May 2002
posts
Questions
and Interpretations (**Spoilers** and maybe a soap box or
two) -- manwitch, 16:11:59 05/11/02 Sat
First a question: The sound cut out on my TV for the last
line of the scene between Spike and Clem. Can anyone tell me
what Spike said to him right before it cuts to the
heist?
Now an interpretation that not everyone will or should agree
with. I think it was Angel vs Angelus who asked not too long
ago whether or not Buffy was postmodernist. Without going
into too much detail, the answer is yes.
Because of this, there are certain things the show will
never ever advocate. The show will never suggest that
exclusivity or cliques for any reason, even a clique of
Buffy, Xander and Willow fighting the forces of evil, are
preferable to open, inclusive communities whose
participation is based only on an interest and willingness
to participate.
The show will also never suggest that people are static,
unchanging, condemned to forever be what they once were.
People can change, and they always do.
So we know that the rejection of Anya and Spike was not a
good thing. I don't mean rejecting him after he assaults her
in the bathroom. I mean the years worth of rejections that
came before. And we know that Spike is NOT forever condemned
to be evil, nor is anya. He is not the same monster that
slaughtered half of Europe. Xander is wrong. The point of
their demonic side is not that they are bad and will always
be that way.
Sometimes its important to remember that the show is not a
plot driven contrivance like ER or The West Wing, which are
all well and good for what they are. Its a collection of
symbols that address how we, the viewers, actually live in
the world, how we might live if we could shake off everyone
else's vision of who we are and what we are to be. And in
that sense, Buffy is the important one.
Buffy and Spike are through. There is simply no way that
this show can have her "take him back." On a visual level,
he sexually assaulted her in the most intimate room of her
private home. No woman ever is or should ever feel
responsible for that. Doesn't matter what they wear, what
they said, or what they did in the past. Period. It would be
an extremely unfortunate image if she allowed him back into
her life any time soon.
That said, in this case Buffy is responsible. Not for
Spike's assault, but for what is going to become of him.
Personally I suspect Spike will be back as the devil
incarnate. He is now fueled by the fires of self-loathing
that only Lucifer himself has known before him. In an effort
to prove or demonstrate his love, he violated the object of
that affection, and expelled himself from its grace. And he
knows both that this brutal rejection is unfair and
that its his fault.
But, and this is the sad part, all Spike wanted was to be
with her, to be part of her struggles, to be accepted in her
circle and to have her acknowledge that he was worthy of
it. People will argue with that and say, no spike wanted
to bring her down. But he really didn't. He wasn't trying to
kill her, wasn't trying to vamp her, and was prepared even
to come to the aid of Willow and Xander when Buffy wasn't
preseent. He was by no means the perfect guy, but Buffy had
the chance to include him, the chance to "slay" him without
slaying him. And then she would have truly been the
transcendent slayer. But it looks like he's going to be a
monster. And I still don't think that Buffy can just kill
him. For Spike to be merely dusted would render the last
five years of Buffy's life meaningless. Spike is her
responsibility.
I'm still not sure Buffy is in her right mind, or being
honest with herself about Spike. Trust like love, is not
something one earns. It is given. That's why its trust. Its
a form of faith in other people. Seeing Red made clear that
Buffy didn't trust Willow enough to tell her, didn't trust
Xander enough to tell him, and she doesn't trust Spike. And
Dawn, at the end of entropy, said I know what its like to
feel you have to hide, to have secrets. This "trust" issue
is about Buffy's character, not Spike's worth.
So were the eggs in the crypt the symbol of creative
rejuvenation that Buffy could have had with Spike but
destroyed through her own denial? Or were they the seeds of
the monstrosity that Buffy's continued relationship with
Spike would have produced? I just can't accept the latter.
Buffy doesn't have to marry Spike. They don't have to live
happily ever after. She can even kill him if necessary. But,
as Captain Kirk once said, "everybody's human." And
so is Spike. And Anya. When you marginalize them you define
the limits of your own humanity. Buffy dropped the ball with
Spike. She's had a hard time of it. She's unhappy and
confused, and she is fallible. But she will definitely bear
the consequences of what happened between them. Since these
are the episodes where we typically get our glimpse of the
following season's big bad, I can only wonder if perhaps
Spike will come back as the monster of monsters.
This season has supposedly been about growing up, or
actually the refusal to do so. Growing up isn't just about
being responsible for your decision, but also about
attempting to earn the life you desire. Everyone on the show
this year is mirroring Buffy. She doesn't want this life.
She didn't ask for it. She wishes it was easier or somewhere
else. And so do they all. They all want it to be easier.
They want the love but not the pain, not the work. But you
get the life you get. That's the existentialist part. If you
want something different, you better make it yourself, not
just expect it to be different because you're
wishing, and not just thinking you can cut corners or find
some easy path, winning the lottery as it were. You do the
work, and you take responsiblity for your actions, and if
you're lucky then maybe you get some reward that
falls far short of your original dreams. But its better
because its really yours.
Buffy has waited a long time to recognize this, and she and
those around her are losing their way as a result. What
matters isn't that Willow has turned to the dark side, but
what will Buffy do about it. Its nice and all that Warren
will get the horrendous treatment he deserves without Buffy
being demeaned, but the fact that Willow is lost to us
really makes Warren that much more despicable. He wins even
as he loses. Its Buffy's responsibility to make something
good come out of that, to ensure that the moment Willow
seized in Welcome to the Hellmouth wasn't the moment that
destroyed her life and forfeited her future.
Oh well, a brilliant episode like that sparks a lot of
thoughts, but I must now channel my sparks in the direction
of the grill.
[>
Great post! -- Dariel, 17:18:19 05/11/02
Sat
I'm afraid you're right about Spike's direction in season 7.
The cherished belief that he would never hurt Buffy, a
belief that sustained him against his dismal existence, is
gone.The only thing that might save him is Buffy's
forgiveness. Not saying she should forgive him; just that if
he sinks back into evil, that might be the only thing to
reach him.
[> [>
Re: Can't answer this cause it would includes
spoilers -- Rufus, 20:22:42 05/11/02 Sat
I wouldn't jump to any conclusions about how Buffy feels
about Spike, or that she would be unable to forgive him.
[>
Re: Questions and Interpretations (**Spoilers** and
maybe a soap box or two) -- Cactus Watcher, 17:18:23
05/11/02 Sat
Clem - Hey! Come on now, Mr. Negative. You never know
what's just around the corner. Things change.
Spike (sarcastically) - Yeah, they do! Ha! ...(Something
occurs to him and his expression changes) If you make
them!
[>
Re: Questions and Interpretations (**Spoilers** and
maybe a soap box or two) -- gabby, 18:58:52 05/11/02
Sat
Please, Spike doesn't have to become a monster because Buffy
spurned him, that would be a immature action and one clearly
of his own making and responsibility. If I get burned by
someone I can get mad, stamp my feet, whatever, but coming
back for revenge or to hurt that person physically and
emotionally would be of my own choosing, blaming the person
who hurt me for my downward personal destruction is a cop
out and a poor excuse. We mostly do what we do by choice not
because someone else made us.
[>
Re: Questions and Interpretations (**Spoilers** and
maybe a soap box or two) -- celticross, 20:40:09
05/11/02 Sat
Excellent post, manwitch, with some points raised that have
helped me clarify my opinions on Buffy's behavior this
season. I have not liked the way she has acted, and as many
have pointed out, she has been through a great deal. But no
matter how low she feels, how depressed, how disconnected
from the world, she is still responsible for what she does.
How we feel does not excuse how we behave. Buffy's sense of
loss and isolation does not excuse her using Spike anymore
than Spike's feelings for her excuse his actions in the
bathroom scene. Willow's desire to keep things happy in her
relationship with Tara does not excuse her use of memory
spells on her lover, and Xander's fear of the future does
not excuse leaving Anya at the alter. I just hope the
Scoobies realize that they've all done wrong to each
other.
[>
Re: Questions and Interpretations (**Spoilers** and
maybe a soap box or two) -- Grant, 00:04:05 05/12/02
Sun
While I agree with a lot of your post, I must disagree with
its beginning. BtVS is definitely not postmodernist. Based
on your argument, I'm pretty certain the only reason you
felt it is postmodernist is due to a mistaken definition of
postmodernism.
Postmodernism is a philosophy that says that it is
impossible to distinguish which rival interpretation is the
true one. Thus there no longer is any Truth, but a
lot of truths, each of which is equally valid. On a
purely theoretical level, this idea is somewhat interesting.
It is, after all, quite easy to argue away just about any
independent standard for determining the Truth one could
come up with. However, once you actually think about what
this doctrine actually means on a practical level it becomes
a lot more difficult to support. In declaring that every
viewpoint is equally valid, postmodernism also declares
every viewpoint equally invalid. And you no longer have to
even work to come up with the truth. I could declare that
the complete works of Shakespeare are a secret code that
describes oncoming Martian invasion, and according to
postmodernism I would be right because there is no objective
way to determine that my interpretation is incorrect.
Right after you state that BtVS is postmodernist, you write,
"Because of this, there are certain things the show will
never ever advocate." This is actually the exact opposite of
postmodernism, which declares that everything should be
advocated equally. You then write, "The show will also never
suggest that people are static, unchanging, condemned to
forever be what they once were. People can change, and they
always do." I agree with that, and I think that the fact
that you use it as evidence of postmodernism it is a good
illustration of where most people get confused when it comes
to that philosophy.
Postmodernism does not assert that we don't yet know what
the Truth is and thus a rival interpretation might actually
turn out to be the Truth. It asserts that there is no
objective Truth and thus all rival interpretations are
equally the truth. The idea that the world is a dynamic
place where we must work to find out the Truth far predates
postmodernism. Ever since the days of the Ancient Greeks we
have clear evidence of humans debating over what the Truth
is. And this attitude is clear in BtVS. Buffy and the other
characters fight for Good against Evil, even though they
aren't quite always sure of what it means to fight for Good.
They have their own arguments over what is the Truth, but
they never assert that there is no Truth. It doesn't matter
what his motivations or that there is no objective standard,
the Master was wrong in trying to open the hellmouth. Faith
had a lot of bad breaks in her life, but she was wrong in
going over to the dark side. The Scooby gang is open for a
debate on what is Right and Good and all that, but in the
end they know that there must be a Right and a Good and a
Truth or else the debate is useless.
[> [>
Common misconceptions: Why Buffy is Postmodern --
manwitch, 06:57:06 05/12/02 Sun
It is a common misconception about postmodernism that it
argues that "there is no truth," or that "one truth is as
good as another." This is absolutely not what
postmodernism argues.
The "critique of truth," as it is called, which is only a
fraction of what postmodernism contains and is about, argues
that all truth claims are mediated through language and
therefore historically and culturally contingent and
indeterminate. Truth is therefore never absolute.
Because the truth claim depends on words whose relationship
to their referents is arbitrary and forever changing and in
fact depends on other words and concepts for their meanings.
In addition, any truth claim is made within a community, a
community that can also be understood to be linguistically
based anad that will have its own rules and criteria for
making and judging truth claims. Postmodernism does not
argue that there is no meaning or that there are no
criteria for judging truth claims in the extremely local and
impermanent human communities in which the claim is
made.
Postmodernism is really a set of critiques of modern
culture, critiques that are so emphatic that they suggest
that the world we live in is no longer "modern." Hence the
name. But it isn't simply a philosophy or a theory. Its the
intellectual grounding for the left-wing opposition movement
that has supplanted Marx. And its basis is in Nietzsche, and
particularly his views on language and discursive
processes.
So Postmodernism isn't just the set of critiques but also a
set of reccomendations for how we might better live. These
include value your local interpersonal relationships over
the impersonal claims of grand narratives of human elevation
or empowerment, such as the French Revolution Narrative or
Enlightenment Narrative of human elevation through the
advancement of Reason, or the Hegel Narrative of human
elevation through the emancipation of the human spirit or
the Marx Narrative of human elevation through the
emancipation of the working subject or the Smith Narrative
of the elevation of humanity through the accumulation of
wealth.
The reccommendations also include creating new institutions,
non-hierarchical institutions that are based not on force or
authority, but on an exchange of different skills, knowledge
and energy. Also oppose the monolithic authoritarian
istitutions that would claim to be elevating humanity but in
fact exist to monitor and narrow human experience. In art,
these institutions will be represented as Government, Law
Enforcement, Hospitals, Schools, the Military, The
Master/Apprentice, the Patriarchal Family.
Since Postmodernism recognizes the linguistic basis of all
things meaningful, it advocates using language differently.
Say new things. Use language to break out of the constraints
that it imposes on our conceptual and interpretive
frameworks.
Postmodernism argues that scientific knowledge is simply one
set of knowledge, not the set, and in fact, not the
most important set. Other types of knowledge that science
would not even recognize as knowledge are equally important
and equally meaningful to the human experience.
Postmodernism believes that individuality is yet another
monitoring tool of the forces that would dominate us. We are
led to believe that we are individuals, and our individual
identity becomes the "permanent record" of who we are, where
we have been, made up of our test scores, certifications and
whatever other paperworks have been bestowed upon us. But in
reality, the postmodernists argue, our identities are
interconnected. Since they are linguistically based it
matters who we talk to, how we talk to them, how they talk
about us, how language about ourselves travels through us
and through others. Consequently Postmodernism argues for
what Foucault calls "de-individualization." To take away the
unit of measure that the State depends on for controlling us
and recognize that identity is not static and never located
in one place, to realize that identities come from complex
and ever changing relationships to ourselves and to others
and that we will not stay the same.
And because, as Derrida points out, the meanings of words
exist outside of the words themselves, and because, as
Foucault and Lyotard have argued, our identity exists
outside ourselves, postmodernism vehemently rails
against exclusion, and passionatley calls for the
incorporation of "otherness" into ourselves. It strongly
reccomends that we stop seeking what is normal, that we
recognize "normalization" itself is a tool of domination
that would narrow and constrain our experience, and to
instead open up to the world of difference and
possibility.
I think that all of these critiques and reccomendations are
manifested in Buffy over and over again. More often than
not, when Buffy is called to fight the Big Fight, she
declines. In Prophecy Girl, she quits the Council's
Mission and says screw the big prophecy. She's not part of
that. It is Willow's tears, LOCAL, that bring Buffy back to
the struggle. She's not doing it for the Grand Narrative,
she's doing it for her freinds, to make the world theirs
again. Xander makes sure that we recognize and understand
this point moments later when, after Jenny says, "Aren't we
forgetting something? The Apocalypse" (or something like
that) and he responds "I don't care. I have to help
Buffy. The point is that this is not the World Mission.
This is the my loved ones mission. The show regularly
illustrates opposition to the Grand Narratives in this
way.
It also shows it in the undermining of the institutions of
the Grand Narratives. The Master/Apprentice institution in
Season 1, the institution of the Watcher's Council and its
authority over her (notice that whenever Giles comes at
Buffy in his "official" Watcher's Council role she undercuts
him, sometimes quite literally taking his legs out from
under him with a staff. But if he comes to her as a
knowledgeable and loving friend, she looks up to him), the
instution of the School or the College throughout the entire
series, the institution of the Mayors office (Season 3), the
institution of law enforcement a number of times, the
institution of the military (Season 4), of the Science
Laboratory (Season 4), the institution of the Hospital
(Season 5), of hierarchical organized religion (in Seasons 4
and 5) and any patriarchal institution that comes within six
feet of her. She rejects, demolishes or overcomes ALL of
them by creating her own institution of the Scoobies, an
institution that is not based on hierarchy, but on a
willingness to participate and to bring what you have to the
community. It is interesting to note that the only big bad
Buffy faced in seasons 1-5 that was not represented by a
hierarchical institution was the somewhat anarchic group of
Spike, Dru and Angel. And they alone among Buffy's big bads
are ALL STILL LIVING.
