Jenny's death is what I find a little bit over-hyped actually. Like of course the death scene itself was extremely-done, but come on at all the talk of the show being daring enough to kill off a major character and a fan favourite. I'm sure that most fans liked Jenny well enough, but IMO people really exaggerate when they act like it was such a brave choice to kill off one of the main characters. Seriously, Jenny Calendar?
Yeah. TBH, I've always thought Passion was overrated as an episode and Jenny's death kinda blown up. I wasn't in fandom back then, but I just have a hard time imagining Jenny was *that* beloved, you know? Even as a teen watching it I thought she had Plot Bait written all over her. I was surprised at the graphic nature for a teen show on the WB part of it but not that she died.
I mean, I don't know. I don't want to dismiss feelings about it, but I do wonder if some of it isn't an 'my favs always die, woe is me!' sort of thing. Modern fandom seems to want to place more importance on this stuff than there was at the time, I feel like. I've seen Kendra called a fan favorite and I'm like 'What?'
Yeah Angelus needed to kill someone that mattered to the characters for his time as a villain to have any impact, so if anything Jenny was the safest and most obvious choice. You couldn't kill any of Buffy's closest friends or her mother (well not at that time anyway when she was still 16/17) without drastically changing her character, but killing off a favourite teacher and Giles's girlfriend was just far enough removed from Buffy that it wasn't going to seriously change the narrative or anything to lose her, while still giving the show a memorable death sequence and a lot of angsty moments.
Arguably they did something similar in the pilot actually with Xander's and Willow's friend being killed off to demonstrate the threat that the vampires represented, although obviously Passion handles the aftermath far far better :P But yeah I don't get why it's developed this rep as something that nobody saw coming, the Angelus arc in general did steer the show in a much darker direction obv and the chase sequence and neck snapping were incredibly memorable, but I wouldn't have thought that the choice to kill Jenny in itself was such a gasp-worthy ohnotheydidnt one, even though that's more or less how it gets spoken of
And lol I have noticed that Kendra seems surprisingly popular among fandom on tumblr, but yeah she always felt like the most thinly-drawn caricature that Joss could come up with to me, rather than a fully developed character :shrugs:
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frelling_tralk) wrote2015-12-23 07:05 pm
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Jenny's death is what I find a little bit over-hyped actually. Like of course the death scene itself was extremely-done, but come on at all the talk of the show being daring enough to kill off a major character and a fan favourite. I'm sure that most fans liked Jenny well enough, but IMO people really exaggerate when they act like it was such a brave choice to kill off one of the main characters. Seriously, Jenny Calendar?
Yeah. TBH, I've always thought Passion was overrated as an episode and Jenny's death kinda blown up. I wasn't in fandom back then, but I just have a hard time imagining Jenny was *that* beloved, you know? Even as a teen watching it I thought she had Plot Bait written all over her. I was surprised at the graphic nature for a teen show on the WB part of it but not that she died.
I mean, I don't know. I don't want to dismiss feelings about it, but I do wonder if some of it isn't an 'my favs always die, woe is me!' sort of thing. Modern fandom seems to want to place more importance on this stuff than there was at the time, I feel like. I've seen Kendra called a fan favorite and I'm like 'What?'
no subject
Arguably they did something similar in the pilot actually with Xander's and Willow's friend being killed off to demonstrate the threat that the vampires represented, although obviously Passion handles the aftermath far far better :P But yeah I don't get why it's developed this rep as something that nobody saw coming, the Angelus arc in general did steer the show in a much darker direction obv and the chase sequence and neck snapping were incredibly memorable, but I wouldn't have thought that the choice to kill Jenny in itself was such a gasp-worthy ohnotheydidnt one, even though that's more or less how it gets spoken of
And lol I have noticed that Kendra seems surprisingly popular among fandom on tumblr, but yeah she always felt like the most thinly-drawn caricature that Joss could come up with to me, rather than a fully developed character :shrugs: