NotWillow in Season Severed

[wannabebad2]

**Feel free to repost me wherev this applies**



Hey, I finally started posting enough and made it into this board!



It's actually nice to see people haven't lost that bitterness from last year.



But anyway, since I'm so late, I was wondering what exactly "NotWillow" means. How did this come up, and the same with "Season Severed". I find these nicknames funny, but I'd love to know the basis for both.



Thanks.

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"In my world there are people in chains and we can ride them like ponies." -- Vamp Willow

[Jimmi Magnus]

Basically NotWillow means that the actor Alyson Hannigan plays a character by the name of Willow, on the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But even though we think we know her, it is a whole new character. With a different personality than the Willow we all knew and loved (Speaking in TV time here. On Pens we know and love Willow.).



The writers just write Willow as a whole other person than they used to. And the result is not pretty. But hey, it's ME so what did you expect?

-I feel as if a kitten sat on my face all night

[themagicpixie]

Looks kinda like Willow, is played by the same actress... but listen to her lines... watch what she's doing... ladies and gentlemen, I give you a brand new addition to the Buffy character line-up, NotWillow!



Watch her fail to mourn her dead lover!

Watch her not even like, say her dead lover's name once in a while!

Marvel how her IQ has dropped by around 140 points!

Roll your eyes as she goes on and on and on about how gay she is and references gay culture and maybe gets a new girlfriend who you know will be totally wrong for her, WITHOUT EVER MENTIONING TARA?!!?



You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll fall asleep. It's NotWillow played by Alyson Hannigan, in Season Severed.



(I mean no disrepect to AH, who is cool. It's the writing and directing that make her character so far beyond bad and into painful, these days).

[Sheridan]

I think season severed refers to the way they just cut off a big chunk of the audience for no good reason?

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[WiccansIllusion]

Or season severed could mean that they severed the charachters on Buffy so much it's not even Buffy, just..well, season severed?

Tara nodded in agreement "She has magic fingers." TheWisdom of War, Chris Golden



You dont really think this is like, Psycho Buffy Cheer Squad central, do you?-Xita ala Julia "Lessons Parody"

[darkmagicwillow]

I think it's because they severed all continuity with prior seasons. Tara? Who's that? Magic addiction? Never heard of it.

--

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

[Dumbsaint]

I still like "Season Seve(rely, Incomprehensibly, Unutterably Fucked the Fuck Up)n."



Edited to add: MagicPixie,

I like Christmas. It's the only time of year at which the rest of the world says "ho" with as much frequency and enthusiasm as I do.

Edited by: Dumbsaint at: 12/12/02 11:45:26 am

[Garner]

I think it's called season severed because they severed their brains from their spinal cords and their fingers just started typing whatever randomly moved them.



Garner

[themagicpixie]

LOL Garner! I think the effect can, in the case of certain writers, can be seen in their speech, too...

[The Rose24]

I saw the repeat of "Something Blue" last night. Willow spends eps 6-9 grieving for Oz, and Willow has hardly mentioned Tara. Oz is the one who cheats on Willow twice and leaves her without even calling or writing. Tara dies in her arms, and Willow is about to move on with some young, immature, pushy SIT. This is definitely not Willow.

Tara: My heart doesn't stutter.


Tara: Willow, I got so lost.

Willow: I found you. I will always find you.

[Monika]

LoL. Lovely nicknames y'all have come up with, make sense thou.

____________________________

=[[ Warning: I have an attitude and I know how to use it. ]]=

[BytrSuite]

Yes, this is a clever bunch we have here. Full of bitterness and hate. It just warms my heart.

________
"Oh, good, my dog found the chainsaw."

[DRUSILLA LOVER]

im not full of bitterness and hate...just towards the show, but not in life general.

[BytrSuite]

Yes, towards the show. This is the season 7 forum, not a forum about life in general.

________
"Oh, good, my dog found the chainsaw."

[Munchkin]

Yeah, Life you can explain. That's the problem with BtVS/S7: it's got nothing to do with life.

________



Dave C.

[wannabebad2]

Hey, everyone.