The shows use of language is brilliantly postmodernist, both
in its use of words and in its suggestion of discursively
based identities and institutions. There is a discourse to
being a scooby, Tara is accutely aware of it when she is not
part of it. Anya is corrected on it over and over again
(normalization! uh-oh!).
The entire series is about the value of mystic and spiritual
forms of knowledge, and that what we "know" to be true is
not. And Science is not the answer. Season 4 makes
abundantly clear that in the battle for turf between
scientific knowledge and "other" knowledge, other wins. The
Scientists can only create the monster Adam. They don't know
what to do with him. To defeat Adam requires mystical
knowledge, and, oddly enough, a spell of "de-
individualization."
And of course, one of the major and continuing themes of the
series is about overcoming exlusion, overcoming the state of
being the outcast, including otherness and rejecting
normalcy.
Buffy shows us how to do it. She shows us how to live
without hierarchy, without the need to lead or the desire to
be led, without being crushed by the weight of other
people's knowledge and expectations, refusing to participate
in institutions of domination, and yet never stepping back,
never leaving the fray, never giving up.
Remember, the fight of good vs. evil sounds a bit like a
Grand Narrative. There is nothing good or evil but that
thinking makes it so. And as Nietzsche points out, we all
have some demon in us. "Though we condmen the evils of our
past, we cannot escape the fact that we spring from them."
And he reminds us in an aphorism that I think is quite
appropriate to Buffy, "Be careful lest in casting out your
demons you cast out the best thing that's in you."
Buffy's struggle is beyond good and evil.
Its a spectacular postmodern culture crit through and
through, and that's why its the best show, in my opinion, in
the History of Television, and why it is significantly
superior to Bonanza.
[> [> [>
Truly Excellent -- Rob, you might want to use this
for your site........., 08:10:51 05/12/02 Sun
[> [> [>
Re: Common misconceptions: Why Buffy is Postmodern
-- DEN, 08:17:59 05/12/02 Sun
An excellent analysis, convincing generally and in detail.
May I add to the list of deconstructed hierarchies the one
portrayed in the opening scenes of s6, when Willow's attempt
to be "boss of us" in the cemetery generates comedic chaos
(the last honest laugh of the season, IMO!).
[> [> [>
Re: Common misconceptions: Why Buffy is Postmodern
thank you excellent post -- zooey, 11:48:46 05/12/02
Sun
[> [> [>
Yes.... except... -- Liz, 12:24:50 05/12/02
Sun
I agree completely about that post (or most of it I can't
recall every word). I did not really have a definition of
"postmodern" but I did see all of those institutions and how
they were viewed by the characters and by the show itself.
It was one of those things I really liked about the show.
(stands behind riot shield)
That's one of the things I find missing in the 6th season.
And I really miss it. It's one of those things that subtly
makes the 6th season disheartening for me.
Emma Goldman, an American anarchist philosopher and
activist, was a believer in communism. Then she went to
Russia to see the communist revolution, and encountered
Stalinist Russia. When she expressed her horror at what
Stalin was doing, he said, "Grow up."
Anarchism is for childish dreamers. This is the real world.
In 3rd season we have Buffy fight her way out of an
industrial factory hell with a hammer and sickle. We have
her summing the place up as, "You work us until we're too
old and then you just spit us out." In 6th we have Anya
chirping about the tools of capitalism, and Buffy looking
defeated in her Doublemeat Palace uniform, saying, "So
that's why I feel like a tool." And everyone says how
adults have to do the hard things and work and bring home
the money, and they congratulate the show on it's maturity.
Now it's real, now it's adult. And if you mourn the lost
fantastical elements and humor then you're shallow, and if
you mourn the lost themes then it's "Oh, grow up."
The first post of this said that Buffy was postmodern, and
therefore there are certain things that it will never
advocate. I don't believe that is true. Not that I think
it's likely to advocate those things listed (although we
seem to be headed towards both). But I think people aren't
paying attention to themes anymore.
Buffy was not only not totally plot-driven, it was also not
totally character-driven. It was theme-driven, and
experience-driven. Ok, I'm making up words here, but I
think there is a difference between experience-driven and
character-driven. With the character one, you are making a
coherent story surrounding what a character would do next.
With the experience one, you're taking a situation that you
want to explore and then you're putting your complex
character into it and seeing what will happen next, what his
or her previous personality will do with that situation and
how he or she will come out of it afterwards. It's a
different thing, and I think it leads to richer characters.
I think right now we're character-driven and a little bit
plot-driven. I just think that is they're thinking right
now as they write the story. And they could go like that
for quite a while because they're got lots of steam built up
from their developed characters. But I miss what's lost.
You don't have to miss it, but it's just what I happened to
like about the show. Maybe that's why some people like 6th
even better than before, and some don't.
But you can't have it both ways. If you love all those
things that people have labeled "postmodern", you can't tell
me that they're still here.
[> [> [> [>
This isn't quite the way I would have expressed it
-- matching mole, 12:35:26 05/12/02 Sun
but it sums up a lot of my feeling about season 6 (although
I would rank Doublemeat Palace as one of my favourite
episodes of the year to date).
[> [> [>
'mazing post, thanks for making me understand a bit of
what post-modernism means :) -- Etrangere, 13:41:28
05/12/02 Sun
[> [> [>
Why Buffy is Not Postmodern -- Grant, 15:03:22
05/12/02 Sun
You start out by stating, “It is a common misconception
about postmodernism that it argues that "there is no truth,"
or that "one truth is as good as another." This is
absolutely not what postmodernism argues.” Unfortunately,
this completely contradicts the entire rest of your
argument, as even you go on to admit that this is a portion
of postmodernism. This “critique of truth” is the foundation
of postmodernism, and I think if you reread your post you
will see that you fully admit this. It is impossible to
accept the postmodernist criticism without accepting the
idea that there is no Truth, and the idea that there is no
Truth is itself impossible to accept.
Unfortunately for the postmodernists, science completely
destroys the foundation of their argument. In science, there
are objective facts that can’t be refuted by word games.
Chemistry may be populated mostly with white males, but that
doesn’t change the fact that there are six protons in a
carbon atom. And two plus two equals four no matter how
phallocentric arithmetic is. This is why postmodernism has
been so vehement in its criticism of science, because
science has created a logical and objective system of
determining the Truth that completely undermines
postmodernism.
You can argue all you want about the merits of
postmodernisms critique of science, but I think that Alan
Sokal pretty much put the issue to rest. And no matter what
the postmodernists say, scientists continue to figure things
out and make really cool gadgets. Sure, in the Buffyverse it
is fun to see magic triumph over the abuse of science, but
in the real world I have never seen David Blaine produce
anything particularly useful for society. On the other hand,
the only reason we can even have this conversation is
because of computers, an entirely scientific invention.
The other major problem with the postmodernist
doctrine/philosophy/whatever is that people want normalcy.
Normalcy is not thrust upon them by an oppressive hierarchy,
as postmodernism maintains, but rather assumed by the
people. That is why people build communities that share a
set of values and, in many cases, a hierarchy, because they
know that in this community they can have the normalcy they
desire. The Scooby gang is one such community. It has a
normalcy, a hierarchy, and an exclusiveness, so how does it
support postmodernism?
Indeed, your argument on the postmodernist nature of BtVS
misses a number of important components in the series that
directly refute it. Primarily, the fact that Buffy and the
Scooby gang are portrayed as the heroes fighting for good is
very non-postmodernist. If BtVS were truly a postmodernist
show, than Buffy and the Scoobies would be seen as a force
that oppresses the vampires and the demons in the interest
of preserving the human hegemony over the world. They would
not be fighting for Good, but rather for a conception of
“good” that preserve the status quo from which they derive
their power. This is obviously not the case.
Further evidence is also apparent that Buffy is far from
motivated by mere local interests. You correctly point out
that it is Willow that encourages Buffy to go to the Master,
but you are wrong in claiming that her motivation is thus
entirely local concerns about her friends. Instead, the
conversation with Willow serves to remind her that she has a
mission, and that she cannot turn her back on it. This is
clear when Buffy goes to tell Giles that she will go face
the Master. Giles has decided to “defy prophecy.” Buffy
counters this not by stating that she has to do this for
Willow, but by saying, “That's not how it goes. I'm the
Slayer.” This is her affirming her role as the Slayer and
her place in the Mission.
The end of season two is particularly strong in portraying
Buffy as playing a role in a larger conflict. Whistler is
the closest thing we ever get to the voice of the forces of
Good, and he is actually a proponent of individualization.
He asserts that there are big moments in our lives, that our
lives are plot driven contrivances, in a manner of speaking,
and it is our individual reactions to these moments that
makes us who we are. When Buffy tells him that she is tired
of fighting by herself, he responds with: “In the end,
you're always by yourself. You're all you got -- That's the
point.” To him, fighting the good fight is about restraint
and exclusion; what you are willing to give up is a more
important question than what you are willing to do.
Her climactic fight with Angel is a major continuation of
these themes. When Angel has her backed into a corner, he
taunts her by asking, “That's everything, huh? No weapons,
no friends. No hope. Take all that away and what's left?”
Buffy’s response is simply, “Me,” a clear assertion of
individualization. This assertion leads Buffy to her victory
in the fight, but then she is presented with a horrible
choice. She must either kill her soulmate, who is
essentially an innocent in this, or condemn the world to
hell. She chooses the world, knowing that she has to make a
huge sacrifice for the sake of the world.
After this fight, Buffy decides that living in this world
and this order is too painful. So, she runs off to LA and
abandons both her calling and her friends. However, she
quickly comes to realize that she cannot abandon her role in
life and simply escape from the world. The crucial component
of this occurs in the hell dimension, where Buffy once again
asserts both her identity as and individual and her place in
the world. She is not just Buffy Summer, she is Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, and she has a mission in life and a role to
play.
Two notable characters, Faith and Spike, also represent a
distinctively anti-postmodern slant. Faith’s decision to
ignore the rules of society and follow her own mantra of
“Want, Take, Have” is the first step in her journey to the
dark side. On the other hand, her redemption only occurs
when she decides to willingly submit herself to society’s
rules and a distinctively hierarchical institution like
Justice system. Faith could easily have escaped at the end
of “Sanctuary,” and she could also escape from prison after
that, but her decision to accept these rules even though
they are contrary to her own benefit and she could easily
escape from them is the best sign that she is on the road to
redemption.
Spike is another case of a character dealing with
redemption. For him, redemption only began when the chip in
his head forced him to accept the rules of society. This
serves as the first step on his redemption, but Spike is
still a long way from being redeemed. His chip has now
become an obstacle to his redemption, because it is
impossible to know whether he truly is willing to live by
the rules and be good or whether an electronic leash in his
head is making him be good and live by the rules. That seems
to be the motivation behind his decision to get his chip
removed. Although you have argued that he will come back the
monster of monsters, I believe that the opposite will
happen. I think Spike will try to prove to Buffy and the
Scoobies that he can be good without the chip making him.
Thus it will be his willingness to play by the rules without
the chip that will serve as the next major component in
Spike’s redemption, a redemption that could not occur unless
Spike does follow the rules of a hierarchical society.
It seems to me that rather than postmodernism the main theme
of BtVS is sacrifice. Buffy is a hero when she decides to
sacrifice herself and her interests for the world and for
others, such as when she went to face the Master knowing she
would die, when she killed Angel to stop Acathla, or when
she killed herself in order to save both the world and her
sister in “The Gift.” Meanwhile, there have been many times
when she has acted selfishly, and this has lead to disaster.
The best example of this is in the season three episode
SChoices.” Buffy decides to base her decision making on her
own self interest, her desire to escape her role and go off
to college, and this cause Willow to be captured. She then
trades back the Box of Gavrok for Willow. The benefits of
this trade have and will be debated, but the end result is
that she traded the life of her friend for the lives of
Larry, Harmony, and every other student or parent who died
during the ascension.
Season six has also had a strong connection to this theme of
sacrifice as a component of growing up. In order to grow up,
Willow must forsake her connection to magic, which has
become something of an addiction for her. She must restrain
herself in this area and sacrifice her magic ability in a
manner that goes against her own self-interest, and she must
do all of this for the sake of others, like the friends her
magic use was hurting and her lover Tara. Buffy, meanwhile,
has tried to ignore her role in life again because life is
so painful. This has lead to its share of problems, most of
which seem to have been answered by her decision to leave
the happiness of the Normal Againverse and take her role
back in the real world. In this decision, Buffy is
sacrificing her happiness to help others, but it is clearly
the right decision.
I could go on with many other examples, but I have faith
that I have provided enough evidence. The point is that
there is a strong component of individualism in BtVS. And
though the show does go after some hierarchies, it is not
entirely anti-hierarchy. The Scooby gang is one hierarchy
that is not seen as a bad force, and most of the components
of our hierarchical society are taken as important
guidelines for human actions. And the central and most
constant theme in the show has been about taking your proper
place in society and sacrificing yourself for the sake of
that society.
So does Buffy have components that are postmodernist? Yes.
But does it present an overall postmodernist vision? No.
With postmodernism, you have to accept the entire theory.
Being part postmodernist is like being part pregnant, it
just doesn’t work that way. There are themes and occurrences
in BtVS that fit with the postmodernist theme, but they are
used to present a whole that is decidedly not
postmodernist.
[> [> [> [>
Re: Why Buffy is Not Postmodern -- Dochawk,
16:00:55 05/12/02 Sun
When I read the original post, I knew I didn't agree, but it
was a gut instinct, not knowing anywhere near enough about
this particular philosophy. I did know that Buffy was about
choices to a much greater degree than the original author
gave it. Thank You for writing this. Its excellent and
makes me more comfortable.
[> [> [> [>
Why science and postmodernism are closer than we might
think -- Sophist, 18:37:20 05/12/02 Sun
I want to say that the posts by Grant and manwitch are both
spectacularly good. I wanted to add some comments about
areas in which I think the two sides are closer than may
appear from these posts.
Let's start with the notion of Truth. By philosophical
convention, going back to Plato, we capitalize this (or any
other term such as Beauty) when we mean to designate
something eternal, perfect, unchanging. A claim that there
is such a thing as Truth is a claim that knowledge can be
certain, perfect, complete. By contrast, truth with a small
"t" means that the truth is contingent and subject to
change.
It is true that postmodernism rejects the notion of Truth.
So does science. Science does this because all scientific
truths (note the small "t") are subject to falsification
(there are other reasons too; I'm simplifying). In
principle, every scientific theory or statement of fact
could be disproved. As a practical matter, some statements
made by science are so well established that the idea that
they could be controverted is wildly implausible. But no
scientist should ever claim that some truth is eternal.
Now let's talk about establishing these contingent truths.
Postmodernism refers to these as socially constructed.
Science says that theories and statements of fact must be
subject to verification, and that the experiments to verify
them must be repeatable. In other words, and in the best
cases, multiple experimenters must agree on the same
results. This strikes me as awfully similar to the
postmodern concept of socially constructed truth. In this
case, it is the community of scientists which agrees upon
the "truths".
There are many areas where science and postmodernism have no
overlap at all. For example, science has nothing that I know
of to say about moral absolutes (e.g., adultery is a sin).
