Episode #6 - No Future For You, Part 1
Look what came in the mail yesterday!
Yeah... Now I admit, I was a bit p.o.'d back in 2002 when Tara got, um, well... if you are a Buffy fan, you know what happened to my beloved Tara. And if you're not, what are you waiting for? Go buy Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- the Series, not the movie -- right now. You'll thank me later, trust me.
You watched The West Wing, right? This is precisely the same. Except instead of C.J., it's a kick-ass blonde teenager who stakes vampires and her pals in high-school. Oh... and high-school is a metaphor and monsters are metaphor as well. Kill a monster, slay your fears. Often literally, when your fears come to life.
Anyway, I love Willow and Tara the most. So I was just a tad upset back in 2002 when what we're not going to talk about on home page happened, cause of the whole spoiler bit and all. (It's fine to talk about it in comments, no spoiler tags necessary.) Which was a problem because I have always loved Joss and here I had to hate him because of, well, you know, what he did to my Tara!
I love Joss because he taught me I could write fiction. Always could write non-fiction. But till Joss, I never had a clue I could write fiction. In fact due to the one time I tried writing fiction and showed it to my theater teacher and he, politely, suggested I try something else (at 15), I thought fiction writing and me were not MFEO. Ha!
Then I met Joss. Well, his teleplays for Buffy, actually. Hip, cool, and so cleanly written even a geek like me thought, "Me, you could do that."Look what came in the mail yesterday!
Yeah... Now I admit, I was a bit p.o.'d back in 2002 when Tara got, um, well... if you are a Buffy fan, you know what happened to my beloved Tara. And if you're not, what are you waiting for? Go buy Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- the Series, not the movie -- right now. You'll thank me later, trust me.
You watched The West Wing, right? This is precisely the same. Except instead of C.J., it's a kick-ass blonde teenager who stakes vampires and her pals in high-school. Oh... and high-school is a metaphor and monsters are metaphor as well. Kill a monster, slay your fears. Often literally, when your fears come to life.
Anyway, I love Willow and Tara the most. So I was just a tad upset back in 2002 when what we're not going to talk about on home page happened, cause of the whole spoiler bit and all. (It's fine to talk about it in comments, no spoiler tags necessary.) Which was a problem because I have always loved Joss and here I had to hate him because of, well, you know, what he did to my Tara!
I love Joss because he taught me I could write fiction. Always could write non-fiction. But till Joss, I never had a clue I could write fiction. In fact due to the one time I tried writing fiction and showed it to my theater teacher and he, politely, suggested I try something else (at 15), I thought fiction writing and me were not MFEO. Ha!
I sat down and read some more Buffy. All of them in fact. Read Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing. Seemed a bit beyond me, but I started to get the hang of it. Then I started reading EVERYTHING. Hundreds of screenplays for movies and television. I went nuts. Eventually I found William Goldman. Two-time Oscar winner Bill Goldman, he who wrote both Butch Cassidy as well as, The Princess Bride. And finally I'd found my match. Joss to Aaron to Bill.
I sat down and wrote a screenplay in six weeks. Then rewrote it in two months. A year later it was done. Ran it by an Emmy winner. She loved it. Said when I had a second screenplay, she'd take them both to her agent. Now I'm writing my second screenplay. Daughter #3 is helping me break story.
Which is a long way to get around to, Buffy is a show I loved right up to the bad thing in Season 6 when I stopped watching forever. Swore a might oath. Blah Joss bad & evil, blah blah blah.
However, this is what I discovered writing my screenplay... I'm an idiot. I was upset with Joss for what he did in Season 6 of Buffy...as a fan. Still am, actually. But as a writer, well, I can't tell. I'm so much an enormous fanboy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I can't get outside the damn show enough to get a writer's perspective to see what Joss should have might have could have. I know the fan arguments. But I can't get it as a writer.
So I apologize, Joss. I'm unable to get to your level of professionalism to have a conversation with you (in my head) about Tara. That being the case, I simply trust that since you've restarted Buffy with Season 8 --
Hey, everyone... THERE'S A SEASON 8 OF BUFFY. It's available from tfaw.com and written by Joss and his gang. Back orders of earlier episodes are available. Also, Season 7 of Angel is about to start, also by Joss. These are cannon books folks. The real deal. Buffy, all the slayers, and oh yeah -- Dawn's a Giant....
-- it's going to turn out better. Eventually. After lots of pain, suffering and trips into hell of course. It is your world of course.
So don't let me down Joss. Last time sucked. Let's have this be better, mmk? Tara, you, me, trust? And not so much with the whole bloody shirt.
I'm counting on you.
PS. Thanks for teaching me how to write.
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