I'm Back

 

Oh hello blog, it's been a while. Looking at my last post, it's been about eight months, wow, I can't believe it's been that long already, it doesn't feel like it's been that long. It looks like no one has read any of my old posts, actually I don't think there's any way of knowing that but there definitely are no comments. Again I will point out that these facts are fine, that I do in fact have rather confusing feelings towards this blog, confusing in my own head anyway - It is public and even uses my real name, but for several reasons it's very unlikely anyone reads it, especially people I don't know. And people who do, well, I don't have many friends anymore and the ones I do, I doubt they care enough to randomly put my name into Google. I mean, I assume this blog would come up if you did search my name on Google.

So this blog is kind of just for me, except it's online so I can't say ANYTHING, so I do hold myself back a bit. But I like this weird in-between feeling of having a blog which is public but also kinda not. I mean, as in no one reads it. I'm over explaining this.

By the way I've given myself half an hour to write this, which I think is the time I used to give myself, even though I would often go way over. I did go back and read some of the last two posts, to see where I left off, to see perhaps why I stopped posting and also just out of curiosity. Unsurprisingly it really is a load of trash, which is most likely what the posts before that were as well, I do remember that I used to blabber on a lot and I wish to continue that tradition. That is one of the reasons I write in here; to get things out of my head, I guess. Or something like that. I didn't quite expect to find so many typos but it's not that surprising, they will also most likely continue. I have however become more worried about my mind over the past eight months; My typing, and to a lesser extent my actual speaking, seems to be become faulty. Of course typos are a normal thing but I never used to miss out really important words in sentences, I find it a little odd that the words I usually miss out are in fact the important ones. Without them the sentence is hard to read or the meaning of the sentence is often reversed. Like the best example is I'll miss out the word NOT. But concerning speaking out loud, it's mostly that I forget words and simple ways to explain things. I'm worrying that I'm getting early on-set Alzheimer's disease. Anyway let's change the subject.

I just had a call from my therapist, as in literally after I finished that last paragraph. I booked an appointment with her, hadn't spoken to her in a while. She had to take some time off.

One thing I didn't forget over eight months is the fact that I wrote a lot about the Buffy TV show on here. I mean, not since the start of the blog many years ago, but it's mostly what I wrote about in the chunk of time I was writing on here while in the pandemic of 2020. More specifically I think that chunk of time in which I was watching a lot of Buffy was in the first lockdown. Since then we've had three in the England, we are currently in the third and on the news they say it will be the final one. They aren't however saying when it'll end exactly but that it will most likely be at the start of spring. I am writing this in February 2021, in case you haven't noticed yet.

I don't plan on writing here every day, maybe once a month? Not that I'm going to try to stick to any schedule, I've learnt through experience that I can't stick to pretty much anything for a long period of time. Probably the only thing I have sticked to is the games quiz I make. That's odd, it's tell me that the word 'sticked' isn't a real word, hah, weird. I just noticed a typo on here while writing this and the funny thing about my typos is that they often look like auto-correct errors but they aren't, they are MY errors.

Anyway, as usual I keep going on tangents, back to Buffy. When I last wrote on here eight months ago, I hadn't finished Buffy and Angel. It also looks like I had already stopped tying to write (kind of) reviews for each episode. I had been writing notes on paper while watching them and then used to notes to write on here. But I had already got behind on them in my last few posts, evidently. It was too much effort, this blog is supposed to be a kind of escape for me. I think the translating and expanding on the Buffy and Angel notes thing was too much work. Which is a lot like most things I try in life, they just end up becoming a chore. By the way I'm trying to cut back on using the word 'just', I noticed I use it a lot.

Perhaps a big reason I started writing on here again last year was because I got really into Buffy and Angel so I wanted an outlet. I used this blog because it's not like anyone I know was watching the shows or would be even interested in it if they weren't. In fact there's a good chance that most people I know think the shows are rubbish. Or at least, and understandably, they wouldn't be interesting because it's such an old show.

Oh, half hour is up but I wanna keep going for a bit - After my last post, I finished watching Buffy and Angel, my nostalgia trip was over and I just remembered that I really didn't want it to end. In fact I just realised that I don't think I wrote about the comics on here, because I think I didn't look into them until after I finished the shows. The comics are, especially at the time, a continuation of the shows, which would have been perfect for me. I think it was a good idea. I way WOULD because I did some research and they seem really really.... crap. It was kind of sad actually. I did find some positive stuff but when I read the negative reviews, I really agreed with them. I looked up a lot of pictures and read a pirated version of the first issue of the Buffy one. By the way they are called seasons, so the Buffy one is season 8. They really don't look or feel like they're the same thing. There's literally at least one interview with one of the creators (maybe Joss?) saying that it's great to make Buffy and Angel into a comic because you don't have to worry about special effects budgets. But when I looked and read some of it, that was in fact one of the big problems. Having "no budget" meant the comics didn't feel like anything like the show. Suddenly there's dragons and fantasy stuff and Dawn is A GIANT which seems to go on for a while. She is a giant straight away and they're all living in a castle in Scotland or something, and now there's whole teams of slayers. Which is what happened at the end of the TV show but I don't think it was a good premise to base a large part of the comic on.