I know this question belongs more in the "Help" Discussion, but since that was sooooo long ago and it would look out of place among "Potential", "The Killer in Me," and "First Date." And since I started this thread, I think I'm allowed to a bit off topic.



So, here's my question..... When NotWillow visits Tara's Grave, why does she put stones on the grave. What's the significance?



Thank you.

---

"In my world there are people in chains and we can ride them like ponies." -- Vamp Willow

[The Rose24]

It is Jewish tradition to place stones each time one visits a loved one's grave. It is a sign of respect.



Anyone can correct me if I am wrong.

Tara: My heart doesn't stutter.


Tara: Willow, I got so lost.

Willow: I found you. I will always find you.

[The Angry Lion]

Im glad someone started this thread coz I always wondered, why do you call (he who will not be typed) Jay Dubya? it sounds funny but I just dont get what it means/refers to

The moon to the tide, I can feel you inside

[wannabebad2]

I believe Jay Dubya is a takeoff on George Dubya, aka Bush.

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"In my world there are people in chains and we can ride them like ponies." -- Vamp Willow

[Blue Pariah]

Quote:

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Im glad someone started this thread coz I always wondered, why do you call (he who will not be typed) Jay Dubya?

---

Since I'm the one who started it off, I guess I should chime in.



While writing my bitter and sarcastic "reviews" of Fireflea, I needed to come up with a properly insulting name to refer to the Flabby One. I went through a few, but was unhappy with them.



Then inspiration struck! Since Fireflea was riddled with pseudo-cowboy-talk, he needed a real "suthin' fraiyd, cahn pohned, sasparilly on th' rahks" name.



wannabebad2 is partly right, Georgie-Peorgie-Puddin-And-Pie was certainly a partial inspiration.



But for the main one, we have to go back to the James Bond movie Live and Let Die. One of the characters Bond encounters on his adventures in the southern US, is Sheriff JW (pronounced Jay-Dubya) Pepper. The good Sheriff is fat, balding, sweaty, racist, sexist, short-tempered, and most of all, profoundly stupid.



For some reason, that seemed extremely familiar.



So Jay-Dubya was born. Spread the word far and wide. My fondest dream would be for everyone, his co-worker, the press, his friends, his family to start calling him Jay-Dubya.



My random act of kindness for the day.

I take to shade and I play in the shadows
I watch my back and I play it cool
"Blue Pariah" by BRJ

[The Angry Lion]

I was starting to think coz maybe had trouble eating pretzals



just saw Live and Let Die recently, that JW was more Cletus then Cletus

The moon to the tide, I can feel you inside

[Firefoot]

The Rose 24 wrote:

I saw the repeat of "Something Blue" last night. Willow spends eps 6-9 grieving for Oz, and Willow has hardly mentioned Tara. Oz is the one who cheats on Willow twice and leaves her without even calling or writing. Tara dies in her arms, and Willow is about to move on with some young, immature, pushy SIT. This is definitely not Willow.



IMO, the writers took shameless advantage of the summer months gap between "Grave" and "Lessons" to minimize the amount of screen time Willow spends actually grieving Tara. Very conveniently, we are (presumably) meant to assume that Willow did most of her mourning over the summer in England, where we (again, conveniently) couldn't see it actually happen. (Although, of course, we got to see plenty of Buffy-mourns-Angel in early season three, and everyone-mourns-Buffy in early season six). The timing of Seth Green's departure more or less forced the writers to deal with Willow's grief over Oz on-screen. With Tara, the writers took the easy, lazy way out. Why should they bother having Willow actually grieve, when they had a perfect reason to avoid it?



What also gets me is the almost complete lack of visible grief on Dawn's part. She was the only one of the Scoobies who really reacted to Tara's death--in the sense of showing visceral pain that someone she truly cared about was brutally and senselessly murdered. It would be nice if, for example, Dawn had pictures of Tara in her room that she sometimes looked at, or maybe if she quietly gave JFK the cold shoulder. But subtlety is a word long-lost from ME's vocabulary.



Firefoot

-----

"The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last for a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."

