Newsgroup: it.fan.tv.buffy
Titolo: Chosen: Last Dance

http://www.scoopme.com/tv/articles/default.asp?article_id=107484
spoiler
by Hunter Maxin
5/21/2003 
 
Listen. 
There are some thing I am not going to do. 
I will not be talking about the story, not really. I’m not going to mention
how forced the Angel part was. How everything moved so fast in the
beginning, and how scenes were taken for granted. 
I won’t mention that the poignant moment between the original four before
the big battle was just a little too underwhelming. 
I don’t need to say that Wood and Faith’s verbal sparring in the basement
was hysterical, or that Faith is the sexiest thing to walk this earth when
she talks like that. 
I have no desire talk of Caleb, or his death. He was a great character, and
I wish we knew him longer, but that is done with now. 
I don’t need to know why the slayers could fight the uber-vamps with swords
and stakes when Buffy had trouble with one earlier on. I won’t question
Anya’s ability to kill two in three seconds. 
I don’t even care if it was well done (some of it was beyond superb, and
some of it was shallow and off key.) 
None of it matters. The how is behind us. The what is all we have. 
That and the what’s next? 
How, really, even to talk about this. It’s just too big, too final. The
title card came up, and my mind just couldn’t not say what’s next? I had
too many questions, questions I wanted answered in the good way. 
In the future. 
Next year, even. 
They’re good questions too? 
Where do they go? Cleveland? Giles’ estate in England to rest up and get
organized? 
Who goes with them? Willow, Giles, Faith, Xander, sure. Andrew would go.
What else is he going to do? The new slayers, most definitely. Wood, too.
Maybe Dawn? But Buffy? Does she just retire? Move to Kansas, get married,
and have babies? Paris to write a book? 
Because, as dead as Spike appears to be - I patently refuse to accept its
finality, my mind won’t allow it - and as dead as Anya is, this simply
isn’t over. This story has no end, not when there is still evil and people
brave enough in this world to fight it. 
The Slayer tale does go on. It has too. Not everyone there could walk away.
Not everyone there wants too. 
Sunnydale is gone, and Buffy might ride off into the sunset, but this story
must live on. 
The question is how, and whether we’d be willing to accept it. Surely, the
tales exist on our mind, and there will be books. Countless books. Some
will read, and most will not, and some of the stories might even be good. 
There’s Angel, of course, and we are thankful. But Angel, as good as it is
(recently, it’s often been better), and as much as we love it, it still
isn’t the same. The tone, the characters, they aren’t Buffy’s. 
And, we’ll hold out hope for a movie. 
There will always be talk of a movie. 
I want to say I’m sad. I want to say I’m destroyed, but I’m not, not yet. I
will be. In a few days or weeks, or, perhaps when the new fall season
begins without it, it’s all going to sink in, and the weight of it will
crush me. 
But now, I’m just in shock. I’m in shock, and I apologize, because, to an
extent, I’m rambling. I’m running on with this what’s next? in my brain,
because it’s all my brain will allow. 
It’s all I’ve got. 
The problem, I think, is that I can’t look at it like an episode. I can’t
see it in terms of one hour. The stories that ended tonight didn’t being
today, or even this year. It is the culmination of an entire lifetime, in a
way, nearly a decade of stories, and it came to a halt all at once. 
To attempt to separate the things that happened tonight from the rest of
everything is faulty. It doesn’t work. We get to talk about it all again
next week with the wrap up, but that doesn’t help us now. 
But I’ll pick a place to start. What choice do I have? 
Spike. We got it all with Spike. Buffy tells him she loves him. Spike tells
her to get bent. Spike becomes the champion through which humanity is
saved, and Spike, by all accounts, burned up and turned to dust. These are
just the facts, people. 
Try taking them one at a time, it won’t help. Spike is dead. Spike is dead?
Spike is dead. It doesn’t even sound right. It’s like I’m speaking another
language. How can I discuss this rationally? What am I supposed to say to
you that you aren’t thinking - out loud, probably, to the consternation of
your friends and family - by yourself at home? 
Buffy loves Spike? And he says No!?! He might be right to. She may have
just been saying it. But I don’t know that! I want to know! Somebody ask
her. Did she mean it? 
Seriously, this has to happen. 
The Slayers. Right now, around the world, little girls are waking up with
superpowers. Forget the fact that foreign governments probably need to be
alerted, but think on the size of this. How many are there? Are they going
to round them up? Are they even going to explain to them what’s going on?
What are they going to do? 
Doesn’t this become an X-Men Mutant Registration Act sized problem? 
Am I the only one who thinks this way? 
The What’s Next? part of my brain is most perplexed by these questions. My
mind assumes that Giles goes back to England and restarts the Watcher’s
Council out of his living room. 
Willow and Xander will come and be a large part of the rebuilding,
