I have to admit to being somewhat confused by some of her examples. I totally agree with Adama and Man Pain, but Starbuck is pretty much MAN PAIN (with exclamation marks) herself. Certainly her man pain upstages everyones but Adama's. {Actually, looking at it under the parameters she's giving BSG is lousy with Man Pain what with the fact that all the people on all the other ships are suffering the entire series.). And, Buffy has her man pain moments herself (but then... so do all the scoobs so she isn't alone on that score. I think protagonist priveledge shows up on Whedon shows regardless of gender).
The one I'm really scratching my head over is the Crichton reference because he sacrificed his planet when exactly? I honestly cannot make heads or tails of that one and I'm trying. I actually left a question on her essay because, I'm not sure what she's referring to. He destroyed some planets and a dreadnought or two but none of them was Earth and none of the ones he destroyed were to save Earth so I'm just really confused by that example.
I'm also not sure about the focus on a one-off character like Gwen on AtS. I mean, Gwen/Spike aren't exactly equivlent characters. He's was a pretty high profile character in the series from way back and she appeared in, what? Two episodes? And wasn't particularly compelling in either. Now, if we want to talk a female character sacrificed on the altar of Man Pain we can discuss how Cordelia suffered and how that just becomes Angel pain, we can go for volumes about how that happened. God, what AtS did to Cordelia...
(One could throw Fred into the same pile, except that it's probably equally true that Joss was loving the whole Illyria thing so I don't think that Fred was sacrificed solely for Wesley but also because he thought Illyria was cool).
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The one I'm really scratching my head over is the Crichton reference because he sacrificed his planet when exactly? I honestly cannot make heads or tails of that one and I'm trying. I actually left a question on her essay because, I'm not sure what she's referring to. He destroyed some planets and a dreadnought or two but none of them was Earth and none of the ones he destroyed were to save Earth so I'm just really confused by that example.
I'm also not sure about the focus on a one-off character like Gwen on AtS. I mean, Gwen/Spike aren't exactly equivlent characters. He's was a pretty high profile character in the series from way back and she appeared in, what? Two episodes? And wasn't particularly compelling in either. Now, if we want to talk a female character sacrificed on the altar of Man Pain we can discuss how Cordelia suffered and how that just becomes Angel pain, we can go for volumes about how that happened. God, what AtS did to Cordelia...
(One could throw Fred into the same pile, except that it's probably equally true that Joss was loving the whole Illyria thing so I don't think that Fred was sacrificed solely for Wesley but also because he thought Illyria was cool).