All these new slayers weren't that interesting in the final season of the TV show, they're even less interesting in the comic. They are also unrecognisable, though this is also an issue with even the main Buffy characters, sometimes they look really different, sometimes because they are simply not drawn well. However the front covers look great. I admit that the idea that the characters are unrecognisable is not my idea, I saw it in a review but then I did notice it for myself.

The other reason I gave up on the comics early was because the story and even story structure was not interesting and not the same as the TV show. So I after I read the first issue, I looked up summaries and info on what happens next in the Buffy and Angel comics and they sounded so crap and ridiculous. Now I do want to defend myself, almost against myself, in fact - Others, and even myself, would usually say that you should stick with things past just episode or issue 1 because things can often be a bit rough at first. But the Buffy and Angel comics are an exception because you can clearly see from looking at pictures from them and also reading up on the stories. I looked up A LOT on them and they were clearly very different from the show. One annoying part of the story is that in the Angel comics, it turns out that Gun becomes a vampire and therefor a villain. That's just ruining the character and was not alluded to at all at the end of the TV show.

The sad thing about my ranting is that I'm complaining about comics that are themselves, in fact, old. The shows are old enough and I'd already watched them before I re-watched them last year, but the comics came out not long after both shows ended (maybe a year max?) and I didn't read them back then at all. So it's pretty pathetic and pointless me talking about them on here to be honest. Them being old also means that a HELL of a lot of stuff had happened in them by the time I was researching their stories. Like, really crazy stuff, most of which I can't remember because I must have been looking info up about them about 6 months ago. Another reason the comics don't feel "real" is that the actors from the show don't seem to acknowledge them. I mean, why would they? They moved on a long time ago. In fact it was kind of sad for me to look them up after I finished the show last year, but hay that's life. Most of it wasn't too bad but one thing was quite tragic really - The actor who played Xander sounds like a bit of a mess now, or least he was after Buffy ended. Being the nicest character on the show, it shattered my illusions of the show when I head that he's had drinking problems. I think also drug issues and maybe even domestic abuse charges? I can't remember exactly, probably because I didn't want to think about it for long.

Another issue with the comics is that it turns out they're shockingly expensive. I could have just read them online but I hate reading digital comics, I've tried a lot but it not so different and not as good. BTW a different Buffy comic did start in more recent years, if I remember correctly. It looks better, it looks more like it's sticking to the feeling of the show, so maybe I'll try that one day.

Enough about the comics, let's move on. Anyway, after writing all that, I have the sneaking suspicion that I may have actually written about the comics last year. If I did, it means I've been repeating myself this whole time (in this blog entry).

Actually I should end this post now, even though I have so much more to say but I've been writing for about an hour. Can't believe I mostly wrote about Buffy stuff and old stuff at that. When I say old, I mean stuff I was pondering about seven months ago. I have so many more things to write about concerning actual current times. However I will end this post by saying more about Buffy -

Even now, months later, even before I decided to come back to this blog, I will think about the Buffy and Angel shows. They've occasionally been popping into my skull ever since I finished re-watching them. It was nostalgic watching them (especially on a CRT) while in lock-down in my flat. I'm now looking back at that period I was watching them last year and I'm even nostalgic for that! After I finished them I did entertain the thought of starting them all over again. I didn't because it seemed like a bad idea for several reasons, one reason was that I don't want to get sick of the shows. I wish I could watch them over and over 'for the first time' but that doesn't make sense, of course. My plan is to, well, basically do what I did in the first place - Re-visit them after some time has past, so that I have had time to sort of forget them. That's the best one can do, really. I mean to be honest I'm getting older and older and my memory might get really bad, and I worry about that. But perhaps the only silver lining of that is that I can watch Buffy and Angel again with new, or least newish, eyes. That way I can love it and experience it all over again. I rarely watch anything after I've seen it once but these shows are exceptions because I think they're amazing. One of the few others is Seinfeld, I'm currently on season five. However I'm not watching it as feverishly as I did Buffy and Angel.