It does, however, teach us to be skeptical about any claim
of Truth. If postmodernism does the same that seems
beneficial to me.
At bottom, however, we need to recognize that science is
much less open ended than some formulations of postmodernism
seem to be. Science may not be able to establish Truth or
even "truth", but it certainly can disprove some
statements. When it does so, all the postmodernists in the
world can't reconstruct Humpty Dumpty. And I wouldn't
recommend treating gravity as a socially constructed truth
either.
[> [> [> [> [>
Excellent post -- matching mole, 20:06:44
05/12/02 Sun
I like your use of truth and Truth. One of my problems in
following these discussions is the use of language. During
his posts I often having the experience of following
manwitch thinking 'yeah this makes sense' and 'I'll buy
that' and all of a sudden there'll be a statement that
absolutely floors me usually having to do with science and
truth (or Truth). If I interpret the words the way I would
use them then they seem outrageous. But perhaps they're
not.
For me there is only one truth (or Truth). That truth is
the physical reality of the universe, the relationships
between matter and energy and their constructs. Science is
attempting to get at this truth. The scientific model of
physical reality is tentative certainly but far more
objective than any other model of the truth (in the very
limited sense that I am using it) and thus, in my humble
opinion vastly more likely to resemble actual physical
reality than other systems of thought.
Truth in any sense that includes values or morality is a
social construct (again in my opinion). Science tells us
nothing about this kind of truth (which is not the same
thing as saying that scientists shouldn't think about
it).
[> [> [> [>
Re: Why Buffy is Not Postmodern -- J,
09:14:12 05/13/02 Mon
It is impossible to accept the postmodernist criticism
without accepting the idea that there is no Truth, and the
idea that there is no Truth is itself impossible to
accept.
Uh . . . can't agree. To argue that there is no meta-
narrative Truth is not the same thing as arguing that
statements have no truth value within certain situations.
You're conflating the two. And your statement that science
destroys critiques of truth-claims as situated has little to
do with postmodernism and far more to do with some notion of
empiricism as the fount of knowledge. But it's been clear
for centuries that plain empiricism is a dead end -- check
out Hume's critique of causation and Kant's attempts at
reconciling western thought in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The battle of "truth" v. "Truth" was fought long before the
advent of postmodern thought.
[> [> [> [>
Some follow-up, SPOILERS through Bargaining --
manwitch, 19:05:26 05/13/02 Mon
Hmmm. It comes off almost as though you don't think Buffy is
postmodern.
Fine. As I said in the original post, and should have said
repeatedly in the second one, this is an interpretation that
not everyone will or should agree with.
But, after reading your post and the responses to it, and
after re-reading mine as you suggested, I have some
questions for you. They might take me a while to get to,
sorry.
When you talk about Buffy, rather than the postmodernism
issue, I agree with much of what you say, although not all.
This is interesting to me because it suggests that
postmodernism itself is the issue, rather than different
views of Buffy. You and I clearly disagree about truth. My
claim is that to argue for the linguistic constitution of
truth is not the same as to deny truth or say that all
truths are equally valuable. You seem to either refuse to
accept the distinction, or perhaps feel that denying all
truth is sort of the necessary reductio ad absurdum
result, so the distinction is meaningless.
To you, this denial of truth is the basis of postmodernism
and therefore the whole theory is problematic. I see the
basis of postmodernism in its critique of language and that
the other positions I described in the earlier post all
arise naturally from that critique. And I don't see why one
has to have the whole kit and kaboodle. Like any
intellectual offering (and unlike pregnancy), one can take
what works and discard what doesn't at any time.
So I guess my question is this. You've made clear why you
don't think Buffy is postmodern, but I'm curious as to why
its important. I recognize that its not really a fair
question. It seems important to you that Buffy
not be seen as postmodern. And its not just you,
either. People frequently react that way to postmodernist
interpretation or even just to the word itself. No one
bristles at the suggestion that Buffy might be acting out
the Persephone myth or that it has parallels to Middlemarch,
but say its postmodernist and look out. Its just another
interpretation, and it can yield some very interesting and
enriching insights.
My own experience back when was that a lot of people use the
lingo of postmodernism to be real cool and to make other
people feel like they don't know what's going on. I
personally don't care for that attitude and I try to present
postmodernism in an open and inclusive way. (My apologies if
I am failing to do that.) Also in my experience,
postmodernism is viewed as an extremely negative philosophy.
I would argue that it is in fact empowering and optimistic.
I find Buffy empowering and optimistic precisely because of
what I see as its postmodern bent.
As far as Buffy goes, my only real disagreement with you is
that the Scoobies are exclusive or hierarchical. While they
have been at times, I think that has been when they have not
been at their best. I think the show made a deliberate
attemtp to emphasize that in the beginning of Season 6, as
DEN has described. By Willow questioning who was the leader,
and by having a vote to establish it and by having a plaque
to certify it, Willows approach to the scoobies is extremely
different and deliberately contrasted to Buffy's model of
total self-sacrifice and inclusion. This is further
illustrated by Willow's position atop the tomb in the
opening scenes of Bargaining, overlooking them all and
giving them instructions by invading their very brains.
I certainly don't mean to say that Buffy doesn't exhibit
leadership, but she rarely forces her leadership on those
who do not want to participate. Again, contrast this to
Willow in Bargaining.
I don't disagree at all about the idea of sacrifice or
personal choice. I don't see those as incompatible with the
postmodernist view I articulated. I don't believe, however,
that the basis of her decision-making process is
righteousness. Xander is more the voice of righteousness,
and he's frequently wrong when he's being righteous. Buffy's
decision making comes from love and compassion, and not just
a general love and compassion for all things, but
specifically for the people in her life.
Does she have a mission? Yes. Is it the same mission that
the Watcher's Council laid out for her? No way. Is it the
same mission the First Slayer had? Buffy sure doesn't think
so. Her speech to the first slayer at the end of Restless
is, to me, the perfect illustration of what Foucault calls
"epistemic ruptures," a total transformation of meaning and
context while the words and ostensible referents seem
unchanged. Yes they are both Slayers, and yes, being the
Slayer seems to mean the same thing, but they are
very different. And its not just a difference in
personality. Its a deliberate and sharp laceration of
historical continuity. Yes she's from a long line of
slayers, but its not the same thing anymore. There is no
long line of Slayers like Buffy.
Anyways, take it for what you will. I am just curious as to
why it sounds like a Postmodern Buffy would be demeaning to
the show. My apologies if I have you wrong.
Oh, and you did say something about If Buffy was
postmodernist they would oppress the vampires and secure
human hegemony. I don't get that. Postmodernism tends to be
anti oppression and anti-totalitarian. If Buffy were truly
postmodern, they would let some of the vampires go, and even
let some of them participate in Scooby-dom. Or, if they
didn't, consequences would result that would demonstrate
that an error was made.
I don't have the energy to go into the science question
right now, and I'm sure few would have the energy to read it
if I did. But to the degree that science uses language to
describe its theories, methods, equipment, discoveries,
communities, etc., it doesn't refute postmodernism but is
rather subject to the same critique of language that
everything else is. The fact that people can make a space
ship or a hydrogen bomb, doesn't mean that they aren't
social constuctions. Conversely, the fact that the meaning
of something is socially constructed, doesn't mean it isn't
real. Sometimes I think people are afraid that postmodernism
means that all their furniture is about to disappear. No, it
recognizes that you have a computer and that the computer
does things. But it argues that the meaning of that
computer, what it does, how its used, is determined by human
communities (and the language they use that both constrains
and empowers them) within a limited space and time. In a
thousand years, the computer won't mean what it does now.
Nor will gravity. The social environments in which they
operate and the communities to which they apply will be
different, so the reality they address will be different.
Their meaning, and in large measure the reality that they
address, will be socially constructed, as their meaning to
us is now. Am I saying that it means we aren't really still
on the planet as it hurtles through space? I don't think
so.
[> [> [>
can't think of the right word of praise, but... --
yuri, 17:46:12 05/12/02 Sun
it's so good to read some of your posts again. You're one of
my favorite writers here, both because of your ability to
explain, expound, and enlighten, and for the beautiful way
you convey it all. Anyway, thanks for those posts. After
those and some others on postmodernism I've read here, I
think I can actually say I understand postmodernism. Well,
understand is a strong word, I at least have a good idea of
what people are constantly referring to when they use the
word.
[> [> [> [>
thanks for your very kind words -- manwitch,
05:44:50 05/14/02 Tue
[>
want to read this post, but are the spoilers *past*
SR? -- yuri, 15:56:21 05/12/02 Sun
[> [>
Re: Nope -spoilers to SR only -- hoping,
16:05:52 05/12/02 Sun
[>
Re: Questions and Interpretations (**Spoilers** and
maybe a soap box or two) -- Ronia, 22:40:48 05/12/02
Sun
I enjoyed your post very much, and agreed with most of it.
Just thought I'd throw a couple of ideas on the plate and
see what happens when people pick at them...
Buffy seemed a tad uncomfortable in gingerbread when the
townfolk started making plans w/out her, but otherwise I'd
mostly agree that they have welcomed individuals on a case
by case basis who wanted to pitch in.
I definately agree that Buffy shares some responsibilty for
Spike's state of mind (not his actions) even minutes before
"the scene"..she just keeps slamming the doors in his face,
not validating his feeling, not even letting him finish a
thought without interruption...ever met anyone who does
this? Did you successfully repress the urge to whap them
over the head with something blunt (like a tree)?
I also liked your statement about Buffy's trust issues, and
I might go so far to say that they are maybe less trust
issues, than control issues. Buffy has taken control of
every conversation, every argument, every relationship....
except for some reason Spike...and Angel... seem not to be
(in earlier years) so much affected by the world according
to Buffy. It is clear that she has trusted him and others,
but has she allowed them a measure of control? Not on your
life. And what did they do? The resurrected her from the
dead, they took her BANG and made it a whimper. She was
this great icon, this supreme warrior, and now she works a
Mcjob with no future and no control in sight. For a control
freak like Buffy, this must be a rude awakening indeed, and
not one she is likely going to forgive easily whether she is
aware of it or not. I think that part of her separation
from her former bud's is self protective. I'll help you,
but you do not have the number for my inner man. The other
thing that strikes me is that they have delivered her into
pretty much the same situation that she left, none of the
things afflicting her now (winces because someone is sure to
come up with at least one thing..) are the result of her
death. I know that none of these thoughts take into
consideration the other characters developements, just
focussed on Buffy tonight. Any thoughts?
On the state of
Angel's mind -- RichardX1,
18:52:43 05/11/02 Sat
In one thread, someone asked how Spike would be judged if he
became human and got his soul back--if we would be entitled
to just blame the demon. I thought this sounded just like
Angel's moral quandary, then I noticed the "became human"
part, and it made me realize some things about Angel's
nature...
The demon is still there. He still has that dark side,
which is proud of every foul act it ever committed. Half of
him still feels no guilt over his past, and that's what
torments him. It's not "His soul is in charge but there's a
demon inside him"--his mind is getting spiritual-emotional
input from two sources (the distinction between
"mind" and "soul" has been implicitly expressed since Angel
visited Pylea). He's simultaneously feeling all the normal
human feelings for his friends and family, while at the same
time feeling the urge to torment, destroy, and devour them
all.
I'd say Angel's a champion just for being able to hold his
sanity (at least until the hospital incident with
Wesley).
[>
Re: On the state of Angel's mind -- ApplePie,
19:33:22 05/11/02 Sat
I agree with with most of what you said, up to the last
point.
"I'd say Angel's a champion just for being able to hold his
sanity (at least until the hospital incident with
Wesley)."
The hospital incident had nothing to do with the demon
inside him. The demon would have no attachment to the baby
so no grief at its lost. It was the HUMAN soul that
encouraged Angel to act the way he did.
Not the demon, but the man.
[> [>
Re: On the state of Angel's mind -- RichardX1,
10:05:48 05/12/02 Sun
I never said the demon made him attack Wesley. I just said
that he snapped. And you're right: anyone else might have
done the same. I was just saying that I'm impressed it
hadn't happened sooner, under some previous mental-emotional
pressure.
[>
Re: On the state of Angel's mind -- yabyumpan,
08:23:38 05/12/02 Sun
"I'd say Angel's a champion just for being able to hold his
sanity"
I totally agree. It does seem that because he is a
"champion" that there is the expectation that he will
respond to situations in a way that is "morally" better than
other people (i.e. see DorN thread). I see that he is a
champion, partly because of the work he does but also
because every second, he's having to do battle with his
"inner demon". He was cursed with a soul but the demon is
still there, not only does he remember all the bad stuff
that he's done and feel guilty but also he must remember and
feel the pleasure of doing all that stuff. As we see in
"real" life and also on the show, having a soul doesn't mean
you automaticly do good. He has to make an active choice all
the time not to give into his demon side (i.e. the blood
drinking scene with Harmony in Disharmony).
People come down very strongly on him, both characters on
the show and fans on the boards when he is less than heroic
or just plain screwing up, but very rarely is he given
credit for the good that he does or how
difficult/conflicting it must be to do the good stuff. He
could just walk away, be the manpire he was in 1952 and stay
in his own private cell but he chooses not to walk away, he
chooses to do good. That for me is why he is a champion and
hero.
[> [>
Re: On the state of Angel's mind and the minds of the
others -- VampRiley, 11:39:19 05/12/02 Sun
People come down very strongly on him, both characters on
the show and fans on the boards when he is less than heroic
or just plain screwing up, but very rarely is he given
credit for the good that he does or how
difficult/conflicting it must be to do the good
stuff.
I've noticed in real life that this is often the case. Like
this one time, I was watching this talk show about mothers
and fathers who were not together and they were going on
about how some fathers don't help to take care of their
kids. This one guy on stage said he did. The audience
applauded and the woman who he had the kid with kept saying
how she should't give him credit for that because that is
what he's supposed to do. You shouldn't be given credit for
being responsible and doing what you have to do. I forget
the rest of the show, but I see this very often (this was
the only time on real life tv that I saw this).
Many times I see where people are doing the right thing, but
they never get credit for it or even a thank you. The ones
in emergency rooms take care of people who come in: they
take care of them, keep them alive, sometimes having to go
to extraordinary lengths to keep them with us long enough to
get them to the OR. Sometimes the ER people are the ones
that do the things that keep them alive. If it wasn't for
them, those people would be dead. They are real life savers.
And the OR people come in and patch things up. But what
often happens? The OR people get pretty much all the praise
for saving their life. Duties in the ER are thanked, just
not all of them.
I think that deep down, everyone of them is deeply afraid of
Angel. They don't give him credit for being a good guy
because that's what he's supposed to do. Being a good guy is
supposed to be a thankless job. It makes them feel safe
around him. But when he screws up, it re-instills their fear
of him and to make themselves feel like they are safe again,
they come down on him. Now, granted they are his friends and
friends tell it to you straight to your face. I just feel
that sometimes they do it too much. Feel free to
disagree.
VR
[> [> [>
Re: On the state of Angel's mind and the minds of the
others -- oceloty, 01:22:47 05/13/02 Mon
I think that deep down, everyone of them is deeply afraid
of Angel. They don't give him credit for being a good guy
because that's what he's supposed to do. Being a good guy is
supposed to be a thankless job. It makes them feel safe
around him. But when he screws up, it re-instills their fear
of him and to make themselves feel like they are safe again,
they come down on him. Now, granted they are his friends and
friends tell it to you straight to your face. I just feel
that sometimes they do it too much.