organization, and training of the new body. 
Faith will be the titular Slayer, or, at least, head school girl. The other
slayers who fought at the Battle of Sunnydale would also go and begin their
formal training. 
In my opinion, the Council should be organized more along the lines of a
private school, some sort of cross between Eton, Hogwarts, and The Xavier
School for The Gifted. Watchers would be more like teachers. Older slayers
would eventually grow into leadership roles. Formal military and special
operations branches of the Council will eventually be formed and staffed
entirely by mature slayers. 
The status of the Council will elevate in the state of world affairs. It
will take on stature not entirely unlike the Vatican. Certain government
leaders will have Giles’ phone number on speed dial. Some governments will
contemplate the Council’s right to exist. 
Diplomacy will be an issue. 
But now we are quite ahead of ourselves. 
Wood and Andrew would also go to England, of course. Perhaps Dawn, as well,
if Buffy allowed it. Buffy might go for a little while, to help them get on
their feet, and to take a nice vacation in the English countryside. In
time, she would go off on her own and see the world, maybe even on the new
Council’s dime. Occasionally, she will do Slayeresque good deeds when she
stumbles upon trouble in far flung places like Paris and Prague. 
The new girls would be found, and trained. Willow would formalize a
relationship with the Coven, and might even open up a parallel school for
young witches. Her and Kennedy will eventually be married by a famous
lesbian celebrity in a beautiful outdoor ceremony in the English
Countryside. Millions of Kennedy haters will be disgusted. 
The people of Sunnydale will be really pissed off, and return to whatever
state they came from prior to moving to California. Their family members
will tell them “I told you so.” The news programs in Los Angeles will make
no mention of any of this at any time. 
Wesley will be offered a position of some honor at the Council and turn it
down. He will occasionally assist in times of darkest need, and will take
on a legendary status amongst the girls at school. Comparisons to Harrison
Ford and James Bond will be made. 
Spike will inevitably be resurrected to join Angel and perpetually torment
Buffy’s heart in the book series. (I told you, my mind refuses to accept
his death.) We will never be satisfied. 
When they were ready, Faith would return to Cleveland, with the help of
some of the girls, where she will endeavor to close the hellmouth there. 
And The First Evil will rise again. 
That’s what my brain tells me. That’s what my mind will allow. Anything
more open ended than that gives me a headache. 
Still, there are other things to discuss. 
Anya. I knew it was coming. I began bracing for it with three weeks left,
but still it hurt to watch. I suppose Joss got us by making it so sudden,
so violent. I never guessed she wouldn’t have a final line, a parting quip
about how, of course, being human didn’t pan out. That Xander never got to
say good-bye, that he didn’t even see her go, that her final moments be
with Andrew, with her fighting with these “lame morons” until the
end...these are the perfect addendum to her story. 
I was proud of Anya more than anything else. It’s how she always made me
feel as she struggled to fit in, not because she wanted to belong, but
because doing the right thing felt the most right to her. I’m stealing this
from Shatner, but it was her lack of humanity - at the start - that
ultimately made her the most human. 
For her actions. 
Her choices. 
Anya is definitely gone. She is one we won’t be seeing, and no one will
sully her memory. She is one we can mourn, for real, and forever, because
even in our dreams, she won’t be doing anything new. 
I feel for Xander, for his life that could have been. But I also know that,
as much as he will miss her, he understood her sacrifice for what it was.
She died to save him, all of them, and that was the perfect last grace for
her. 
Andrew. All I’ll say is that I’m thrilled he got his I Can Do That moment.
He truly doesn’t understand why his life was spared, and that makes him an
interesting person to watch in the future. What he does next would make us
all proud, and, at the very end, he earned it with us. In a strange way, he
slides right into the spot in our hearts than opened when Anya died. He
could never hope to replace her, but he is the ideal candidate to succeed
her (I know, two Trek nods in one night is a stretch. Cut me some slack,
these are trying times.) 
Dawn. Her kicking Buffy in the shin was priceless, but I feel silly talking
about it. What a woman she will become? What a force she already is? We
couldn’t have been any more wrong about her, and we deserve punishment for
chasing Joss away from DtVS. When she referred to herself as “Junior
Watcher” a light went on in my heart that warms me still. With two little
words, she mapped out her entire future in my head, and these stories will
bring me comfort when I need them. 
Willow, Xander, and Giles. It is funny how little they need our attention
here. Other than Xander’s loss of Anya, in a strange way, their lives are
