Succubus Club
5/22/02 - Hours Two-Three

Many thanks to Rally for transcribing this interview, and for allowing us to post it here.

C=Candy
K=Kitty
J=Jane

*Stream broke and it was a good 15 minutes before I got reconnected - coming in middle of a question
K: ...coincidence that Anya became a vengeance demon again so she could pop in and out of scenes. Or was it just like oh, she's a VD now we can have her do this.
J: Oh we knew we wanted her to be a VD, again because it gives her exciting, fun stuff to do. And then we were in a fix of how we were going to move people around, how we were going to get information to people. And then we realized, hey we got a VD. It just worked out.
C: If everyone is growing up and be accountable for their acts this season, when will Buffy be accountable for hers? It appears that everyone will soon know what Spike almost did to her and he will be held accountable for that. But when will everyone find out how she treated him. Everyone should see the dark side in her. Everyone has been privy to the evil dark in the others, Willow and magic, Xander running out on Anya, Anya becoming a VD, Dawn stealing and is held accountable for it. But no one knows how she treated Spike, the way she used him and beat him up, she needs to be held accountable for her evil dark, by everyone.
K: But she did try to kill everyone.
J: Yes, that's even worse, she tried to kill all her friends and they forgave her. Yes, she did treat Spike badly but she didn't do it from an evil place. She did it from a not knowing what else to do place. Which to me feels really true for your twenties. Even though on Buffy, everything has consequences, sometimes the consequence is that you're not called on it. I think a lot of times Buffy gets away with stuff, she's not called on which is something as we all look back at our twenties, that we sometimes go, oh I treated that person very badly. I didn't behave... and you don't always get called on it. And you have to live with it. I think Buffy lives with her own recriminations a lot. I think Buffy can tend to be harsh. She hasn't dealt with, she makes so many mistakes. She has not dealt well with Dawn, at all. She has not been open with her friends. She was terrible to Spike. Her friends forgive her, because they are good people and she has the hardest job in the world. She is very much a normal person, maybe, I mean those are mistakes everybody makes. They are the kind of mistakes everybody makes. Your twenties are a time to make those mistakes. If Buffy were severely punished for every one, every mistake she made...
C: She'd be dead by now.
*More Spike Buff talk
C: He has a soul but does he have a working chip, somebody wants to know.
J: Yes he does. The chip still works.
C: So he cannot hurt humans, even though he will be a souled vampire.
K: Is he ever getting that thing out?
J: Don't know.
C: Let's talk about Dawn. I'm going to be perfectly honest, I've never been a big fan of Dawn's. Perhaps one of my favorite moments of last nights show was when Willow said all those stuff about her being whiny. I was like go Willow. That was hysterical to me. We see last night in the final scenes, this huge revelation almost, between her and Buffy, where she starts to fight with her. What does this mean for Dawn and I've heard rumors to get her ready for a spin off of her own should Buffy not go to season eight.
J: Dawn doesn't have strength. So it would be very hard for her to fight beside Buffy as anything like a Slayerette. She can be a Scooby, she can do what Willow does. Although Willow had magic. She has certainly been dumped into the gang a little bit. In that final episode we saw that Buffy... I love the line "I've been protecting you from the world, what I really want to do is show you the world". I think that's very cool. This is one of those things where you have consequences. We could punish Buffy for infantalizing Dawn or we could do something even better which is have her realize what she has been doing and face it. Also you may notice that Dawn is the right age to enter high school. She is the age Buffy was when we started. She is at a good age to start participating in a different way in our adventures.
C: So is it foreshadowing for next season that she will be more a part of everything.
J: She's gonna be a little different next year and she's going to be... in the thick of things. And she's not always going to be the damsel.
C: I was going to ask that, is she just always going to be in trouble.
K: Is she going to keep stealing things?
J: I, I don't know. I cannot comment on the klepto angle. It's an interesting thing, the needing of a damsel. When we first started, we had a lot of people that didn't have powers and one person who did. There were a lot of people who could be in danger. Now we've got a bunch of people with powers and only a few that don't. So, Xander and Dawn have been in the situation where they were our last two damsels. The problem is, everybody hates the damsel. You resent the damsel for always getting themselves in trouble. So what do you do when you realize that and ok Xander saves the world and Dawn has a sword. Now we're fresh out of damsels. And you get creative and you think in new ways.
C: It takes you back to stand alone episodes, where the damsel's are non cast members.
K: So Willow is fighting against Buffy and we know Willow has this new power. But Buffy knows how to fight, Buffy's like a martial arts expert. But Willow, she doesn't know how to do it.
J: She's been participating in Scooby fights and helping Buffy for many years.
C: But the things she was doing last night. She must have gotten that from Rack or Giles or something.
