by BBOvenGuy » Thu Jun 13, 2002 5:14 pm
It's not so much optimism as it is setting reasonable expectations and redefining what counts as a victory.
Do I expect Mutant Enemy to apologize for what they've done and do some sort of plot twist at the beginning of Season 7 that restores Willow and Tara to the way they were right before Tara was shot? No, of course not. Do I expect that the vast majority of [i:ceaeee4c74] Buffy[/i:ceaeee4c74] fans will ever understand what we're so upset about and why we're upset about it? Nope, not really. But that's not really the issue.
The way I see it, if we can make our case on a reasonably large stage for a reasonably large chunk of the summer, people are going to remember what happened. It will become a permanent part of the [i:ceaeee4c74] Buffy[/i:ceaeee4c74] lore, the way the two great write-in campaigns became part of the [i:ceaeee4c74] Star Trek[/i:ceaeee4c74] lore. When people remember [i:ceaeee4c74] Buffy[/i:ceaeee4c74], they will remember Season 6 as the year when Mutant Enemy ticked off a large part of their fan base, and the fan base fought back. If [i:ceaeee4c74] Buffy[/i:ceaeee4c74] does fold its tent after S7, as it quite possibly will, what happened at the end of S6 may go down in history as the show's fatal mistake.
And then maybe the next time some writer or producer wants to do something like the W/T storyline, they won't make the same mistakes that Joss made.
But in some ways, none of that is really the issue, either. On another level, I think the issue for each of us is whether or not we, as individuals and as a group, stand up for what we believe in and refuse to back down. If we can look ourselves in the mirror and know that we did what we could instead of going along with the sheep of Joss's flock, in some ways that's enough.
That's how I see it, anyway.
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