Angel's decent into villain-hood. The episode before the big reveal had me thinking Angel was making Angelus look like a little bitch.
 
So, stupid question.

Would a vampire get stronger from working out at a gym?
 
Dumb question time: how many fics/writers have explored the lives and campaigns of Slayers and support-teams before Buffy and the Scoobies got to work?

I mean, I'm a great fan of the canon cast and their semi-routine world-saving antics (well, as they were before the scriptwriters made them all brainless narcissists in the later seasons), but the fact that the world still existed for the Scoobies to save means that the previous Slayer(s) had to be at least competent. Like the current craze for Worm, there's enough world-building and other fodder in the BtVS universe for shitloads of stories to be told about other Slayers in other places before Buffy got the nod... yet the only such fics that I can remember seeing are one of my own (which is a long-moribund WIP and in need of some de-Sueification) and a semi-related one by someone who wanted to name-check my OC.

[Crossposted from/with the corresponding thread on SB.com]
 
Sir Rabby said:
I'm going to request links. ;)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
For my fic and the name-checker?

Controlled Circumstances
This is my one — Taz is Buffy's immediate predecessor, and the fic itself is a prequel to my first, larger Buffy work, the Xander-centric Matryoshka. (As I said, Controlled Circumstances does need some rewrites to dial back the Sue factor. Re-reading it now makes me cringe a little. :oops:)

Fast
AxedGoat specifically e-mailed me for permission to name-check Taz in this one. Sadly, it never got beyond a single chapter, posted twelve(!) years ago. :(

That said, somewhat to my surprise and delight, someone over at SB.com pointed me to a category at Twisting the Hellmouth for Original Slayers. It's sadly underpopulated at the moment, but The Cloak of Mist looks pretty promising.

EDIT: and that category led me to another site, again too underpopulated but still interesting: History lesson. Short-stories of Slayers from Ancient Rome to thirteenth-century France to Brazil in the 1980s.
 
Last edited:
Bad timing, I guess. Buffy had been over for a couple of years, BattleStar Galactica was hitting it big on-screen and in SB.com fan-fic, a lot of people were burned out on YAHF and powered!Xander stories (which Matryoshka could easily be mistaken for).... [shrug]
 
Trace Coburn said:
Bad timing, I guess. Buffy had been over for a couple of years, BattleStar Galactica was hitting it big on-screen and in SB.com fan-fic, a lot of people were burned out on YAHF and powered!Xander stories (which Matryoshka could easily be mistaken for).... [shrug]
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Power!Xander stories are tolerable - it's the XINO aspect that I think people were sick of.
 
The ting about Power!Xander stories is that no one got it right. I should know, I read them all.

Or just gave a look at their first chapter and ran away but it amounts to same thing anyway.
 
Tasoli said:
The ting about Power!Xander stories is that no one got it right. I should know, I read them all.

Or just gave a look at their first chapter and ran away but it amounts to same thing anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Whereas very few people seem to take the road of; Hey...what happens if we make the insanely god-tier powerful Witch slightly less insane?
 
Sir Rabby said:
Whereas very few people seem to take the road of; Hey...what happens if we make the insanely god-tier powerful Witch slightly less insane?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Most people who write power fantasy are male. Which is also why their Xanders are all XINO, because that's actually their SI mary sue pretending to be Xander, while playing out their power/sex fantasies.

Also why many people here don't like reading it - because honestly, when it reads like you wrote it one handed with your other hand down your pants....
 
To be honest, when I come across Xander-centric Halloween stories that turn him into a God(or as near as) and suddenly, ALL the girls want him, I just shake my head and move on, more than a bit disgusted. I'm not adverse to power-fantasies from time to time, but all of these completely miss his character and it just turns into wanking. Bleh.

And it's always Xander. Never any of the other cast. I mean, I want more Buffy-YAHF or Willow, or Cordelia(okay, Cordelia didn't go to Ethan's, whatever). Some of the Buffy-YAHF I've read have been amazing, but they are so rare.
 
Frankly; I want more power gaming SI's. The Buffyverse is interesting enough with its powerups to justify [Look at me and my newly godlike powers making reality my bitch] stories. Which only seem to happen with SI's ;(
 
chibipoe said:
To be honest, when I come across Xander-centric Halloween stories that turn him into a God(or as near as) and suddenly, ALL the girls want him, I just shake my head and move on, more than a bit disgusted. I'm not adverse to power-fantasies from time to time, but all of these completely miss his character and it just turns into wanking. Bleh.

And it's always Xander. Never any of the other cast. I mean, I want more Buffy-YAHF or Willow, or Cordelia(okay, Cordelia didn't go to Ethan's, whatever). Some of the Buffy-YAHF I've read have been amazing, but they are so rare.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I said it before, I'll say it again. Joyce. As Integra Hellsing. No Alucard, just her knowledge, training and will. And the fallout of them.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top