Can I chime in to admire all of what you folks have said,
but especially this?
In the context of the show, Angel's human soul is wrestling
with a inner demon. I like the literal demon as a metaphor
for the darker side of human nature, so that Angel is a
walking dramatization of good vs. evil, battling inside the
human heart.
In addition to everything you guys have said, I also think
this metaphor could be part of the reason why people (both
fictional characters and real-life viewers) are so hard on
Angel. If I want to believe that people are fundmentally
good and identify with Angel as symbolizing the conflict
between good and evil, then it makes sense that I get upset
when Angel screws up, because it symbolizes evil winning,
when I want to believe it won't.
On a literal level, Angel making bad decisions can be very
frightening. (Say, Forgiving.) Metaphorically, it's also
scary to think, hey, maybe we're not as good as we thought.
Seeing the dark heart of human nature -- that is truly
disturbing, and I think that can make people flinch. Or
respond irrationally (maybe unconsciously), by taking it out
on poor Angel. Who, in the meantime, is doing his best not
to eat us all.
[> [> [> [>
"Doing his best not to eat us all" LOL! Great
line! -- Scroll, 08:50:52 05/13/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
Aww, thanks. -- oceloty, 00:07:24 05/14/02
Tue
Hope I didn't beat that metaphor into too fine of a
pulp.
Spike and Darla
parallel (Spoilers up to Seeing Red) -- agent156,
20:29:19 05/11/02 Sat
After rewatching the ep "Darla" yesterday something came to
me. Spike as he is in "Seeing Red" reminds me a lot of
Darla, second human go.
Darla was brought back to life by Wolfram & Hart as a human.
But she doesn't feel human. She may be alive and have a
soul, but she still has all the memories and feelings of
Darla the vampire. As she sees it her soul isn't something
allowing her to live as a human, it is just something that
is holding her back, keeping her from being the way she
feels she should be. As long as she has it she is incapable
of being a monster. So she doesn't feel human and isn't
capable of being a monster. Sound familiar?
Spike is in a similar position. He has a chip that was
inserted into his head against his will, just as Darla never
chose, or would have chosen, to be given a soul. The chip
just holds him back keeping him from acting in the way that
he wishes. But it has not changed how he feels or his
desires, it merely keeps him from being able to fulfill
them. Just as Darla's soul hasn't changed her desires, only
kept her from being able to act on them. Thus Spike doesn't
feel human and he can't be a monster.
Both of them long to be back to the way that they were and
for the same reason, it was easier. As a monster, there
were no restraints on behavior, no remorse for actions.
Everything was clear and easy. As Spike says to Clem
"Everything used to be so clear. Slayer. Vampire. Vampire
kills Slayer, sucks her dry, picks his teeth with her
bones." Darla wants that as well. As she tells Angel, the
only things to being alive are "pain and suffering and
disease and death."
And interestingly enough I think both of them could learn to
live as humans, if only they would allow themselves to.
Darla has a head start and probably a slightly easier path
to it since she already has a soul, but seeing as how it
took Angel one hundred years and the intervention of
Whistler to get him started to redemption it would still
likely be really hard. Spike would have the harder path as
he would have to make up for not having the things that a
soul would provide, such as a conscience. But I think the
fact that he is able to feel bad for what he did to Buffy
after doing it, shows that the possibility for him to do so
is there, even if extremely slim. Just because it's never
been done before that we know of doesn't mean it couldn't
happen. After all, don't they say that there's an exception
to every rule? I'm curious though if each of their past
experiences as humans affects their current choices to not
attempt that path. Neither one of them exactly lived great
lives and undoubtedly don't look back on them fondly.
So instead they both choose to go the same way, back to
being a monster. Darla goes to Angel to try to get him to
turn her and then to other vampires when he won't do it.
Spike is leaving Sunnydale with the apparent intention of
getting his chip removed to make him a true vampire once
again. But the events following Darla being made back into
a vampire led to her eventual redemption of sorts. She got
to feel love and happiness through her baby, and was able to
do the noble deed of sacrificing her own life so that her
child would live. It seems a bit ironic that her becoming a
vampire again, a very non-redeeming spot, would lead her to
the redemption she didn't want back when she was in a good
position to get it. Could this perhaps mean that Spike,
despite having the possibility through his chip to follow
the path to redemption, will be led to it or something
similar by once again becoming a vampire?
[>
Printing now.....get back to you later -- Rufus,
20:46:17 05/11/02 Sat
[>
Great analysis, but... -- Vickie, 20:47:55
05/11/02 Sat
I really think Darla didn't choose to go back to being a
vampire. My impression was that Angel had convinced her to
remain human (with his support). She was just too weak and
vascillating to resist Dru at all (as if she could have
succeeded).
my $.02.
[> [>
Re: Great analysis, but... -- agent156, 21:01:27
05/11/02 Sat
Yeah, right before she got turned she decided to stay human.
I was referring to before then though when she was actively
seeking out someone to turn her into a vampire. At that
point she was making the same decision as Spike, to go back
to being a monster.
[>
Re: Spike and Darla parallel (Spoilers up to Seeing
Red) -- shadowkat, 21:33:14 05/11/02 Sat
Great post btw - been thinking along similar lines.
Except
i think they may go the opposite direction - make him human
and possibly force him down the path Darla wasn't able to
take.
I also think and this isn't a spoiler - b/c I really am
spoil free after Seeing Red and the preview for next week, I
think he may discover the chip is irrelevant. And what
has been happening is his choice. What he does with this
information should be interesting.
He and Darla did live different lives though - he was
younger than Darla when he was turned. Also he wasn't on his
death bed. Another major difference is I don't believe he
was living an unsavory or difficult life - we know so
little. (I'm hoping ME is going to show us more in the next
few episodes like they did with Angel in the whole Becoming
- Amends arcs...but who can predict ME?)
This is what we do know:
1. He was a scholar and a bad poet (or so his peers
believed) He prefered scholarly pursuites and poetry and
romance and had no interest in violence. I think of him as a
bit of a dreamer - what does Dru say "you walk in worlds
no one can imagine?"
2. He was infatuated with Cecily - notice I say infatuated,
not love - Cecily clearly didn't appear to return it and he
seemed to write poetry to her from afar. Now I could have
misunderstood the scene, since she clearly recognizes him in
OAFA - so if Halfrek is Cecily, maybe more is going on
there? (Hmmm is something being planned on that score?)
3. He was close to his family and states Mother is
expecting
me.
In no way did I get the feeling he had a bad human life. Dru
just happened upon him during a weak moment and seduced him.
Darla - she was a prostitute and was dying of syphilus when
the Master turned her and when Drusillia did. Her life was
horrible. As she states - she wasn't a good person when she
was alive - if anything she was pretty bad, just like Liam,
its one of the reasons she turns him. Drusilla was a good
person when she was alive and goes after someone similar to
what she was in nature. The BIG difference is that Drusilla
doesn't drive William insane first - like Angel drives
Drusilla insane. Instead she just seduces him as Darla
seduces Angel. The Master turns Darla and coaches her in his
evil ways. When Dru does it, she's still a bit nuts.
Also Darla resisted being turned by Dru - so it was a rape,
while she gave in to the Master. Just as Dru resisted being
turned by Angel and it was a rape. I think that's
important
for some reason.
The names also interest me. Angel hasn't kept his human
name, he got rid of it. So did Darla - we don't know what
her original name was. Not so Drusilla and Spike. While
Spike did change his, he still is called Willaim by Buffy on
more than one occassion. Why? Also why use William and Liam
= both mean protector and are variations. Does JW
just have a love of the name William?
The characters of Spike and Darla have always fascinated me
because of their greyness - I can't predict them. Also they
were both the truth tellers. Angel and Dru tended to be a
little crazy and into dreams, while Darla and Spike were
pragmatists and tended to be upfront and forthright. They
also questioned their lovers - much like Anya.
I have no clear idea where they are going with Spike, just
hunches which I trust, b/c well I've been right on every
single thing that's happened up to now. But his character
never ceases to surprise me - partly because it is a
combination of Victorian gentleman and chaotic emotional
demon. He always seems to be on the verge of losing control,
going off the deep end or...and so did Darla in Ats.
So...you may be right, his arc may be Darla's. It certainly
sounds more reasonable to me than manwitch's prediction
below which gave me a headache.
Sorry for the rambling, tis late here and I keep getting
kicked off. Hope made some sense.
[> [>
Re: Spike and Darla parallel (Spoilers up to Seeing
Red) -- agent156, 22:37:33 05/11/02 Sat
I will concede that Spike didn't have a bad life in the same
sense that Darla did, but I think to him it was still
something he looks back on unfavorably. His telling Buffy
in FFL that he never really felt alive until he became a
vampire hints to that.
I disagree on the name thing though. Spike did change his
name. He even corrects Angelus when he calls him William.
He doesn't want to be associated with that name anymore. I
think the fact that William has stuck around at all is in
reference to the rather humanness he has even as a vampire.
As evidenced by the fact that the Judge could not burn him,
Angelus has no humnaity in him, and as such his name of Liam
has not followed him. But Spike, as the Judge pointed out
and we have indeed seen, does still have some humanity in
him. Spike did not choose to still go by the name of
William, it just followed him after he assumed his new
persona because unlike some other vampires he kept a bit of
his humanity after being turned.
As for where they're going to take Spike I don't really know
either. That was just some wild speculation of mine that
seemed interesting since it would continue the parallel.
And I can't believe one of the greatest posters on this
board liked my post. Thanks! That atleast means it was
worthwhile to do it.
[> [> [>
I Fail To See How It Is Possible to.... --
AngelVSAngelus, 10:07:27 05/12/02 Sun
feel remorse for a transgression if one doesn't have a
conscience. Maybe this is my own short coming, but I was
under the impression that a conscience what gives one the
ability to have the empathy for other people necessary to
feel remorse in the first place.
The writer's have really confuzzled me with this one, and
maybe I'm being rigid in doing so, but I don't accept a
creature that has been explained as NOT having a conscience
before feeling remorse for a dastardly deed, not even
against the one he loves. Love is amoral, IMHO.
People have pointed out that while Spike blames the chip
for his remorseful feelings and not going through with
Buffy's violation, that isn't possible. That, to me, is
inconsistancy on their part, and while I still find it
interesting to watch, I also find it disconcertingly
distracting. It takes me out of the element of belief that
I've had for the show for years.
It took Darla infection from her child's soul to feel any
remorse, and Angel a soul as well. I still stand by not soul
equals good, but soul equals capacity for empathy.
[> [>
Re: Spike and Darla parallel (Spoilers up to Seeing
Red) -- Rufus, 23:45:16 05/11/02 Sat
The names also interest me. Angel hasn't kept his human
name, he got rid of it. So did Darla - we don't know what
her original name was. Not so Drusilla and Spike. While
Spike did change his, he still is called Willaim by Buffy on
more than one occassion. Why? Also why use William and Liam
= both mean protector and are variations. Does JW
just have a love of the name William?
Angel adopted the name his sister called him when he had her
invite him into his parents house after he "died". It was a
perverse tribute to the sister he killed. From the
Prodigal...
Dad: “Be gone, unclean thing! A demon can not enter a
home where it’s not welcome. He must be invited!”
Angel: “That’s true. - But I was invited.”
Angel looks to the doorway. His father turns and sees little
Kathy slumped against the wall.
Dad: “Och!”
Angel: “She thought I returned to her - an angel.”
Darla is a bit of a different story. She was a prostitute
who had enough going for her to have property, but what she
couldn't have was the inclusion into polite society. She may
not have been what people call a "good girl" but she was
attempting to survive. Makes one wonder what you call the
customers who left her alone to die of syphillis?
Then we get to William, I agree that maybe his family was a
bit closer, but don't you find it odd that his mother was
expecting him not his family? Also his resentment of the
father figure in Tabula Rasa, that assumption that he hated
his father.....I considered him to be either from a family
with an absent or dead father. He made a specific point of
changing his station, his name, to that of the lower class
Spike persona. I highly doubt William the Bloody was a name
he considers a compliment, but at least Buffy called him
William. I think he had a bad life in that he was rejected
by all of those in his class, doomed to a solitary life,
until a certain dark beauty found him. Dru was smart to keep
him "sane" someone in the pair had to have an idea of what
was going on.
I've found both Spike and Darla to be rather predictable
because they both did things in a pattern. Angelus changed
his killing style because he wanted to make an artistic
statement...plus kill-drain-dump has to become tedious.
Spike killed for the prestige in numbers, when that tired
him he resorted to killing Slayers to earn respect. He is
kinda a trophy hunter of vampires. Darla tended to kill in a
way similar to a hooker finding a customer, she resented men
and tended to kill family units, perhaps because it was the
thing she never could have in life, a family and good
reputation. Even Angel knew where to look for Darla, she
loved Missionaries.
It was Darla who said "what we once were informs all that we
become" and she was right. The stuff from the vampires life
becomes how they act out as demons. William was rejected,
didn't measure up as a man, so he spends his unlife doing a
version of "Look at me!" over and over again. Angelus kills
purity and loving people because he resents their ability to
enjoy life. Darla kills the image of what once vicimized her
in life in the form of Johns and their families. Drusilla is
the most unpredictable, but even she has a cause...she is
attempting to rebuild the family Angelus took from her,
transferring all her need to her vampire parents.
When vampires are made they lose their soul, the moral
compass that once was directed to good is now pointed to
evil. They feel good doing things that would have horrified
them in real life, unless they were already sociopaths like
Kralic, then hey!, it's just a party with more energy.
Now to redemption and Darla and Spike. One thing we have to
remember is that redemption is an individual thing, there
isn't only one path to it, something can happen that will
turn someone in a new direction. For Darla it was the soul
in her son, the soul that caused her to feel love, real love
for the first time. For Spike, it could be something else,
some event that is no way near the same as the soul Darla
had temporary custody of. Is the chip a Jiminy Cricket to
remove and squish, leaving Spike to again be a monster? Or,
are the feelings Spike is following up on the need of
finding a way to get Buffy to love him? Spike is feeling
like nothing, he can't be either a monster or a man like he
is now, he is caught between two worlds, unable to truly
occupy either....his goodbye from the motorbike promised
change, we can only guess how.
[> [> [>
Rufus's thoughts on Spike; minor spoilers to SR, but
mostly just very long and historically-minded -- (don't
say i didn't warn you) - redcat, 04:57:41 05/12/02
Sun
Rufus - your perceptive comments and very enjoyable post got
me thinking, so this loooong response post is partly your
fault. ;)
You said: “Then we get to William, I agree that maybe his
family was a bit closer, but don't you find it odd
that his mother was expecting him not his family? Also his
resentment of the father figure in
Tabula Rasa, that assumption that he hated his father.....I
considered him to be either from a
family with an absent or dead father. He made a specific
point of changing his station, his
name, to that of the lower class Spike persona. I highly
doubt William the Bloody was a name
he considers a compliment, but at least Buffy called him
William. I think he had a bad life in
that he was rejected by all of those in his class, doomed to
a solitary life, until a certain dark
beauty found him.”
I generally agree, and have what is actually just a small
thing to add to this discussion, even
though it seems really long now that it’s all written out.
It’s based on my reading of the
construction of William as a literary trope representing a
certain recognizable historical
character type from the late 19th century. I know this
might sound more than a bit lectury, but
I think there’s a value to injecting at least the broad
outlines of the historical data into the
discussion.
