For the month of April, I’m breaking out of my usual “format” and showcasing one of my favorite fandoms a day, so I will have shiny things to make me smile every day of my birthday month. When I sat down to write the list of my top 30 fandoms, I found the task terribly hard. How do I choose just 30? My apologies to all my beloved fandoms left off the list. Iām using random.org to determine what fandom gets what day.
Angel the Series
Favorite Quote: Spike: [about Dana] The tingling in my forearms tells me she’s too far gone to help. She’s… one of us now. She’s a monster.
Angel: She’s an innocent victim.
Spike: So were we… once upon a time.
Angel: [understanding] Once upon a time.
Favorite Season: Five (yeah, I know, I’m weird. I love the last seasons of Buffy and Angel the best even though they both break out of the shows’ molds)
Favorite Episodes: Damage, Smile Time, hero, Spin the Bottle, Life of the Party, Not Fade Away, I Will Remember You… clearly I need to do a top ten list of favorite episodes in the future…
How I Got Into It: Like many things, I think it was online fandom that pushed me into trying an episode. I watched TNT reruns and was instantly hooked. I still don’t know how I managed to avoid spoilers, but I remember being surprised Wes wasn’t in the beginning of the show and then shocked when he came on board.
Fangirl Intensity (scale of 1 to 10 with 10=full-out obsessed): 8
How I Fangirl: I’ve written fanfic, though mostly post-series ‘verse fic that takes into account both Buffy & Angel. I have tried getting into the Angel continuing series comics but some of the major plot twists are painful for me (I feel like the ending was so emotional I almost don’t want an official “here’s what happens after that”). I do own some of the other one-offs and short series (how could I resist puppet!Spike?). I’ve done some crafts like ATCs and I’ve read a handful of tie-in novels. I bought Season 5 on DVD before any of the others and wasn’t even planning on buying the others until I got a good deal on the DVD boxed sets. And even though I owned it, I would still wake up to episodes on repeat on TNT and watch them over and over again.
Favorite Fandom Creation: Excluding the amazing fics I can’t link to here… Hmmm… Maybe some of my favorite userpics by cooldecade, sdwolfpup, __sparkles__, and quebelly? The cast is so expressive!
Why I’m Glad I Fangirl It: It has come to my attention lately that I love boy scout characters more than any other character types out there–characters who have unfaltering moral centers and direct all the other characters around them toward the good. You don’t get any more boy scout than Duncan MacLeod or Angel. Oh, he messes up some time and there’s brooding, but that’s the best part š Again, though, it’s largely about the full cast for me. Cordy comes into her own in this show. Wes absolutely transforms over and over until he is as rich and complex a character as you can get. Then with Doyle, Lorne, Gunn, and Fred and even baddies like Lindsey and Lilah you have a beautiful, full cast of amazing characters that drive the action in a million directions at once. Not to mention expanding the Spike, Dru, Darla, and Angelus backstory. I’m not a huge fan of the middle of the series; it’s interesting and I’ll watch it over and over again for some of the best moments in the show. But I just don’t like what happens to Connor and Cordy in Season 4. I will always laugh at the talking hamburger. I will always cry when Angel tries to smother Wes with a pillow. I will always want to reach in and hug Angel when he’s in Pylea and sees his reflection. I will always watch “A Hole in the World” through my fingers, unable to take in the raw emotions happening on screen directly.
Leave a Reply