--Mark Twain

Edited by: Firefoot at: 2/11/03 1:03:52 pm

[Sheridan]

It would make sense for Dawn to cold shoulder JFK as a usurper. ME however are so desperate to sell this relationship that they daren't allow a dissenting voice. Both Willow and Dawn appear to be being bent out of shape to accomodate a rushed and ill thought out pairing.

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[LostWithoutTara]

What's happened this Season has been so embarrassing - the main plot is awful and repetitive. However, I have enjoyed some of the one-off episodes. I just really miss Tara and wish they'd mention her more. Not that I'd forgive them for what they did, but it would be more of a healing salve. But at least we had TKIM. When Willow was crying for Tara it broke my heart.

Edited by: LostWithoutTara at: 4/11/03 11:49:47 am

[sam7777]

Mr Greenberg is not a friend to the kittens from what he said at the Bronze Beta board:

Quote:

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In characterizing Tara's death as yet another in the string of cliched lesbian deaths, you indicate that you do not see Tara as anything but a lesbian, you do not see her as the unique character she was, but rather just as a woman who had sex with women, and, in doing so, you reveal your own homophobia, your own prejudice and, more than anything else, your own lack of understanding of what we did with that character.

---

Because of this type of remark and the sentiment behind it, I personally cannot thank Greenberg for anything.

_____________________

I see dead lesbian cliches

[LostWithoutTara]

Ugh. I was not aware of that. Thank you for pointing it out. I've subsequently edited my post.

[sam7777]

LostWithoutTara: Sorry to have to expose anyone to that. You might want to check out an essay I posted on pge 102 of the Angry Rant thread. For me, seasons severed and especially "The Killer in Me" was about how notWillow had to "heal" by forgetting about Tara and moving on to nssk. This is why I elected not to watch season 7 and see notWillow. The real Willow for me died in "Seeing Red".



My anger has ceased along with my support for Mutant Enemy projects or projects by their writers and producers. I don't think that they can give me a story I want to see any more. I can accept Tar's death. I cannot accept how she was forgotten this season or how out of character Willow has been IMHO.

_____________________

I see dead lesbian cliches

Edited by: sam7777  at: 4/11/03 12:07:32 pm

[LostWithoutTara]

Your essay was great, I completely agree with what you said. I still like that end scene, but that's because Aly crying never fails to get me choked up.



Willow really did die when Tara was killed - she became an inhuman shell. In Villains she echoes Vamp Willow's sentiment of 'bored now'. She is a monster deprived of humanity. NotWillow has recovered from the monsterousness, but without Tara she is incomplete and empty. That's why I can't believe what is happening in Severed.



But my opinion of TKIM is still elevated. At least Tara got a lousy mention. Shame it was 13 episodes too late.

[sam7777]

Thanks for the kind words. My problem with TKIM is that it marks truly the end of W/T and does it with a brutal reenactment of Tara's death and notWillow moving on to JFK. The final end of W/T puts TKIM as the bottom of my Buffy list even below "Seeing Red". At least after "Seeing Red", we could hope for some sort of memorial for Tara. After TKIM, all hope is gone.



Tara also got a mention in "Conversations with Deap People" as the FE tried to make notWillow kill herself. Why can't Tara have had a happy mention this season? Like Willow remembering something good about their relationship? An episode with a flashback to a Willow/Tara adventure would have shown that ME gave a damn about W/T fans.

_____________________

I see dead lesbian cliches

Edited by: sam7777  at: 4/11/03 2:35:40 pm

[LostWithoutTara]

Agreed. We need to see Willow remember the good times. I don't want to watch her cry for Tara every episode, I just want want to see her remembered and respected. Wouldn't it have been touching if Willow had asked the other Scoobs to join her in a private Wiccan funeral for Tara (considering she probably wasn't at the real one). Or if we knew that Tara was still watching out for Willow - they could have swopped Willow and Dawn's stories from CWDP and had Tara bringing Willow a message. Or even if Tara (in spirit form) had been in TKIM and her kiss had saved Willow from the spell (with no JFK). Willow could just as easily have transformed by trying to live life again. This would cause the guilt that led to the spell. Willow would he happier knowing that Tara forgave her for the atrocities she committed in the name of vengeance for her.