Especially during the last two decades of the 19th century,
a cluster of British and American
social and cultural commentators, ranging from clergymen to
newspaper editors to educators
and academics in the newly-emerging professions of sexology,
psychology and sociology, very
publically heralded a clarion call for public panic about
the supposed “softening” of the male
citizens of the two respective nations. They were worried
about something generally called
neurasthenia, a condition of “social nervousness” which
manifested *in men* as the linked evils
of feminization, over-culturization and bureaucratization.
Many commentators blamed these
symptoms on men’s supposed over-civilization by women,
others on the creeping cultural
emasculation caused by the social effects of the industrial
revolution on the (white) middle
class. A whole generation of Anglo-American men were
supposedly afflicted, their cultural
type being represented in popular literature, sermons,
editorials and “educational” tracts as the
overly-sensitive, romantic, non-athletic poet of the genteel
middle class. Visual
representations of the neurasthenic male generally portrayed
him as thin, slightly stoop-
shouldered, fussily-dressed, clean-shaven, wearing glasses,
carrying a book, etc. A common
linked attribute of this type of character, especially in
popular dramatic and comedic
representations, was his over-identification with a (usually-
widowed but always over-protective)
mother and the real or implied absence of a strong father.
While there were vigorous social
arguments about the *meaning* of the neurasthenic male (and
his counterpart, the frigid and
infertile neurasthenic female), the problematical and wide-
spread existence of the type itself
had become generally accepted by the mid-1880s. For such a
weak character, the type had a
fairly healthy life, sustaining public and academic interest
throughout the rest of the 19th
century and into the early decades of the 20th, after which
the trope went through a series of
minor revivals, particularly in America in the period just
prior to WWI and in Britain in the inter-
war period.
Structurally, William is almost a caricature of the British
middle-class model of this type. His
comment to Dru in the alley when she vamps him that his
mother is waiting for him at home
confirms the typologic basis of his character. Cecily’s
comment that William is “beneath her”
also reflects the ways in which this character type was
thought to be a special problem of the
middle class. Particularly in Britain, the representation
of the middle-class neurasthenic male
was also linked to a critique of the upward class mobility
of modernity, in which these men
were seen as inappropriately using middle-class attributes
(education, manners, clothing, etc.)
in an attempt to climb the social ladder into the lower
rungs of the upper class. Both Cecily’s
dress and the furnishings of her drawing room, in which she
rejects William, suggest that she
is from at least a slightly higher class position than his,
which reiterates the tropic nature of the
characterization.
Seeing William’s surface characterization as based on this
common stereotypic figure helps
make sense of at least two sorts of statements that we have
seen Spike make. The first is his
fondness for describing men whom he wants to characterize as
emotional or weak as “nancy-
boys,” the perfect descriptor of dear, sweet, slightly
pathetic and clearly virginal William
himself. The second is Spike’s assertion to Buffy that Dru
had saved him “from a life of
mediocrity,” a pejorative phrase that is an almost-perfect
descriptor of the neurasthenic
“condition,” and one that might well have been snidely flung
at a young man like William (if he
were real and not a fictional character, that is) as he
walked the streets of London in 1880.
Finally, as many posters have noted, we need to consider
Spike’s construction of his vampire
identity at a class position lower than William’s original
human one. Darla, Angel and Dru all
clearly seek to establish a vamp life-style at a class
position higher than or equal to their
human one. However, as far as we know, none of the rest of
the “family” has, as a primary
internal psychological legacy from their human self,
inherited the need to establish and display
their “virility” in public ways, nor do they seek to do so
in situations where weakness would also
be publically and particularly displayed. Spike does, on
both counts. He not only loves the
brawl, the riot, going up against unfavorable odds and
coming out the winner, but by his own
admission, he needs it. His fighting style includes a large
dose of performativity, the acting-out
of being The Big Bad. He is only an efficient killer when
he has to be, or when no one
important is looking (e.g., the clerk in the Magic Box,
“Lover’s Walk”).
His intention in his public performances of violence,
however, is not to toy with his victims; he does not delight
in their
pain as Angelus, Dru and Vamp Willow seem to. Spike simply
seeks to display his own wit,
power, speed, strength and cleverness, acted out on the
bodies of his victims, almost as if they
were his canvass. And he does so in the style of a working-
class street-brawler. No fancy
Asian martial arts moves for Spike, no highly-sophisticated
elegance, no spouting of verse or
philosophy while fists and fangs fly. Spike dusts a demon
and then turns, expectantly, looking
to see who saw his theatrics, who he can brag to.
This need for the public display of strength and masculinity
was also the typical 19thC male
response to being categorized as neurasthenic. Literally
tens of thousands of middle-class
British and American men began taking boxing and hunting
lessons and joined organized
outdoor “sports clubs” to prove they weren’t “part of the
problem.” (This is also the era, of
course, of the beginning of the Boy Scouts - which perhaps
explains that organization’s history
of homophobia, although not its current practice of this
social disease.) Oddly enough, this
concern for public displays of “masculinity,” then, in fact
encouraged the broad development of
sites for homo-social organization, behavior and activities.
Men best prove that they are men,
after all, only in the presence of other men, not in the
company of women.
Spike’s choice for a new persona makes sense, given the
trope. Why not move up the social
ladder? It was the upper and middle classes who rejected
him as William, just as it was
members of those classes who identified the “problem” of the
weak man, and all too often
publically condemned and humiliated its human
representatives. Further, we see Spike calling
Angel/Angelus “fop” and “foppish,” words suggesting a
critique of the aristocracy as foolishly
effeminate. But while both the aristocratic/upper class and
the poor certainly had their own
models of inappropriate male development (coded somewhat
differently in Britain than
America), the vigor of the working class was often touted by
social commentators as the most
appropriate antidote for the emasculated, over-civilized,
over-educated male. This message
was mixed, though. Middle-class men were told to value
becoming “hard” like the working
class (as in hard labor, hard physical exercise, hard-
decision making skills, hard business
sense), but were simultaneously warned about the “evils” of
the lower-class world - drink,
drugs, violence and sex – just the sort of things any
sensible vampire would find pretty
exciting. Given all this, becoming the late 19thC
equivalent of Sid Vicious was almost
William’s only option. Since vampires signify (at least on
one level) arrested development,
perhaps it should come as no surprise that Spike retains
William’s typological insecurities and
that they are embodied in his outward persona, as well as in
his judgements of and
relationships with other males.
I’ve barely alluded to the sexual identity issues that are
linked to the model being discussed,
but the basic outlines are clear and folks can take that
wherever they need it to go.... One
thought - since Buffy, as the hero, exhibits a number of
significant attributes that have been
traditionally coded as “masculine,” Spike’s relationship
with her is clearly multi-valent and
complexly ambiguous. (Of course, this is true whether or
not one uses this model to
understand Spike – many, many folks have discussed the
nature of this ambiguity...)
I guess the reason that I’ve taken the pains to discuss this
historical issue at such length here
is that I think it affects Spike’s motivations, his interior
psychological processes, the way he
“came to be” who and what he is. Therefore, by extension,
it should affect his actions in the
present and the future, and, hopefully, our understanding of
them. Spike’s character clearly
reflects a close familiarity on the part of the writers with
the historical type, its representations
in the popular literature of the day, and the contemporary
debates over the resonance of this
“problematic” masculinity-type for modern American culture
in particular. Spike doesn’t just
*seem* to be someone who is insecure, he *represents* that
insecurity in a specifically-coded
way.
Someone else noted on another thread (sorry, I couldn’t find
it when I looked again, please
forgive me, whoever this insight originally was from) that
Spike takes trophies of his best kills,
his coat being the most obvious, and was at one time fixated
on killing Slayers because those
killings gained him a highly-masculinized and highly-
sexualized public reputation (at least in
the demon world). All of this fits with a late Victorian
man who was rescued from a life of
mediocrity by being made a vampire, and who then re-made
himself into a vampire hunter of
vampire-hunters. There’s been a lot of discussion on the
board lately about the relationship
between William and Spike, especially post -“that scene” in
SR. I have no idea if anyone will
even read a post this long and boring, but if so, I hope it
will -- just maybe -- spark a few
thoughts that might add to the general discussion of
Spike/William and the show.
Thanks for reading this and sorry once again that it's so
long.
a hui hou (until we meet again)
redcat
[> [> [> [>
Neat! Plus, a hobbyhorse of mine . . . --
d'Herblay, 06:38:24 05/12/02 Sun
So, Spike is then Teddy Roosevelt, a weedy, bespectacled,
bookish boy who grows into bustle and bluster after a
diagnosis of neurasthenia, travelling out west to take the
air and indulge in a little big-game hunting? I can buy it.
In fact, I outright like it. In the romanticization of Spike
there has been a tendency to Romanticize him as well; a
tendency to latch onto William's posistion as a poet and
build him into another sensitive Shelley or Keats. I wonder
if William might be viewed better within his context as a
Victorian poet, an embracer of blood and sweat and
colonialism: a budding Kipling before Drusilla nips him.
In fact, I (basically because I wanted him to flip through
Dawn's British Literature textbook and say, "That one's
mine") have entertained this fantasy that Spike is really
William Ernest Henley. I'm not sure if Henley was ever
diagnosed as neurasthenic; his tuberculosis was more
obvious. Still, from his infirmary, he did his best to
convey his Victorian masculinity:
Life -- life -- let there be life!
Better a thousand times the roaring hours
When wave and wind,
Like the Arch-Murderer in flight
From the Avenger at his heel,
Storms through the desolate fastnesses
And wild waste places of the world!
Life -- give me life until the end,
That at the very top of being,
The battle-spirit shouting in my blood,
Out of the reddest hell of the fight
I may be snatched and flung
Into the everlasting lull,
The immortal, incommunicable dream.
("Space and Dread and the Dark")
Or, "Oh, God! It's been so long since I had a decent spot of
violence. Really puts things in perspective."
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Neat! Plus, a hobbyhorse of mine . . . --
redcat, 13:12:43 05/12/02 Sun
William Ernest Henley!! Woo and hoo and woo
again!
thanks for your comments. i've also seen the tendency to
equate william/spike with the
Romantics of the earlier era, in part perhaps because spike
himself seems to demand the
comparison. william's own self-conceptualization would
probably seek a blurring of the line
between the Byron/Shelley/Keats image, with its inherent
component of the grand gesture and
the public displays of doomed courage, over the reality of
the poets' not-so-great neurasthenic
grandsons’ empire building during the late industrial/mid-
colonialist era at the end of the
century.
as have many scholars of the period, i see a direct
connection between the late victorian
debate over male neurasthenia and, at least in the american
case, the drive to war and
conquestive imperialism that resulted in the forceful taking
of Hawai'i, Guam and the
Philippines in the Pacific, and Cuba and Puerto Rico in the
Caribbean at the turn of the
century. the Brits, of course, were at the same time
demonstrating their continuing control
over China during the failed Boxer rebellion, during which
we see Spike kill his first Slayer.
Joss obviously had a good undergrad education at Welsley and
one of the things i appreciate
most about the show is that *most* of the time, ME not only
gets the history stuff right, they try
to understand the influence of specific historical issues on
the characters they've created.
Spike and the gang are not just some random creations based
solely on pop culture
iconographic representations of "the vampire." they are
specific vampires, literally "fleshed
out" characters for whom vampirism is but one of a number of
important life
experiences/processes that work complexly to provide them
with conflicting motivations and
multiply-layered psychological structures -- kind of like
the rest of us.
anyway, thanks again for responding. BTW, if you’re
interested in this period and haven’t
already read it, a good set of essays is collected in Gail
Bederman, _Manliness and
Civilization_, UP Chicago, 1995.
a hui hou,
redcat
[> [> [> [>
not boring at all, highly enjoyable actually --
aurelia, 08:51:24 05/12/02 Sun
[> [> [> [>
Re: Rufus's thoughts on Spike; to SR, but mostly just
very long and historically-minded -- Rufus, 14:28:11
05/12/02 Sun
Especially during the last two decades of the 19th
century, a cluster of British and American
social and cultural commentators, ranging from clergymen to
newspaper editors to educators
and academics in the newly-emerging professions of sexology,
psychology and sociology, very
publically heralded a clarion call for public panic about
the supposed “softening” of the male
citizens of the two respective nations. They were worried
about something generally called
neurasthenia, a condition of “social nervousness” which
manifested *in men* as the linked evils
of feminization, over-culturization and bureaucratization.
Many commentators blamed these
symptoms on men’s supposed over-civilization by women,
others on the creeping cultural
emasculation caused by the social effects of the industrial
revolution on the (white) middle
class. A whole generation of Anglo-American men were
supposedly afflicted, their cultural
type being represented in popular literature, sermons,
editorials and “educational” tracts as the
overly-sensitive, romantic, non-athletic poet of the genteel
middle class..
When I did my original outline of William I considered what
to do with Spike to make him someone you could do the
unexpected with. To make him a member of the upperclass was
a way out. Spike had been considered "manly" but I could see
that characterization was very limiting in possibilities.
What originally got me posting on any board was the fact
they went with what I had come up with right down to the
mother figure appearing strong in his life. This was a smart
move because William became a gentle potential of the more
sociopathic Spike. To make him a character made up from a
character was a smart thing to do. It gave redemptionists
something to look to, reference to show that Spike had been
once a "good man". The rejection by Cecily was also a great
addition because we got to see he was no Angelus in the
woman department. It also gave him much in common with Giles
who was another character who went below his station to find
a persona. No mistake you see the two men on the swingset
together.
From the Shooting Script of Fool for Love:
INT. ENGLISH DRAWING ROOM - 1880 - NIGHT
We cut to a high-society drawing room of the late nineteenth
century. Young people mingle and politely flirt.
SUBTITLE: LONDON, 1880
We pan across the crowd to find, sitting alone and staring
longingly out the window, young WILLIAM. Spike before he was
Spike. The biggest sissy imaginable. Chewing thoughtfully on
the end of a pen, mumbling...
William was the biggest sissy yet.....I loved it....he was
what Giles appeared to be in "Welcome to the Hellmouth",
fussy, almost feminine. In season two, Giles proved to be
more complicated than everyone assumed by his gentle seeming
exterior. In Halloween, we found out that Giles did just
what Spike did so many years previously. Giles was the
Ripper. The thing with Giles was that with a bad experience
with Dark Magic in "The Dark Age" he was capable of growing
from that, growing up, becoming an adult. The Ripper got
shoved behind spectacles, and a suit, but in Band Candy we
got to see the Ripper again when he had his way with Buffy's
mom over the hood of the police car. He violent tendancies
were very similar to Spikes, as a more adolecent personality
he had less experience that tells someone that you don't
only use violence to become a man, or to solve all
problems.
He looks in her eyes, begging for a chance he feels he's
earned. She looks back, sincerely.
CECILY
I do see you.
He holds his breath. Hope! She continues:
CECILY
That's the problem. You're
nothing to me, William.
You're beneath me.
Spike takes this in as she exits. He is quiet, trying to
contain his pain
EXT. ENGLISH STREET - 1880 - NIGHT
Without his hat and coat, William tears down the street. Hot
tears streak down his face. He rips up his poem as he stalks
out the building and down the street, blinded by rage and
humiliation.
He BUMPS into a GROUP of three people. A man and two
women.
SPIKE
Bloody... watch where
you're going!
He continues down the street, ripping up the paper into
smaller and smaller bits.
ANGLE ON: A dark section of street beneath a gas lamp.
Spike's overcome with fatigue and humiliation. He
rips the paper into smaller and smaller bits until he can
rip no more.
And slowly, all the rage drains out of him.
