.... so unfair. Usernames can contain "zalgo" characters that escape the text boundaries and will overflow above near content, yet I can't had a simple "🦄" to my username. Sigh

My phone recognises it as a Rainbow unicorn. :)

@doppelgreener @besw - let me guess.... Windows?

@Derpy Nope.

@BESW Oh, nice. Anyway, still lacking some recent unicode characters support. Like Doppel noted, that is an unicorn emoji.

@Miniman Eeeeeh. That really depends on whether you like some of the [spoilers].

@BESW For context, the reason I am wondering if it's a good time to break it off is because it feels like a good time to break it off. Unlike previous season finales, there was a definite vibe of tying off loose ends, culminating, bringing the series to a close, etc. It's not out of disillusionment or dissatisfaction.

The show changes a lot in tone and theme, and makes (in my opinion) some major fumbles with characterisation in the fourth season before it recovers later. Especially re: relationships.

@BESW Wouldn't be the first time...

@BESW One of the things I realised quite recently is that most of the show's really jarring moments come from the jerky pace of character and relationship development.

@Miniman Hmm. Let me take a glance at the seasons to get it straight in my head.

@BESW Given that there are other conversations happening, we should probably also move to NAB, I think.

← 8 messages moved from RPG General Chat

@BESW Thanks

So: Four is a major shift in themes. A lot of wild characterisation stuff happens that has lasting repercussions, but the plot itself ties off pretty nicely at the end. I found the season overall... underwhelming where it wasn't teeth-grindingly aggravating, but it contains a couple of my absolute favourite single episodes.

@BESW Hmmm. And going forward from that?

Five hits the ground running with a brand-new exciting, interesting plot which wraps up the series again.

...Six manages to move forward from that ending much more gracefully than Four moved on from Three's grand finale, by really digging into what it means to have it NOT end there.

Unfortunately the villains for most of season Six are kinda lackluster and comic-relief, and then it takes a massive neck-breaking jerk into the dark and macabre at the end, which Seven really struggles to recover from.

Seven tries to move on from Six's finale, which is difficult but it manages to do it pretty well by virtue of another epic brand-new interesting season arc plot.

Ok...and (sorry to be a pain) how does Angel tie into it? I've heard everything from "You don't need to watch it at all" to "You have to watch it, and it has to be in broadcast order interleaving the two".

And then Seven concludes with a truly final ending to the series, that's actually pretty satisfying, except then season eight and forward continued in comics.

@Miniman Almost entirely separate.

@BESW That's ok, I definitely won't go to the effort of reading comics :)

There's one or two bits where you need to see a couple episodes of Angel to really get the entire picture of why Buffy's feeling the way she is in the next episode, but eh.

I didn't see Angel while I was watching Buffy and didn't feel much loss, and Troggy didn't see Buffy while he was watching Angel and he felt similar.

@BESW That's a relief - it didn't sound particularly appealing. I'm equally ok with not understanding Buffy's feelings, after all, why change things now?

[snerk]

Honestly Angel's pretty good.

@BESW Oh? The way I've heard it described sounds like "Buffy but darker, grittier, and taking itself more seriously".

That's not entirely inaccurate.

In fact, it's pretty spot on.

But the LA setting helps make it work, and they generally do it with a good blend of tongue-in-cheek seriousness.

While Buffy's general arc tends to be "Good people struggling to stay good," Angel's is "Bad people struggling to get better."

@BESW I guess I should fill in some more context - my housemate and I try to have something to watch (be it TV, movies, or what have you) with dinner and in order to spend some time together rather than spending all our time with closed doors.

So we're not...particularly invested in the series.

Gotcha.

I will say, the last season of Angel has an episode where he's cursed into a muppet.

@BESW Well, I do love me some muppet episodes!

A broodier muppet you never will see.

@BESW You really know how to push my buttons, you know that?

[grin]

Unfortunately both Buffy and Angel succumb to Whedon syndrome in their last seasons.

@BESW Whedon syndrome? (I have guesses, but I'd rather not miscommunicate.)

Angel mostly in season four, but Buffy starting... oh, toward the end of season Five is where it really kicks in aggressively.

