The RETURN of THE RANT (Or "how I spent my summer vacation")

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Matt: I've been watching Buffy Season 6 on DVD this week....man, it's even more disturbing and funny on a ridiculous level than the first time.

Eric: See, it's better than you thought it was.

Matt: Uh, no..it's actually gotten worse.

"I'm a breast girl" *shivers* COME ON!

Eric: What's wrong with that?

Matt: It's just sexually creepy.

Eric: How so?

Matt: Not that it's lesbian in origin. It would be creepy if Spike said it the WAY Willow said it.

Eric: Jenn says it all the time.

Matt: And every single Spuffy hardcore sex scene is worse the second time as well. The grinding is just....come on!

Eric: What would you say if it were Xander?

Matt: Wouldn't want to see that either. You know what? I LOVED Spike at the end of S5 Buffy....and I loved him in Bargaining and After life....but the moment he said, "You belong in the darkness with me" in Life Serial, I hated that relationship. That's when I started to hate it. He turned from someone who loved the slayer, to someone who was trying to influence her into his world when she was at her most vulnerable.

He's awesome when he's noble and fighting the good fight, and being heroic, but he sucks balls when he's being dark and mysterious.

Eric: The problem with season 6 is that there were still Bangels on the writing team.

Matt: It was just the darkness in the entire relationship. The stuff in Dead Things...the balcony scene.

Eric A Spuffer would write the relationship as good, then a bangel will write it bad.

Matt: Dead Things was written by DeKnight. Doublemeat Palace (the dumpster sex) was written by Jane Espenson.

Eric: Personally, I never liked him with Buffy, they weren't a good match, better than Angel, but still not good.

Matt: But Jane loves Spike.

Eric: I know bangels that love Spike. Jane also loves Angel.

Eric: Remember them crooning over him in casting?

Matt: Jane wasn't there until Season 2.

Eric: Ok, bad example. Someone did it though.

Matt: You must remember, Marti Noxon loves Spuffy, and this was the year that Joss wasn't around much except for the musical. So how do you explain that?

Marti was in charge, and all she did was have Spike look like more of a monster than he ever did before. That shit in "Gone", when he's in the kitchen with her, feeling her up and calling her goldilocks...and she's so fucked up she doesn't know if she should shag him or punch him in his face. This is what was bad with that relationship.

She was fucked up, and he just said, "well, you belong to the darkness", and they fucked like bunnies....dirty evil bunnies. She didn't know what she was even doing.

Eric: I think they were trying to make a strong contrast between souless and souled Spike, because his actions in Season 6 are out of character with who he was in Season 5.

Matt: All I wanna know is, WHO could've POSSIBLY been a Spuffy shipper in the middle of S6? WHO? HOW?

Eric: I did want them to kiss.

Matt: Were they even watching? And the kiss was fine, but then he just kept proding. I knew it. The only thing better than killing a slayer would be--" I mean, come on man. Who the fuck could possibly LIKE this stuff?

Eric: Season 5 Spike and Season 6 Spike are 2 different people. 2 sharp a contrast, in my opinion. The change doesn't make sense.

Matt: How did he go from "I saved you every night" sweet and all in After Life, to "You're a creature of the night" 2 episodes later? He was still the same Season 5 Spike in After Life.

And then in Life Serial he gets darker.

Eric: They should have had his chip fizzle out and him become bad in S6, then he realizes what he did and goes for his soul. Spike the S6 big bad...not Willow.

Matt: My point is, how could people still ship for that during that period of time?

Eric: I don't know. I think that people just liked Spike so much.

Matt: That ANYTHING he did would be considered OK?

Eric: Think about battered wives - they explain everything off. Women's emotions work completly different than ours.

Matt: But Spuffy shippers aren't all battered wives, are they?

Eric: In a way. They all loved Spike, then he became dark and mean, but they still loved him. So they write everything off.

Matt: But they didn't change...they just blamed the writers.

Eric: He's telling her what he wants to hear. He only knows Drusilla-like relationships.

Matt: But these our the characters we're dealt...the writers are the creators. If its written badly, its still the characters. It's the direction they obviously want to take them.

Eric: Right. I see that, you see that. They don't want to see that.

Matt: Right, which I don't understand. I can understand loving Spuffy AGAIN in Season 7 near the end. I can understand wanting to see them together eventually in Season 5. I just can not comprehend how they can defend it in Season 6.

Eric: You know what Joss said about that...the Season 7 ending.

Matt: What's that?

Eric: That Buffy actually loved Spike and he knew it, but wanted her to leave. It just didn't come out right. It's on the S7 commentary supposedly.

Matt: Well that's fine...I get that. I understand THAT.

Eric: Right. This is one topic we agree on.

Matt: I can see why Buffy would love Spike. What I can't understand is the fans of this ship blaming the writers and ignoring what was going on in Season 6, and MOSTLY saying that Buffy was "leading Spike on" and that she was playing with him. BOLLOCKS. Fucking Bollocks.

Watch it from Life Serial on. Spike is leading her there, and he leads her in Dead Things...and in Doublemeat. And by Gone, SHE herself is Gone.

Eric: Spike let little Spike control him in Season 6. She isn't totally a victim though.

Matt: But she's been pushed there after being totally fucking sick of the world.

Eric: She should have learned not to do vamps by then.

Matt: She gives in...and gives up.

Eric: *As The Narcoleptic Argentinean* NEVER DATE VAMPIRES... IT ALWAYS ENDS BAD!

Matt: And then Spike kicks her out in Gone, because he wants all of her. How fucking clueless can he be? She was clearly gone even if she wasn't invisible.