A soothing, understanding voice comes from nowhere:
VOICE
And here I wonder...
Embarrassed, Spike whirls to see who it is.
DRUSILLA. Dressed for the times. Looking at him with total
love and understanding.
DRUSILLA
What possible catastrophe came
crashing down from heaven and
brought this dashing stranger...
She reaches out, gingerly wipes the last remaining tear from
his face.
DRUSILLA
...To tears?
SPIKE
Nothing. I wish to be alone.
DRUSILLA
You've been alone too long.
SPIKE
What could you possibly know of me?
DRUSILLA
I've seen you. A man surrounded
by fools who cannot see his strength.
His vision. His glory. That, and
burning baby fish swimming all
'round your head.
What? Spike eyes this crazy Victorian chick suspiciously as
she steps closer, curiously examining him like a cat eyeing
a new breed of mouse. Her lips part...
SPIKE
Th-that's quite close enough.
I've heard tales of London
pickpockets. You'll not get
my purse, I tell you.
DRUSILLA
Don't need a purse.
Your wealth lies here.
(touching his heart)
And here.
(touches his head)
In the spirit and imagination.
You walk in worlds the others
can't begin to imagine.
He's flabbergasted. Hypnotized. How could she know? She
steps closer. Her face near his. He's not used to this. He
squirms, but can't move.
SPIKE
Yes... I mean, no. I mean -
Mother's expecting me.
She leans closer, whispering in his ear.
DRUSILLA
I see what you want. Something
glowing, and glistening. Something
effulgent. Do you want it?
SPIKE
I - yes! God, yes!
She smiles. VAMP-FACES. And BITES deeps in his neck. Spike
rears his head back, new sensations coursing through him. He
closes his eyes, feeling ecstasy... then some pain.
SPIKE
Ow. Ow! OW! Ow ow ow ow OW-WOO!
Drusilla keeps feeding, sucking on the young poet's neck,
pinning him upright against the post, lit by the single
light from above. Draining him, sucking him...
I included the previous exchange because it shows William to
be no man of heavy labour. I don't think he was middle class
he had to be high enough in station to gain entrance to such
a party. His presence there was only because he was in that
class, but as a nerd type he was rejected because he was for
even that type eccentric.
Spike makes his way into the crowd. The Male Partygoer
turns to him.
MALE PARTYGOER
Ah, William. Favor us with your
opinion. What do you make of
this rash of disappearances
sweeping our town? Animals -
or thieves?
All eyes turn to Spike
SPIKE
I prefer not to think of such
dark, ugly business at all.
That's what police are for.
William was not into participating in society, he was more
of a solitary type, one who was a bit of an academic snob,
in that he wasn't going to get his hands dirty with "ugly
business" he clearly "wouldn't" be involved in.
Of course Dru found him and took him to the never-never land
of the vampire. No more books, no more having to live up to
expectations, he was liberated to become a new man. But that
new man came from the mind that had company in the form of
the demon influence that took the potential of William
changing and becoming more of a Ripper type, to a Ripper who
was clearly a monster. I will say again, with age and
experience, Giles was able to evolve into the watcher we
know now, hiding Ripper, but using some of those strengths
when needed. With Spike we perpetually see an adolecent, one
that could never understand why he should find a happy
medium between shy scholar and tough guy. This is because
without a soul, Spike is stuck in that adolecence, still
blaming others for his own weakness, still a very big danger
to those around him as he is prone to act out without
reason. Buffy can't love him because she simply doesn't
dare. We saw that alley scene with the woman he talked
himself into attacking. That to me was the signal from the
writers that the soul was the thing that stood between the
monster and the man. I have to wonder what would happen if
Spike got a soul back? With his experience of over a hundred
years, I doubt he would revert to the ponce we first saw
sniffing after something he couldn't have in the form of
Cecily. I think that like Giles he would be able to use the
strengths of what he had once been as human and demon, leave
never never land and become someone Buffy could give a
serious look to.
I guess we could take a second look at all those punches to
the face as the womans way of civilizing the male.:)
BTW....LOL at the idea that Buffy is a manifestation of
masculinity that can make Spike feel manly, thank god she
hasn't smashed his orbs..;)....heroes have such a tough
job.
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Rufus's thoughts -- redcat, 19:39:57
05/12/02 Sun
well, rufus, we may have to just respectfully agree to
disagree. i can certainly see why you see william as upper
class and i think that interpretation is valid, especially
given the shooting script directions. some of the points i
made earlier about the neurasthenic trope may still work
within that perspective, though.
however, in re-thinking the crucial set of scenes in FFL, i
still see william as somewhat outside the "high society"
social order, and not just because he is a poet or sensitive
or a geek. i look at his clothes and manners in relation to
the others in the drawing room, cecily's statement to him,
the way the visual, textual and structural cues reflect the
neurasthenic model so perfectly, and i wind up saying - yep,
once again ME has created ambiguity rather than certainty,
leaving important factors like william's class position open
to debate. so, as has been mentioned on more than one
occasion, such events only confirm the truth that Joss is
both God and evil.....
BTW, i always enjoy your posts, even the ones i don't
completely agree with, so thanks for the great insights
across a number of topics and threads. -- rc
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Rufus's thoughts -- Rufus, 20:28:52 05/12/02
Sun
in re-thinking the crucial set of scenes in FFL, i still
see william as somewhat outside the "high society" social
order, and not just because he is a poet or sensitive or a
geek. i look at his clothes and manners in relation to the
others in the drawing room, cecily's statement to him, the
way the visual, textual and structural cues reflect the
neurasthenic model so perfectly, and i wind up saying - yep,
once again ME has created ambiguity rather than certainty,
leaving important factors like william's class position open
to debate
I agree it is open to interpretation, the clothing could
easiliy explained as either lack of income, or just lack of
style or freedom to express style. I did agree he did
reflect the neurasthenic model, but he could be in a higher
income and be neurasthenic. I see him as upper middle class,
not anything like aristocracy, look to how he treated the
butler. He asked a question one wouldn't think of to ask a
servant, so is that inexperience in the drawing room, or is
he so removed from everyone else because of his introverted
leanings. One thing that bugged me, if his mother was
expecting him....if he was ready to chuck it all to travel
with Drusilla(I doubt he understood he was going to die to
start that journey), could he possibly know his mother was
well taken care of, or was he a selfish uncaring person?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Rufus's thoughts -- anom, 22:19:55 05/12/02
Sun
"One thing that bugged me, if his mother was expecting
him....if he was ready to chuck it all to travel with
Drusilla(I doubt he understood he was going to die to start
that journey), could he possibly know his mother was well
taken care of, or was he a selfish uncaring person?"
I doubt he was thinking in terms of traveling in the 1st
place--just that she was offering something intangible (he
thought) that he really wanted deep down & never thought he
could have. I don't see any basis to believe he thought he'd
be leaving his mother.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Rufus's thoughts -- Rufus, 00:19:41 05/13/02
Mon
I wasn't thinking about the 5 minute trip he thought he was
taking....from Fool for Love
What? Spike eyes this crazy Victorian chick suspiciously
as she steps closer, curiously examining him like a cat
eyeing a new breed of mouse. Her lips part...
SPIKE
Th-that's quite close enough.
I've heard tales of London
pickpockets. You'll not get
my purse, I tell you.
DRUSILLA
Don't need a purse.
Your wealth lies here.
(touching his heart)
And here.
(touches his head)
In the spirit and imagination.
You walk in worlds the others
can't begin to imagine.
He's flabbergasted. Hypnotized. How could she know? She
steps closer. Her face near his. He's not used to this. He
squirms, but can't move.
SPIKE
Yes... I mean, no. I mean -
Mother's expecting me.
She leans closer, whispering in his ear.
DRUSILLA
I see what you want. Something
glowing, and glistening. Something
effulgent. Do you want it?
SPIKE
I - yes! God, yes!
She smiles. VAMP-FACES. And BITES deeps in his neck. Spike
rears his head back, new sensations coursing through him. He
closes his eyes, feeling ecstasy... then some pain.
SPIKE
Ow. Ow! OW! Ow ow ow ow OW-WOO!
Drusilla keeps feeding, sucking on the young poet's neck,
pinning him upright against the post, lit by the single
light from above. Draining him, sucking him...
Even as a soulless evil, vampire, he seemed to respect a
mother figure, strangers are one thing, but his real mother
is something else. I got the impression that he had no
worries about her well being before he left forever with Dru
and the family. I didn't feel he went back and killed his
mother like Angelus killed his father. If his mother wasn't
of high station, a son who could take care of her would be
as good as killing her if he left her alone, so I thought
somehow that he didn't have to fear for her well-being, be
it food or lodging.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
what wasn't clear... -- anom, 11:19:10 05/13/02
Mon
...was your use of "travel":
"...if he was ready to chuck it all to travel with
Drusilla...."
I didn't think William had any idea he'd be leaving his
mother, either to "travel" long-term or by dying. And if
"the 5-minute trip" means sex w/Dru, ...well, maybe one of
the board's experts on the Victorian era can tell us if its
poets would expect "effulgence" from a quick, or even not so
quick, roll w/a stranger. I don't see any evidence in that
scene that when William said, "yes! God, yes!" to Dru, he
thought he'd never see his mother again & might be leaving
her w/no means of support, only that he'd be late. And maybe
not even that--he probably would have stayed longer at the
party if Cecily hadn't rebuffed him, so "Mother's expecting
me" might have been just an excuse.
What did he think he was saying yes to? Maybe someone
who could understand the worlds he walked in, his search for
effulgence...someone with whom he could transcend his
mundane, "mediocre" existence. Well, he did, just not in any
way he might have expected.
"Even as a soulless evil, vampire, he seemed to respect a
mother figure...."
Hmm. Certainly he had a soft spot for Joyce. But I don't
know if we can extend that individual case to a general
respect for mothers. Did you have any additional instances
in mind?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: what wasn't clear... -- Rufus, 14:36:12
05/13/02 Mon
Nope, for the instances with mothers, it was only an
observation, I would have provided an exact quote if I could
remember one. I think the only thing William knew at the
point he died was that something was going to happen, I
don't think he even knew what that was. I used the word
"travel" with tongue in cheek, I should have made that
clear.
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Rufus's thoughts -- Ronia, 21:42:40 05/12/02
Sun
O.K. I do not posses at this hour, desire to back myself up
as historically acurate, so I'm just gonna offer up a
possibility that occurred to me reading these last few
posts...couldn't William be both? It is interesting to me
also that he mentions only his mother, and that he is an
invited guest at the party, and that he doesn't seem to have
a trade...so I was wondering if perhaps his mother is
widowed, therefore, leaving him formerly of their class, but
now somewhat beneath it due to his financial situation. I
noticed as well that he was not "quite" as nicely dressed as
the others, and wondered if this could be part of the
culprit for his dandification...
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Rufus's thoughts -- Malandanza, 10:32:18
05/13/02 Mon
...couldn't William be both?
I believe William was both as well, although I come at it
from a different perspective. Granted, my view is most
likely not historically sound, since it is based on Jane
Austen novels (which predate William), but Joss is a JA fan
and often doesn't worry about historical accuracy when he
has a story to tell.
I see William's family as being thoroughly middle class, but
with a father who made money in some trade (unworthy of the
aristocracy) like the up and coming families in JA's novels.
They are treated with disdain by the old landed gentry.
This prejudice against new money is best seen in Emma
when Augusta Hawkins becomes engaged to Mr. Elton:
What she was, must be uncertain; but who
she was, might be found out; and setting aside the 10,000
pounds it did not appear that she was all Harriet's
superior. She brought no name, no blood, no alliance. Miss
Hawkins was the youngest daughter of a Bristol--Merchant, of
course, he must be called; but, as the whole of the profits
of his mercantile life appeared so very moderate, it was not
unfair to guess the dignity of his line of trade had been
very moderate also. Part of every winter she used to spend
in Bath; but Bristol was her home, the very heart of
Bristol; for though the mother and father had died some
years ago, and uncle remained -- in the law line: nothing
more distinctly honourable was hazarded of him, than he was
in the law line; and with him the daughter had lived. Emma
guessed him to be some drudge of an attorney, and too stupid
to rise. And all the grandeur of the connection seemed
dependent on the elder sister, who was very well
married, to a gentleman in a great way, near
Bristol, who kept two carriages! That was the wind-up of
the history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins.
So I see William in much the same way -- his father made
money through hard work and either his father or (more
likely) his mother wanted to see William become a gentleman.
But While William's money may buy him admittance into the
upper class, it cannot buy him acceptance. He is Jonathan
trying out for the swim team. He does not belong and his
actions and mannerisms reveal this. Like Miss Hawkins, he
has "no name, no blood, no alliance" -- just money.
And money has always been important to Spike -- there's not
much he wouldn't do for a few dollars. Even when William is
accosted by Dru, William's pocket book is what concerns
him.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Rufus's thoughts -- Ronia, 11:29:45 05/13/02
Mon
wow...I was thinking of JA when I wrote that...the only
reason that I came to the conclusion that he was previously
of their class and not working towards it are as
follows...he was not dressed as nicely as the others, if I
had come into money and was trying to fit into a different
class system, I can't imagine not dressing the part.....his
mannerisms and speech are entirely genteel, not something
that you learn as an adult but are almost bred in..life Is
this way and so on....He doesn't seem to have a trade, or
even to know anything about the trades of others, I can't
imagine the child of a nonwealthy parentage who has worked
to acheive wealth enough to admit them into another class
systems private party would be that ignorant....and lastly,
he was addressed very informally, which was not common at
the time and so it is unlikely that he is a new aquaitance
(sp?)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
requested spelling -- anom, 23:10:00 05/13/02
Mon
"...a new aquaitance (sp?)"
Close--since you ask, it's "acquaintance."
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: requested spelling -- Ronia thanks, knew that
didn't look quite right, 09:29:33 05/14/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Rufus's thoughts -- Rufus, 16:21:30 05/13/02
Mon
Great Mal, now you will have people thinking of Spike in a
Speedo.....I know they didn't have them in Victorian times,
but who wants to be exact?
When I looked over William, I thought he had an absent
father, I don't know why I got that vibe but I did. Absent
or dead, and in those times the father could have been in
India. When it comes to money, I thought that with his
bookish looks he may be well educated which I thought back
then would have cost money.....most of all I see him as a
Victorian Giles.
[> [> [> [>
weary of boredom, but gobbled up every word! I look
forward to more - I know nothing of this subject --
yuri, 00:39:57 05/13/02 Mon
[> [> [>
a quick question -- abt, 06:44:15 05/12/02
Sun
What do you think lies behind Spike's tendency to comfort
crying women?
[> [> [>
Re: Spike and Darla parallel (Spoilers up to Seeing
Red) -- clg0107, 13:49:11 05/14/02 Tue
>> I think he had a bad life in that he was rejected by all
of those in his class, doomed to a solitary life,
Actually, William wasn't of the class that he was hanging
onto, and to which Cecily did belong. She makes that plain
-- she could/would ever consider him courting her because he
was not of the class to marry her. And that was probably
part of William's worship of her -- in his heart of hearts,
he knew her to be unattainable. It didn't hurt any less to
have it said to his face when he got so wrapped up in his
emotions that he declared himeslf. But he was of the
society and knew it's rules.
As to his name following him, he now has pretentions to
humanity -- he effects mannerisms like eating that are
unnecessary to him as a vamp, but that he likes; and he
frequently refers to himself as "a man". And the few times
when Buffy has referred to him as William, it has been as a
recognition of sorts of that. In AYW, it's definately as a
sign of respect for the vestiges of the man in Spike that
she calls him William -- kind of a sign that she recognizes
that his feelings have some worth. It was how he realized
that she really meant it this time.