"Whedon Syndrome" is what I call it when a show that starts out with a variety of interesting dramatic plots and character complications throws all that out the window for a specific formula:

Take a fan favourite character. Give her what she wants, then take it away as cruelly as possible. Milk the resulting drama for all its worth, and when that runs dry look for another fan favourite to do the same to.

@BESW Just as well I asked, Google gave me something completely different (though equally accurate).

@BESW Also, interesting subset of what I would deem "Robin Hobb syndrome".

The "unending cycle of misery" thing is not uncommon in character-driven fiction, especially ones that have a heavy romantic bent.

@BESW Mmmmm.

Ok, that was too many m's. But it was meant to be an "mmm" of agreement, not whatever it became.

mmmmMMMMmmmmM.

If you do decide to skip the later Buffy seasons, I'd suggest some specific awesome episodes to watch anyway.

The production values climbed significantly.

@BESW I think I've heard about some of those.

The Body is... really well done, but not exactly a "fun" episode.

And season seven is kinda hard to single out specific episodes for. It was a headlong rush toward the finale.

@BESW Starred so I have a record.

I've shown Hush, Restless, Buffy vs Dracula, and Once More, with Feeling to friends who knew basically nothing about Buffy.

@BESW A friend who was a seriously intense Buffy fan showed me Grave to try to entice me to watch the series. This did not work at all. In fact, it had the opposite effect.

Whaaaaat.

Noooooooo.

Dark Willow was stuuuuuupid.

@BESW Having seen Dark Willow quite recently, I'm inclined to disagree :P but I know what you mean.

The plot, anyway.

@BESW I meant Vampire Willow, from the parallel dimension. Not the original parallel dimension episode, the later one.

She's Whedon Syndrome incarnate, and manifest evidence that he's got no clue what he's doing with symbolism, metaphor, or sexual politics.

@Miniman Yes, Vampire Willow is pretty great.

But Dark Willow from Grave? [sigh] Whedon, you dropped your metaphors and mis-labelled them when you picked them back up.

@BESW I'm not 100% what you're referring to (this was a long time ago and I was too young for analysis), but yeah, it sucked.

He spent three seasons building up "witchcraft is a metaphor for lesbianism" as a major motif of Willow's character arc.

Then he has the loss of her girlfriend turn Willow into an evil world-ending witch of doom!

And after that, the witchcraft metaphor started to be for drugs.

Way to be lesbian-positive, Whedon. [golf clap]

Your message, it has a confuse.

@BESW He does have a tendency to get bored of things and suddenly change them into something else.

[sigh] Yes.

This is one reason I'm totally okay with Firefly sticking to one season.

(Somehow Dollhouse managed to stay mostly on point and avoid aggressive syndroming, perhaps because it started with the premise of being awful to all the main characters and taking away what they cared about.)

@BESW This of course BESW saying "MmmmmMMMMmmmm" backwards in order to perform a summoning/banishment right (can't tell).

It's also indistinguishable from the sound made while being suffocated by an eight-foot-tall teddy bear.

I may have found the real reason for that new lightsaber models...

or, to sum it to just one image...

the middle one seem just so.... functional to swing around...

ok,..... I was half willing to let the laser crossguards slide

I can't stand the sight of the ones on the left and right though

@Derpy I'm SO TEMPTED to link a strip from Oglaf...

@Derpy the one about the three bladed sword

@trogdor because the "let's connect a bladed hilt sword to a candelabra" middle one is better??

At least now Star Wars fans won't be able to mock us on the whole "Winged Twily" affair.

(and please notice: who made the toys? yep.... you guessed right! Hasbro!)

@Derpy I was talking about that one too

oh I see

I didn't notice that on the middle one

I wonder... can I somehow attach one of those "build a pony" sets in place of a blade for a change?

Wait, forget what I said. Let's avoid ponies for once. This add is worse in a way.

It is like they took the old meme images that the original crossguard design called for... and though "Cooool ! Let's sell them!!"

aaaaaand, google image search gifted us with this one:

@trogdor what you say, should we propose this one for the next movie?

sure, yeah, whyyyyy noot

@BESW I agree with this

it suffers from similar problems to Buffy, but that was basically unavoidable