The Kitten Board and Buffy Season 6!

So a guy called DrLloyd is doing a history of The Kitten Board from its beginnings as merely a Willow & Tara fan board through its period of being (and to some extent still is) a protest board over the death of Tara and the introduction of Kennedy. 10 years have passed since that fateful run up to the episode "Seeing Red". Given the passing decade, have my views on Season 6 and Tara's death changed at all?

Truth is, if anything my feelings have merely become better expressed. Whilst I certainly no longer feel the raging anger and feeling of betrayal towards Joss that I once did, nor has anything in the passing 10 years made me feel that he has made any real attempt to make what I feel are well overdue and obvious amends.

The more I see Season 6, and I have watched season 6 again since the original transmission (the wonders of DVD) it makes even less logical sense now to kill off Tara than it did then, and it made no sense then. I will probably at some point write some great tome, pouring over every point and principle involved in what I see as a colossal mistake that blighted the show and a very positive storyline for LGBT people and others (I belong in the others category) and for no real gain, either critically or commercially. But worse yet, they lost the moral argument, and that is a shameful indictment of Joss.

Truth is, its all too late to do anything. Buffy finished the following season, unable to get back the mass exodus it lost when Tara died, and the comic book has really done nothing other than underline that point. Joss is unable to accept blame which is his perogative but it does leave me thinking less of him as a person as well as a writer.

The Diet!

Yes I am on a diet, one that is self-inflicted so I cant blame others. Nor can I blame others for the causes of needing the diet.

The causes? Simple enough a lack of a decent diet (in so much as foodstuffs) and exercise (it appears sadly that masturbation does not count as an exercise routine). Add to that my general state of not really giving a damn about myself and the meds I'm on having the effect of slowing my metabolism down and the result is over weight me.

So why the diet? Well its not for reasons of vanity, I simply cannot summon up enough self-esteem to even care moderately about my looks or if I attract others based on the belief that no matter what I did, short of a full body transplant, it would not make any more physically appealing. No my reasons are health ones.

At Xmas it became apparent to me at the dinner table that I really had put on pounds and then some. A shirt a friend had bought me wouldn't fit (truth is it was probably too small to begin with but it still made me embarrassed) and my own shirt was nearly bursting loose after the meal. Although my weight had nothing to do with my spending the next 24 hours after the meal throwing up at every opportunity, it did make me feel that it was time for a change. Also, whilst I hold little love for myself, I would definitely hurt my loved ones if they saw me die and being somewhat of a fatalist I felt I was heading that way, or at the least to an early grave.

It made me think about death and it scared me. Leaving those I love behind scares me. And although I dont believe in either Heaven or Hell, they both scare me. I am comforted by the notion of the end being that, the end. But dying a slow, painful death due to ill health brought on by my progressing towards obesity, that does scare me. Hell scares me because although I dont think I'm a bad person I can't claim to be a good one either. I have made mistakes and choices that I am not proud of. I've never tried to hurt anyone and in doing so I've hurt people, which makes me quite the coward. Truth is I am very much hoping for a chance to redeem my worthless life. I dont care if I never see Heaven, as long as I dont see Hell.

So part one, diet trying to get my health back to some degree. Eating low fat foods and doing more everyday moving about than I usually do. I have felt an increase in my energy levels and today a shirt that for the last couple of years hasn't come close to fastening round my neck is close to it again. I dont care about flat stomachs and washboard abs and six packs and all that vain nonsense, just to have something like equilibrium again will suffice.

As for the rest, my inner peace, I feel I am damned for the choices I made, some of them whilst not really thinking beyond the most carnal of thoughts. I know I shut off, I know I am very insular and very difficult to get any emotion out of because these days I am so scared of getting hurt i have pretty much accepted hermitude and loneliness to what I am sure would be continued pain if I put myself "out there".

I've come close to suicide many times and never done it. That I haven't has far more to do with my fears of what awaits beyond and what it would do to my family and friends here than it has to do with any desire on my part to go on existing. So I do what I can to survive, and this diet is part of that.

truth is I dont live, I merely exist. And the sadder truth is that for the most part, I'm okay with that.