All in the FWIW category!
~clg0107
[>
Re: Spike and Darla parallel (Spoilers up to Seeing
Red) -- Malandanza, 05:44:46 05/12/02 Sun
I would add that Angel also tried to go back to his
murdering ways after his ensoulment. He tracked Darla down
and tried to get the "whirlwind" back.
Having said that, I think there is a big difference between
a soulless vampire and either human Darla or souled Angel.
Remember, all it took was one drink of blood to erase all of
Darla's moral qualms and angst. Suddenly she was back and
as bad as ever. Similarly, when Angel lost his soul,
Angelus was back in full force -- a century of memories
where he had been wracked with guilt had no effect on him --
one sip of blood and he was back.
My guess is that if Spike gets his chip out, his first
victim will erase all the "progress" he has made since the
Initiative boys castrated him.
[>
Is this what you and Dochawk were chatting about the
other night? Great post, agent! :-) -- OnM, 21:29:55
05/12/02 Sun
Very well reasoned and written, and these were some insights
that hadn't occurred to me.
Nice work!
Nemesis - Willow
and Warren -- Ixchel, 21:03:48 05/11/02 Sat
Warren to Buffy: We're your arch-nemesises...nemeses.
(Gone)
It seems some people have expressed the opinion that Tara's
death is Willow's punishment for her resurrection of Buffy.
If the Buffyverse is a world of harsh gods (the PtB?), who
punish with the discernment of a venegeance demon, then this
would be appropriate.
From www.pantheon.org:
"In Greek mythology, Nemesis is the goddess of divine
justice and vengeance. Her anger is directed toward human
transgression of the natural, right order of things and of
the arrogance causing it. Nemesis pursues the insolent and
the wicked with inflexible vengeance."
Is Warren the instrument of Nemesis exacting the gods'
retribution on Willow for violation of natural law
(resurrecting Buffy)? This idea is congruent with the Greek
idea of the PtB. Tara herself becomes (cruelly, unjustly)
irrelevant, just a means of punishing Willow's hubris.
OTOH, Tara's death could be the seeming cruelty of an
indifferent and random Buffyverse's cosmic balance
adjustment?
Ixchel
[>
Re: Nemesis - Willow and Warren (SPOILERS for Seeing
Red) -- Robert, 21:38:56 05/11/02 Sat
Ixchel, you should label your posting as a spoiler.
>> "OTOH, Tara's death could be the seeming cruelty of an
indifferent and random Buffyverse's cosmic balance
adjustment?"
I actually prefer this interpretation, partly because I
don't believe the BtVS universe includes the powers-that-be,
as a force taking an active hand in the day-to-day operation
of the universe(s).
>> "Tara herself becomes (cruelly, unjustly) irrelevant,
just a means of punishing Willow's hubris."
Tara is not irrelevant. Being the instrument of righteous
punishment (and poetic justice) is certainly not irrelevant.
Beyond that, please recall that Tara is not wholy innocent
of Buffy's resurrection. She may not bear blood on her hands
as Willow does, but she did knowingly participate in the
darkest magic. The other two participants (Xander and Anya)
appear to have received their punishments as well.
Who received the greater punishment, Tara or Willow? If
Willow comes to understand that her actions were the
antecedent to Tara's death, then maybe Willow's punishment
will be the greater.
[>
Spoilers for Seeing Red in my above post. --
Ixchel, 22:45:25 05/11/02 Sat
[>
On the side of Revenge (good spotting !) --
Etrangere, 08:27:51 05/12/02 Sun
We've got Warren, and the trio, self named Nemesis, yes, but
also because his main intention is to "get back" at everyone
who made him suffer. From Katrina to Buffy, passing by the
guy that humiliated him when he was in high school, Warren
is all about vengeance.
In OAFA, Halfrek claimed that vengeance was the same thing
as justice. But if this season teach us anything it's that
this is wrong. Anya learned that, contrary to Halfrek, she's
not interrested anymore into fulfilling wishes, because she
realised that vengeance caused only more pain to
everyone.
Tara however was a symbole of forgiveness, not blind
forgiveness, for she would not let herself be abused by
Willow's use of magic, but she got back with her when her
mind safety was safe anew with Willow.And just when she did
that she was a victim from vengeance's blindness.
Before the end of the season, Buffy, Willow and Xander will
have to make a choice between (or somewhere in between)
vengeance and forgiveness and wonder what justice really
mean.
[> [>
Re: On the side of Revenge (good spotting !) SPOILERS
for Entropy and SR -- manwitch, 10:42:46 05/12/02
Sun
When I see Tara come to Willow's room at the end of entropy
I sense a sadness that seems almost comparable to Christ
going to the cross. There is a quality of, "here it is
folks, time to take it all the way to the conclusion."
Tara seems to be the willing sacrifice, come back to Willow
for I don't know what reason. To give her the chance to work
without the net? As a final lesson in compassion by allowing
Willow to suffer the loss of Tara herself?
And what about the blood? Willow is splattered with Tara's
blood, while Buffy, shot at the same moment and exhibiting
nearly the same wound as Tara, bleeds out. Shadowkat has
argued for Tara as a "mother" figure. Blood of the Mother?
The final ingredient? Dried on Willow's hands?
I don't see Tara as simply a tool. She's far too powerful
for that. Not demon witchy power like Willow has, but
compasionate bodhisattva power.
No, I don't have a point. Just some thoughts.
[> [> [>
Sacrificing Dawn was sacrificing Innocence - Is
sacrificing Tara sacrificing Experience ? -- Ete,
13:56:22 05/12/02 Sun
[> [> [> [>
Uhh, Ete? Spoiler in your subject line! -- OnM,
21:14:54 05/12/02 Sun
[> [> [> [> [>
Arrrrg, sorry ! muchos apologies. When is an episode
not spoiler anymore ? -- Etrangere, 03:42:50 05/13/02
Mon
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Arrrrg, sorry ! muchos apologies. When is an
episode not spoiler anymore ? -- LittleBit, 05:59:14
05/13/02 Mon
Australia is only up to Gone, if that is any help.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
*** Spoiler Policy *** -- Masquerad3, 10:33:01
05/13/02 Mon
The official policy here about marking spoilers is that we
put up spoiler warnings at least a week after the episode
has been shown in North America. That is because not
everyone sees it on Tuesday. Trying to not spoil other
countries that are behind by months (UK, Australia) would be
a full-time job.
That said, spoilers in subject lines that give away major
plot points should be avoided in general just out of common
courtesy. This is almost impossible to enforce, but I've
started deleting posts that give away future spoilers (not
yet aired in N. America) in the subject line.
And as Rob has recently reminded folks, it's also a good
thing to say which episode a spoiler is for. This should be
MANDATORY if it's an episode not yet aired in N.
America.
Questions? Comments?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: *** Spoiler Policy *** -- Sophist, 13:12:29
05/13/02 Mon
Some posters are skirting the spoiler policy by comments
such as "this is speculation" or "ME is going in this
direction". When such comments are made by someone known to
be spoiled, I think a spoiler warning is appropriate.
Speculation is fine, but only if the person is really
speculating.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
There used to be a thing called "Spoiler
Speculations". Should be re-emphasized! -- Masq,
13:22:01 05/13/02 Mon
Spike, Willow,
spoilers to Seeing Red -- abt, 06:36:51 05/12/02
Sun
How do you compare Willow's violation of Tara, and Spike's
attempted violation of Buffy?
Neither of them did it to hurt their loved one, they both
thought they were going to make things nice and happy, but
by the method of force.
In Willow's defence, she didn't hear Tara's voice saying
'No, stop, please' like Spike did, but then again, Willow
went ahead and did it a second time in Tabula Rasa, even
though she knew Tara didn't want it.
[>
Re: Spike, Willow, spoilers to Seeing Red -- Sloan
Parker, 07:02:07 05/12/02 Sun
Here for angel and buffy
scripts and for a free DVD contest! Bloody cool!
[> [>
Re: Spike, Willow, spoilers to Seeing Red -- SM,
09:01:48 05/12/02 Sun
Rape, and "Jack Rolling" (gang rape) is a national disgrace
in my country. It is all about power, and hatred for the
"victim" or "survivor" of the violation, usually but not,
always a woman. It is nothing to do with "sex". The age of
the victim, here, can often be counted in months, not years,
as sex with a virgin is thought to be a "cure" for AIDS.
Rape can never be acceptable or excused. I am dismayed at
the writer having included such a scene. BtVS is aired here
at 5pm to a mostly children's viewership.
[> [> [>
Good grief! -- vh, 06:55:07 05/13/02 Mon
[> [> [>
Re: Spike, Willow, spoilers to Seeing Red --
maddog, 10:26:14 05/13/02 Mon
ok, first off, they write these with the US time slots in
mind(8pm). If the channel that shows Buffy in your country
didn't preview it and decide to put it on at a later time
then it's their fault. Don't blame the writers...they
didn't make that decision.
Trust and Love
and Passion/SPOILERS at end for next week's preview --
alcibiades, 09:59:21 05/12/02 Sun
Buffy shut down with Riley after the Faith body switch and
the fact that Riley didn't recognize that he wasn't having
sex with her.
Buffy shut down with Spike over the demon eggs incident.
All forward movement on disfunctional relationship squashed.
It was the lack of trust that empowered her ability to keep
on saying no.
But until the AR, Buffy trusted Spike with her body and to
recognize her and to know her in a way she never trusted
Riley, just as she trusted Riley with her mission in a way
she never trusted Spike. I suppose Riley's second betrayal
of leaving was also about realizing that Buffy's mission was
not enough for him -- he needed his own that made him feel
important, and that was a betrayal as well.
So, Spike was correct when he said, "I know you felt it when
I was inside you, Buffy," but what he doesn't take into
account is that the last time he was inside of her was
moments before the (as yet unexplained) demon egg incident
was exposed. And the very fact of that incident (still
unexplained) to Buffy means -- you have now betrayed me
once, therefore I can't love you. Because to Buffy, the
first betrayal always leads to the second betrayal, which is
just as profound or more profound than the first. In
Angel's case, there were two profound betrayal's, in Riley's
case, there were three betrayals, over Faith and over the
vamp-hos which led to his abrupt departure. In Spike's
case, she's less inclined to give him the benefit of the
doubt to begin with, and she knows absolutely that one
betrayal will lead to the next. It always has in her past.
So she cuts him off. And then he betrays her again anyway,
her, not her
mission, in the AR scene -- a more profound betrayal than
the demon eggs because it is personal. He betrays her with
the thing she had trusted him with --her body.
There is a great parallel between Buffy's fight with the
first slayer in Intervention, with Buffy trying to call it
off again and again, and the first slayer going back on the
attack. Finally the First Slayer is straddling Buffy and
trying unsuccessfully to thrust the knife/stake/penis symbol
into Buffy's heart, but it doesn't penetrate her -- she
doesn't feel a thing. "Nothing seems to penetrate my heart"
from the musical.
Is this not what Spike is doing in the AR scene? Straddling
her, trying to penetrate her heart with his penis, trying to
penetrate her body in order to penetrate her heart. "I know
you felt it when I was inside you Buffy." But it's not
effective, she can't feel a thing that way. So she kicks
him off just like she kicks off the First Slayer and both
Spike and the first Slayer, realizing their failure, look
wounded
and perplexed and shocked.
Also, the First Slayer's black with white paint and white
gauze. He's white but all in stark black.
Note Buffy's snide comment on hair care. "You might want to
consider what impression you're making in the work
place."
So if Spike comes back with a different dye job from his
sojourn or next year which some of us have wondered, it will
have been foreshadowed in Restless as well as in Forever,
i.e. Doc's comments about someone with darker hair who is
human and likes dominoes looking just like him.
Spike has been echoing all season. He's going to have to
learn to change the dance entirely.
PREVIEW SPEC/Spoiler for those who haven't seen it
The issue of trust and love is also the big question Buffy
is going to have to face viz Willow in the next few
episodes.
I think Buffy's trust issue and worldview is so black and
white, that this will be the reason that she won't be able
to
figure out how to deal with Willow when Willow goes round
the bend, as indicated by last week's preview. "What did
you do," she said in the preview, the same words she said to
Spike in DT.
Buffy will try to go the same old route, "she will never
learn," from the musical. But that won't be the way to
solve it.
I'm still hoping that the musical template is in effect, and
that Spike can deal with rescuing Buffy/saving the situation
in a way that Buffy can't. Effectively, but with compassion
and understanding, as foreshadowed in AL when he is the one
to turn back to Willow, not Buffy in the final scene. The
personality parallel between Willow and William is just too
suggestive. Spike would do exactly what Willow will do if it
had been Buffy who was killed thoughtlessly and for nothing
as Tara was (not the same as her self-sacrifice to save the
world in The Gift). If Spike can understand Willow's
reaction, he might be able to deal with it.
Btw, Spike did say he was storing the demon eggs for a
friend. And Clem is his friend. His only one apparently.
So I'm hoping there will be Clem-Buffy time coming up which
will explain those eggs. MN did say they were tying up all
the old issues in the last few episodes. And that is a
black gaping hole.
[>
Re: Trust and Love and Passion/SPOILERS at end for next
week's preview -- shadowkat, 12:38:07 05/12/02
Sun
Excellent post - one nitpick - the scene you are describing
is at the end of Buffy's dream in Restless not in
Intervention.
Understand the confusion. Both feature the first slayer
and both deal with buffy's inability to deal with complex
issues.
1. She sees the primal power of the slayer as wrong. And
rejects her instead of finding a way to incorporate her into
her being. She does the same thing with Spike.
Effectively chops off the left hand as being in Buffy's
words = wrong. I can't trust this part of myself. The
darkness is wrong. At this point in her development, she
hasn't quite got the knack for balance. Something her sister
is attempting to give her - oddly enough by asking to help
patrol in Entropy or going to visit Spike (left
hand) in his crypt and pleaing with him to go to Buffy.
Dawn (right hand or ego) sees the need for Spike (the
left
hand or id) in her sister the superego's life. Buffy all
season long has been jumping between the two, but I think
they'd like to join together. It's an interesting
metaphor
which they've gone to a lot of effort to subtly suggest over
a two season arc. Not sure if they will complete it or not.
But at this point it is safe to say - Buffy does not
trust or respect the left hand or slayer persona and
wants
no part of it. Hence the gunshot at the end of SR.
2. Intervention is where the first slayer tells Buffy:
You are filled with love it's blinding. But you turn away
from it because of the pain. The pain gives you strength.
Must give into the pain. Love, Forgive, Give - and it will
lead you to your gift. Which is Death.
What a lot of people including Buffy forget is relationships
in life, particularly on Hellmouth are painful. People make
mistakes. Horrible painful mistakes.
They hurt us. Rejecting them is not always the answer.
Remember this is the Buffyverse not our world, so mistakes
tend to be a bit harsher.
Willow unlike buffy has accepted the primal left hand,
she has gone the other way. Both women are out of
balance.
One - goes completely towards the left hand or dark
and the other is going completely towards the right or
light
as evidenced by final scene of seeing red where Buffy is
bathed in light and dressed in white and Willow is in
darkness and eyes are dark. Seeing Red is into the harsh
use of light.
Spike looks like a black and white image after the
bathroom
scene, even during it. A sideshow freak in Giles dream who
can't participate in the action...is a subplot
Willow is also in dark tones and in preview is drained of
color, black and white - sideshow freak
Buffy is in white tons - with pastels or little color -
white hero...