J: Even Dawn had a very smooth move, just from observing.
C: We're talking about Joss' involvement this season, only one episode, a big episode obviously. Huge episode and he was busy doing Firefly, the pilot and directing the pilot and that's why he couldn't do the finale this year. But you did mention about the first episode for next season.
J: Yes we have broken the first episode for next season and my understanding is that Joss will be writing that himself. He has written not only the two hour Firefly event but also another one hour episode for Firefly. So everyone should tune in and check out the fancy new show. Mega Joss.
C: And Angel as well?
J: And Angel. I think he is going to be more involved in Angel next year.
K: And you are going to do Firefly and Buffy and ...Angel.
J: Buffy and Firefly. If they would like me to (write Angel), I am there.
C: What scene I really liked, and I know it has to be intentional, was her digging out of the hole.
J: Absolutely. Yep bringing it back around to the beginning. A hand comes out of the grave.
K: Ok, I want to know about Willow's hair. Did you guys dye her hair?
J: No it was a wig. It was a very very good wig. I was sitting as close to her as I am to you guys looking at her hair and going wow they dyed your hair. She says no it's a wig. You could see like little hairs coming out of her head. I don't know how they did it.
K: I was looking at the close ups and I was like damn, they dyed her hair.
J: She was really uncomfortable because they had to put the wig on really really tight. Plus she had those enormous black contact lenses. They cover your whole eye. She could see kind of but it was more that they are very painful to put in if you have sensitive eyes. I mean I can't wear regular contacts. Then she was out on that bluff overlooking the ocean and they had sort of scattered charred earth around there for the effects of her blasts. The wind was blowing really hard, blowing all this dirt in her eyes. So there is actually, you can see that her eyes are almost all the way closed. She's trying to keep the dirt out of them.
K: Was Sunnydale always on the coast?
*Joking about different times they went to the water, beach, docks in the show
C: How do you feel when sometimes it gets too complicated, or does it, is it harder (visiting posting boards etc) when the fans are hard on the show and they transfer the anger to you, its writers.
J: That is hard. A lot of us were more interactive when we first get the job. The new writers are all I will go to the posting board, I will interact with the fans. It does get tiring, because you bond with the show so much and even if the decision isn't yours, you have to take the responsibility for it and defend it. I think that's really important. So you're put in this position of having to defend things that if you were a fan maybe you... and sometimes it's embarrassing because people remember the episodes better than you do. I feel weird, like I wrote that and I don't remember that moment. I can't remember why it was important. That makes it a little bit of a strain sometimes. But other than that, we go to the posting board party, we always all have a blast. The fans are very kind, very smart. I mean this Tara thing is... is probably going to be really hard on us, because... you do find yourself getting defensive and feeling misunderstood. Yeah it can be tough.
C: It's interesting that you brought up the fact that you may disagree or may not like or something... something that happens in the script. But you find yourself having to defend it. When David Fury was in here last week, we asked him about that because he had some very different points of view about certain characters and stories and he's not shy about it. He told us as much, and yet it's still his job to write the script as he's been told to. We asked how difficult that was for him. Is that as much of a problem for you?
J: Not as much as it is for Fury. Fury is, has very strong independent ideas about where things should go and I tend to be more what... Joss' word defines the universe. When we hear Joss' word we know what the right answer is. So it does differ for the two of us. We are probably the two most extreme, he is the most likely to disagree, I am the most likely to hop on board. So it is a different experience for both of us. I tend to pretty much love everything we have done.
C: Has there been anything though, that maybe you didn't...
J: There really, there has been very few. There are just a few lines and I don't even want to say what they are because they belong to specific authors. Ok, ok, here's one. I can cite this one. The thing that was cut from my episode where Buffy sleeps with the guy in college, she sleeps with Parker.
K: Parker sex.
J: Harsh Light of Day. Where at the very end, all the fans were very upset. They were like this didn't feel like, why would Buffy get so hung up on this guy. Particularly lines at the end about maybe we can still get back together, maybe if I try harder. People thought that was very very weak of her. What they didn't see was a bit that had gotten cut where she says the whole time I was with Parker I kept thinking look at me, I'm doing something that doesn't have to do with Angel. Look at how this has nothing to do with Angel. OMG this has nothing to do with Angel... and that got cut and I think that was a mistake.
*Talk about cut stuff and DVDs more Buffy / Spike rape talk
*Talk about Christ allusion / Xander, not intentional
*Talk about the flowers at Xander / Anya wedding were from Giles, that scene got cut
*More talk about Giles and Ripper
J: It's certainly a stunning moment when something throws Willow back and suddenly there is Giles.