Can't he see that? Can't we all?

Eric: No, only us on the outside can see it. It's much easier to see from the outside looking in. All of her friends wouldn't see the big picture.

Matt: No one saw it, true....no one close to her. Only Tara really knew at the end of Dead Things.

Eric: But Tara's fat ass was too dumb to do anything but make lude jokes. By the way - The Tara comment will get me in like Flint. As in, Larry Flint leaving his trial in Georgia.

Matt: When she finally realizes that this isn't healthy (in As You Were), he can't accept it. And then we get...well, you know. The scene. The scene they pretend never happened.

Or they use the excuse - "look at his face afterwards". Yeah, my rebuttal would be "look at his face during".

Eric: I write it off to...HE WAS AN EVIL CREATURE! THEY DO EVIL THINGS LIKE RAPE AND PILLAGE!

Matt: I KNOW!

Eric: HE HAS DONE IT A MILLION TIMES BEFORE! ANGE DID TOO! KNOW WHO DIDN'T?

Matt: Yes, I do.

Eric: XANDER, BUT DO YOU SEE BUFFY FUCKING HIM? NO! BUT THAT'S OK CAUSE BUFFY IS A WHORE.

XANDER DESERVES BETTER! *mentally blocks hell's bells*

Matt: Well, leaving Anya at the alter is a WEEE bit different than attempted rape. Now if he attempted to rape her after saying he didn't want to get married, we could have a problem with our logic. Fortunently, our logic is earth logic, and theirs (being Spuffys) does not resemble our earth logic.

Eric: Their logic is more llike, ummmmm Bangel logic.

Matt: Yes, which is funny. They make fun of the Bangels for being 'out there', but anyone who even TRIED to defend Season 6 is AS FAR out there than anyone who tried to defend that suckfest cuddle puke that was middle o' season 3.

Buffy does piss me off though.

Eric: How Poobah? *rimshot*

Matt: She gets me pissed off...especially when she treats her boyfriends like they're more special than everyone else. "Well, I should probably go kill Angel...but I'm not ready yet". "Giles, I should probably kill you for trying to kill Spike". These, of course are paraphrased, but that's the basic thoughts she had.

Jenny's dead. Well, fuck her and the hole she dove into! Tara's dead? Willow, dont kill anyone! Spike just tried helping Adam kill you all? Ah fucking well. Spike just threatened to untie Dru and let her kill me if I didn't say I loved him? Give the boy a break, I will...pip pip.

What kind of fucking decisions are these? Everyone is off limits who I say is off limits?

You can't kill Dawn, Giles! I'll kill you if you touch her! The world is going to end if Dawn lives? Oh well, I didn't want to see that Law & Order episode anyway...this season just sucked without Sam Waterston.

Eric: What the fuck?

Matt: Well, you get my drift. She makes up her own rules, and fuck if anyone is going to tell her differently. That's what pisses me off about her. It's probably the only thing. That, and her affinity for assholes.

So yeah....Season 6 still sucks balls....most of it.

Eric: I beg to differ.

Matt: After re-watching it, I can safely say that the musical is the best shit ever. And the last 4 episodes of the season were hella-cool.

Eric: I like the darkness and pain.

Matt: I'm sure you do...afterall, you are a sadomasochist.

Eric: It felt real to me, what would have really happened...except for Spike pretending to be an asshole.

Matt: Pretending?

Eric: I have smoked and snorted and it still doesn't make sense, or becoming your choice.

Matt: What? You lost me.

Eric: His out of character transformation.

Matt: It wasn't out of character, brohand. It was how the writers wrote him.

Eric: Yes.

Matt: That's in character.

Eric: But you can do things out of character, can't you? If you went out and fucked a tree, isn't that out of character?

Matt: Not really. That isn't out of character for me. Barkhole tail, man.

Ok, so let's say Spike is out of character. That's how the writers wanted him to be. So whether he was OOC or not still doesn't change the fact that it was him doing these things.

Eric: Right.

Matt: And THAT'S where they don't get it. OOC to them means, "it was the writer's fault...they suck. That wasn't Spike." Yes it was Spike...and the writers wrote him that way for a reason.

Eric: I say...that wasn't how Spike normally acts.

Matt: Wait...but wasn't it...BEFORE? Before 'Out of My Mind' when he realizes he loves her? Wasn't that Spike for 120 years?

Eric: You know what I meant...the new Spike.

Matt: It wasn't the new Spike, nothing changed in him....except that he loved Buffy. So couldn't he revert back to that at times whenever he felt like it? Really, how truly OOC was it?

Eric: You don't change personalites on a whim. We can't control our personality. It was more OOC of Spike in Season 5 than anything.

Matt: Exactly. If they want to debate about how he was written differently in Season 6, I should debate about how differently all of a sudden he was written in Season 5.

Matt: They grasp at straws. It's all the same. Spike is Spike.

Eric: Well, he did have a trigger for his personality change. What did it in S6?

Matt: He was Spike in S5, he was Spike in S6. I think the beginning was when she was so angry at her friends that she only told him that she was in heaven. Then he thought he could 'let it out' with her all of a sudden.

So then she came to him upset about her jobs not working out. And he said, "You belong in the darkness like me." And so it began.

Eric: Speaking of jobs - I would have blackmailed Doublemeat Palace.

Matt: Yeah, really. Hmmm...big money, minimum wage? Big money, minimum wage? The choices...the choices.

Eric: Also what happened to the treasure Spike found in Harsh Light of Day?

Matt: No idea.

Eric: Why did buffy need to work? She was fucking a rich man!

Matt: Hmmm...maybe she wasn't crazy afterall.