little changed. It just moves. These past seven years, their lives have
slowly been overtaken by the mission. That is what they know. It is all
life has prepared them for, and they will soldier on. As big as this
apocalypse was - and, make no mistake, it was - it also brings with it an
air of familiarity to them. This is what they do. This is what they will
always do. 
Buffy. Next week we will discuss our girl. Next week we will marvel in how
far she’s come. How much she’s done. She deserves whatever break she has
coming, whether it be retirement or vacation. Buffy has earned the right to
fade away, if she desires, and her story truly has come to an appropriate
end. 
What has it all meant? What she really wants? Who she really wants? These
are private questions for her now, and, as much as the ‘shippers in us want
to know, we also don’t need to know. Not with the same urgency. One senses
that she now has the opportunity to find her heart like any normal girl in
her twenties. Nothing would surprise me now, least of all her falling madly
in love with an architect in Connecticut who never heard of a slayer. 
She probably wouldn’t even tell him. 
She wouldn’t need to. 
The life Buffy has led, the mistakes she has made, these are all behind
her. The road stretches out in front of her and nothing has been decided
for her. There is nothing to tie her to her past. No roots. 
Even Dawn binds her to nothing. Dawn has a family and a life without Buffy.
They are already too grown to need each other that way. Their lives were
never normal enough to demand such conventions anyway. Dawn moving to
England while Buffy backpacks around the world suits them both better,
anyway. 
Buffy’s died twice. It’s high time she finally lived. 
And so it ends. I’ve gone on too long, and I could go on all night. 
I wish I could sit around a campfire with all of you and just tell stories. 
Do you remember when....? 
We could warm ourselves by the fire and tell tales of heroes and what they
have meant to our lives. We could pass them around under the stars and make
them legend for our children’s children. 
And they would be our stories. These were our lives too, imperiled and
saved in front of our eyes every Tuesday stretching back as far as we can
remember. We were different people when this story began, shadows of who we
now are, and this huge part of our history that we grew up with is
apparently no more. 
What else is there to say? 
What else can we do? 
What’s done is done, and we are left with our memories. 
So, one last time, raise your glass with me... 
To Buffy... 
May you always find peace. 
I’ll see you all next week at the Wake. 
One last thing... there is one more thing I would like to leave you with,
one final piece of me before we go. I don’t really know how big of a deal
it is, but it is important to me. 
My name is not Hunter Maxin. 
I debated for a long time about whether I would share this with you, and I
very nearly decided against this, but our time together, and the
relationship we have made this a necessity. The bottom line is that you all
have meant so much to me that to leave you with anything but the whole
truth seemed unfair. 
The story is a simple one. When Jen Sonstein retired, everyone wanted to
review BtVS. Who could blame them. The editors held an open audition and
received scores of submissions. Many were from ScoopMe writers, though most
came from outside the existing staff, and, from what I’m told, a great deal
of them were excellent. At this time, I had been gone from ScoopMe for
about a year after three years of writing everything from Charmed and
Enterprise to ScoopMe’s first (and only completed) original serial novel,
The Red Door. 
Like everyone else, the opportunity to write for Buffy the Vampire Slayer
was too attractive to pass up, and, I too submitted a series of reviews.
Thankfully, I got the job after a tight competition that dragged on for
weeks, but there was a concern. A number of the finalists were already
ScoopMe writers and no one, least of all me, wanted there to be bad blood
or cries of favoritism amongst the existing staff. We all felt it would be
better if the gig went to an outsider to soothe office tensions, and Hunter
Maxin was born. 
My real name is Matthew Heitzer, and this past year has been one of the
most enjoyable and satisfying experiences in my life. What we have here,
and what we’ve done together, have become a huge part of who I am. I thank
you for that. I cannot express enough what all of this has meant to me. 
I’ll still be here next week, for our final wrap up, our last goodbye, and
I look forward to seeing you all then. 
Until that day...
-- 
Jolan Tru
Filippo "Hytok" Simone - 
http://www.startrekitaliamagazine.it/
*L'oracolo Romulano di Sunnydale* - 
http://www.ussexcalibur.it/
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/hyterdeflok/
 - 
http://uncino.free.fr/

 
http://www.scoopme.com/
Tutte le volte questo url mi fa venire il mente...va beh, nulla ;)
Ciao
Valentina
-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - 
http://www.Mailgate.ORG

 
http://www.scoopme.com/tv/articles/default.asp?article_id=107484
azz, ma quanto scrivono??
--
Tristano
ICQ #117306256

azz, ma quanto scrivono??
Prolissi, eh? :-)