C: And no glasses.
J: That's right, Joss said no glasses for Giles this episode. Let me ask the audience, how many of you think Anya should get together with Giles.
*Talking about playing with the notion of Giles / Anya
K: Do the DVDs have Buffy bloopers?
J: We certainly see gag reels every year at the rap party. I don't know if any of those...
*More talk about bloopers
C: So the cast for next season is exactly the same as this season?
J: Ummm, well Tara won't be back at least not...
C: Well I meant in the credits at least except for the one that she died in.
J: I believe that's right.
K: No new people.
J: There are going to be new recurring characters but I don't believe there will be any new regular characters.
C: Can you tell us anything about these new recurring characters?
J: I wouldn't be surprised to see a high school principal.
C: Oh for Dawn in HS.
*Joking about rebuilding the High School and the principal
*Talk about Anya having soul, Jane thinks yes
J: As you get to know a character, they are the thing that they are. This is our Vengeance Demon, all VD's are like that. This is our Vampire, all Vampires are like them. They are categories. You get to know them and when you, like, you get to know people in real life, you find out how much more complex they are. One of the reasons why I think people are saying, "you killed a lesbian," are not giving her enough credit for being a person... first. We killed a person, goddammit. (laughing)
C: Maybe they are upset about that, I mean really maybe they are upset that Tara is gone.
J: It is very sad that Tara is gone, I absolutely understand. And I even understand the taking a step back and saying do you realize what you did, you killed the lesbian. But I also think it discredits her a little bit to suggest that she is, that she is nothing more than that label. She is so much more a person, than she is a label. That I think even as we debate the politics, of killing her, gosh you know... if if... it would certainly... I don't know, if you did the Matthew Shepard Story, you're killing a gay person. If you do a movie, uh Schindlers List, oh my goodness, Spielberg killed many many Jews. It is a tricky situation and I don't want to make light of anybody's anger. But I think it is interesting that we do make our characters very fully faceted, be they lesbians, be they whatever. We like to think that they become people with sooo much texture that, so much reality that, that's what becomes important about them, not that they happen to write demon on their college application.
K: When you look at Warren's character, you're like I can't believe Willow skinned him and killed him. I am sure people were sorry to see him go, but I don't think anyone was that bummed because he was a mean, evil, horrible guy.
J: Yes, it's true. And um um... maybe he was gay.
K: Maybe.
C: Don't start. You're gonna get yourself in trouble now.
J: He was seriously leading poor Andrew on.
*Joking about Andrew
*Talk about Buffy being in a mentor role next season to Dawn and or other people
*Talk about the characters changing, growing up, becoming different
J: There were a lot of people who I talked with on the Internet saying they would stop watching when Willow became gay. Cause they used to watch with their kids and now she's changed and it's horrible and now I can't let my daughter see it. Wait...whyyy? I was very confused by that. We probably lost some people then, we'll lose some people now. But when it's time to change you got to rearrange.
C: Ohhh, Brady Bunch. Why don't we talk about what you can say about next season that you maybe haven't already said.
J: Ohhh, I've said far too much. Next season, yes, looping around to the beginning. School, mentoring... hmm Joss doing some writing.
K: Is she still gonna work at the Doublemeat? And maybe we'll see Giles?
J: I think she actually has already been fired at this point. She hasn't been there for a while. Maybe we'll see Giles.
C: What about somebody like Amy who has kind of been left up in the air.
J: It is always a possibility.
C: Any other returns...?
J: Very possibly we could see some of the trio, bits and pieces of the trio, you know. You could see... hmm hmm this is an interesting little hint, I wouldn't at all be surprised to see some old villains.
K: Drusilla...
J: Maybe. Maybe more than that.
C: Faith?
J: I don't think I can comment on Faith cause I have no idea.
*Various closing comments and thank you's
J: Oh and wait, oh... I am very very sorry about Tara. Really. We really feel bad. And it is very possible that we did a bad thing. And I don't want to completely... I don't want to completely exonerate us because... um I could, I could... it is possible.
C: That's very cool of you to say.

*End of the third hour, no Jane, Candy and Kitty giving their thanks to everyone
K: We also want to thank and you know this isn't, I am going to say this and people are going to be all you're being mean. We want to thank The Kitten Board, for all the Kittens who have listened. You know even if you were angry at us, or didn't like what was said. We still want to thank you for your input and for your comments and criticisms and all just listening. We want to thank you for that absolutely.
C: I want to thank you for caring about this show and these characters. Because with out... even if our views are not the same as yours, I can never really bad mouth somebody who loves the show. You obviously love the show and... at least you did at one point. Or you loved a character and that is to be commended and uh I think that is what people are in this business for people to care.

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