All three need balance. Until they do...chaos?
Sorry for the ramble. Just a few thoughts. Loved your
post
by the way.
[> [>
Re: Trust and Love and Passion/SPOILERS at end for next
week's preview -- redcat's evil twin, 14:36:09
05/12/02 Sun
'kat,
you say, "...the knack for balance. Something her sister is
attempting to give her - oddly enough by asking to help
patrol in Entropy or going to visit Spike (left
hand) in his crypt and pleaing with him to go to Buffy.
Dawn (right hand or ego) sees the need for Spike (the
left
hand or id) in her sister the superego's life. Buffy all
season long has been jumping between the two, but I think
***they'd like to join together*** [emphasis added]. It's an
interesting metaphor which they've gone to a lot of effort
to subtly suggest over a two season arc. Not sure if they
will complete it or not."
you do realize one of the possible, if highly incestuous,
logical extenions (completions) of this dawn/spike, right
hand-left hand analysis, don't you? big brother-protector-
first-(sexualized)-crush becomes first romanticized-fling-
with-bad-boy first lover. right hand attempts to "act" and
heal the center by seeking out the left hand, who responds
with an "emotion"-filled but poorly-conceived trip to the
dark side. or, put another way, spike returns, dawn goes to
him, he seduces (?) her, which act Buffy then has to
reconcile.
freudian much? (or would this be freud's revenge on
jung..?)
mwahahahaha....
[> [> [>
thanks to both ckats, my brain says yum but oooh, let
me digest. -- yuri, 16:21:10 05/12/02 Sun
the most kaboomy part of shadowkat's post for me was her
points about Dawn, and I must say though the scenario you
propose is disturbing, it would also be very intriguing. And
anyway, disturbing can be interesting, evocative. I don't
know how it wuold fit the season's theme of "Buffy, year
one," except if you saw Spawn (ha ha) as a mirror of the B/A
thang... Naaaaaw.
[> [>
Very interesting, shadowkat! -- Simone, 14:56:41
05/12/02 Sun
Question: what do you think it means that Willow is Buffy's
Spirit in "Primeval" and that the repressed/rejected First
Slayer (which I too see as representing the same things
Spike does, only in a reverse, mirror-image sort of way)
attacks her by trying to strangle her, effectively taking
her breath/spirit away (the word "psyche" is derived
etymologically from the Greek word "psuche," which means
both breath or life-force and soul or spirit - that which
makes us alive and human)?
It seems like it's no coincidence that Buffy's wandering
around with little "spirit" left and feeling all
disconnected from life and humanity while Willow is turning
to the dark side.
[> [>
Symbolic meaning of Black and White.....**spoilers to
include season finale** -- Rufus, 17:26:08 05/12/02
Sun
There has been a deliberate use of black and white in this
season....note the bathroom scene "big white
space"........From Herders dictionary of symbols....
"BLACK: A color symbolically analogous to WHITE and that
similarly corresponds to the absolute; hence it can express
both the abundance of life and its total emptiness. In
the sense of the undifferentiatied and abysmal, it often
appears as the designation of darkness, primal chaos,
and death. As the color of mourning, it is closely
associated with resigned pain(thus differing from the light
color white, which signals hope).
As the color of the night, it shares in the symbolic complex
of mother-fertility-mystery-death; black is thus also the
color of fertility, mother godesses, and their
priestesses(in this context it is sometimes related to
symbolically to RED, the color of blood). In China, black is
the color of the feminine principle, yin (see yin and
yang) and contrasts with its opposite, Yellow (or sometimes
also Red), rather than with white, as in the West.
In the Spanish Court, black was for a long time the color of
great dignity."
I underlined the words primal chaos because that is what
takes hold of Willow. I see her situation similar to that of
Giles in The Dark Age. Her lucky streak of magic gone wrong
is over, and she finds out she was never in control and is
paying a price for arrogance. Giles is who I keep going back
to because his conversation with Willow in Flooded is so
important to the happenings in seasons end.
GILES
Having Buffy back in the world
makes me feel indescribably
wonderful - but I wouldn't
congratulate you if you jumped
off a cliff and happened to survive.
WILLOW
That's not what I did, Giles!
GILES
You were lucky.
WILLOW
I wasn't lucky, I was amazing.
How would you know anyway?
You weren't even there.
GILES
(almost yelling)
If I had been I'd have bloody well
stopped you! The Magicks you
channeled are more primal and
ferocious than you can hope to
understand, and you're lucky to
be alive, you rank, arrogant amateur.
Beat. Giles is done. Willow flatlines, total calm,
staring into his eyes. Then:
WILLOW
You're right. The Magicks I used are
incredibly powerful. I'm incredibly powerful.
(beat)
And maybe it's not such a good idea
for you to piss me off.
The two just stare at each other. Long beat. Finally, Willow
relents, back to herself.
WILLOW (cont'd)
C'mon, Giles, I don't want to fight.
Let's not, okay? I'll think about
what you said, and you ... try to
be happy Buffy's back.
Giles just regards her a moment before responding.
Willows lucky streak with magic is over. Her control over a
power she thinks is hers is over. Her transformation in
"Villians" will be proof of that. Willow becomes the
instrument of primal chaos, no longer the master.
Then there is the colour White......Herders Dictionary of
Symbols....
WHITE: the colour of LIGHT, purity, and perfection.
Like its opposite, BLACK, white has a special place among
the colours of the spectrum (which combined yield white). It
is closely associated with the absolute (both the beginning
and the end, as well as their union) and consequently is
used at marriages, initiations, and death rites. I is
the color of mourning in Slavic lands and in Asia, for
example, and occasionally at the French court.
White was the preferred color of specially selected
sacrificial animals.
Priests often wear white garments to symbolize spirit and
light, and the angels and the blessed in Christianity are
often clothed in white for the same reason. Newly baptized
Christians wear white clothing: at Christ's transfiguration
his garments became "white as snow"; the white ceremonial
dress of brides, postulants, and those making first
communion signify innocence and virginity.
In contrast to the vital color Red, white is also the color
of ghosts and specters. Sometimes the color red is
associated with man and white with woman.
Willow will have to fight an internal battle of darkness
over light. Her loss of Tara will leave her in such despair
that she will lose sight of who she has always been. For
those who have seen the pictures, Willow will be transformed
becoming a black presence, hair, clothing. She will become
an instrument of primal chaos. The only thing that can
intervene will be another absolute influence.
One more thing, the last episode is called Grave, the thing
that Willow brought Buffy back from in the season premiere,
the symbolic meaning of a grave is this.....Herders
Dictionary of Symbols.....
Grave: As a barrow of tumulus, it may be an allusion to
Holy Mountains. The form of numerous tombs or monuments (and
also urns, such as the so called house urns)refers
symbolically to the idea of a dwelling (ie., house,
temple,etc)for the deceased. -As a place of death but also
rest, of being cared for, and of the hope of rebirth, the
grave is sometimes associated psychoanalytically with both
the loving and horrific aspects of the Great Mother.
[> [> [>
Black and White - no spoilers -- ponygirl,
07:01:13 05/13/02 Mon
I found it intersting as well that Buffy's robe was gray,
suggesting the complexity of the situation and her own
motivations. It also seemed significant that Spike had left
off his adolescent uniform of jeans and a t-shirt, to put on
more "adult" clothes.
[> [> [> [>
Re: Black and White - no spoilers -- alcibiades,
07:30:21 05/13/02 Mon
Buffy is wearing light grey as well when she is shot. She's
got some culpability for not respecting Warren enough as a
villain to deal with him earlier. [I watched part of OMWF
over recently and I was most taken with Giles' face,
regarding Buffy, as she sings "Why Should We Care?" He's
astonished and dismayed at her insouciance even though he is
eventually caught up in the music.]
Warren is in black in the backyard scene. It's taken him a
long time to get there. He's as black as Spike was dress-
code-wise in the bathroom scene and he too is trying to
penetrate Buffy's heart -- which is a great irony. Not
least, because he comes much closer to his goal.
[> [> [> [>
Symbolic meaning of Gray -- Rufus, 16:28:32
05/13/02 Mon
From the Herders Dictionary of Symbols
Gray: Consisting equally of BLACK and WHITE, is the color
of mediation and compensating justice, as well as the
intermediate realms(eg.,in folk belief it is the color of
the dead and spirits that walk abroad). In Christianity it
is the color of the resurrection of the dead and of the
cloak that Christ wears as judge at the Last
Judgment.
[>
Re: Trust and Love and Passion/SPOILERS at end for next
week's preview -- Lyonors, 07:44:43 05/13/02 Mon
I just had an interesting thought...maybe someone else has
allready had it, but I feel the need to slightly digress on
a subject broached by alcibidaes:
>Buffy shut down with Riley after the Faith body switch and
the fact that Riley didn't recognize that he wasn't having
sex with her.<
After reading this sentence and some more a little further
down in the post...it suddenly occurred to me: In
opposition to Riley's inability to tell the difference
between Faith and Buffy, Spike, in Gone, could tell that the
"ghostie" that was *ahem* playing with him in his crypt was
Buffy....Just another thing pointing to the Spike/Riley
comparison/contrast posts.
Ly
[> [>
Interesting point, but... -- Isabel, 13:01:22
05/13/02 Mon
I think perhaps Spike had a few more clues than Riley had to
work off of.
1) Faith was in Buffy's body. Riley was unfamiliar with
magic so the fact that Buffy was acting very strangely
wouldn't cause him to think, "Is this Buffy?" Plus we see
Faith (in Buffy) at the Bronze drinking beer with the guys
before it occurs to her to go play with Buffy's 'clean
marine.' Since Riley and Buffy had been sleeping together
for a short while, Riley may have assumed that Buffy's
altered behavior was because she was a bit drunk.
2) With Spike, while she was invisible, Buffy was in Buffy's
body. She would smell the same, kiss the same, be the same
height and strength... and Spike is very familiar with the
concept of magic. He thought it was a ghost until she
started ripping his clothes off, then he knew.
I think an adequate test of whether Spike knows her better
or not would be if Spike ever realizes that it was not Buffy
coming on to him that same night in the Bronze. He obviously
remembers well that whole speech that Faith said to him.
"I could go anywhere, do anything, have anyone, even you,
Spike."
In Gone, after Xander left, Buffy was commenting on
how free she was as invisible, Spike was drinking at the bar
and quietly quoted part of Faith's speech back at her, "Go
anywhere, do anything..." He obviously hadn't made the
realization that he hadn't heard those words from Buffy
until then.
All quotes are out of my memory. Hope I didn't get them too
wrong.
[> [> [>
there's an easier way -- anom, 22:27:03 05/13/02
Mon
"With Spike, while she was invisible, Buffy was in Buffy's
body. She would smell the same, kiss the same, be the same
height and strength... and Spike is very familiar with the
concept of magic. He thought it was a ghost until she
started ripping his clothes off, then he knew."
All he had to do was recognize her voice: "I told you not to
try to see me!" Although the shorter hair might've thrown
him off just a bit.
[> [> [> [>
Re: there's an easier way -- Isabel, 07:31:00
05/14/02 Tue
But she didn't speak to him until after he guessed it was
her. The voice was just confirmation.
You're right about the hair...
;)
[> [> [> [> [>
Buffy's hair in Gone -- alcibiades, 09:07:32
05/14/02 Tue
Speaking of Buffy's hair in Gone, regrettably I saw the
preview for Scooby Doo, and I swear she was wearing that
horrible Goldilocks wig in Scooby Doo, (the one she was
wearing before she cut her hair off) just died a slightly
different color -- more horrible yellow, but it was the same
hair style, side part, falsely bouncy.
That's She in the
Spotlight, Losing Her Religion - Thoughts on *Seeing Red*
... (***Spoilers**) -- OnM, 21:08:02 05/12/02 Sun
*******
I give my fans what they need, not what they want.
............ Joss Whedon
*******
Accckkk! Damn! Eat sh*t and die, Whedon!
............ OnM
*******
Oooooo.... Macbeth on acid, with lesbians. Cool!
............ Evil Clone
*******
So I was right. Bummer.
(~sighs~).
As most of you (the board regulars, that is) already know, I
generally don’t go in for obtaining any overly
detailed spoiler material, but I do on occasion read the
stuff on AnGeL X’s site, since she tends to mostly
present ‘general’ spoiler stuff and not blow-by-blow
descriptions of the impending action. (I always
avoid the wildfeeds, for example). So now here we are, and
where do we go?
I pretty much accepted from the time I first heard the
rumors that if the so-called ‘Big Scooby
Death’ turned out to be the real thing, and was not a
misdirection or red herring, then the only logical
candidates were either Anya or Tara. I give great credit to
the show’s various creative talents that it was a
55-45 tossup between the two, you could site several good
arguments in favor of predicting the outcome
for either character. In the end, I still strongly leaned
towards Tara, if for no other reason than that her
demise would hurt the most, and Joss has said before that if
no one genuinely cares about the death of a
character, than what’s the point?
That’s so very true-- it’s like the ‘red shirt’ in the Trek
universe. After a while, it’s almost a joke, a death
bereft of any genuine emotion. Real death is anything but a
joke, and I think that the overall theme of this
season is eventually going to rock our world in a very
intense way, and re-establish what I’ve felt all
along-- that this season will be one of the best in the
history of the series. Not necessarily an upbeat one,
but one that may still turn out to be full and satisfying
from a dramatic/writerly aspect. I was sure that if the
events detailed in this recent spoilery came to pass, that
it would divide the fan base of the show, but that is
nothing new. I am making no judgements of any kind at this
point until the end of episode 22, but I have
faith, if not Faith, ya know? I sympathize very strongly
with those fans who ache at this potential loss, but
all is surely not lost. Go rewatch Becoming Pt. II
and then Anne, if you have any doubts.
No matter how dark the night, morning light eventually
returns.
OK, so I tended to predict the worst possibility when
presented with a collection of them, but
unfortunately there has been ample foreshadowing for the
eventuality of Tara’s death. The sad but true fact
of the situation is that this turn of events closes many of
the ‘plotholes’ or ‘writing weaknesses’ that some
viewers have complained about regarding Season 6, and
further is entirely consistant with the overall
theme of the season.
First, to the foreshadowing. The single biggest red herring
that we’ve been presented with this season is the
idea that Willow has somehow already ‘paid for’ her use of
dark magicks with the ‘addiction’ problem..
Many people, myself included, have felt that there was more
to this apparently simplistic theme than has
appeared to date in the season. The main elements of
foreshadowing in this regard were, first, Spike’s sad
and angry comment that ‘The trouble with magic is that
there’s always a price’. This line appeared
very early on in the season, in Afterlife, if
I recall, and I think many viewers have forgotten
it until now, or as mentioned above, think that the
‘addiction’ was ‘the price’, since it caused Willow to
have to renounce the use of any magic, certainly a
great blow to her self-esteem.
The second major piece of foreshadowing was Gile’s extreme
anger at Willow for bringing Buffy back to
life, which shocked and then angered Willow in return.
Willow saw her involvement in Buffy’s return from
the dead as a matter of wresting good from the forces of
darkness, and that if she was successful, then that
was the end of it. I think Giles failed to reveal something
to her that he may have had personal or close
experience with-- that the ‘conventional’ penalty for
returning a soul from the realm of the dead means that
another life must be sacrified in return. He may have chosen
not to reveal this fact because it may not have
been a certainty, just a very high probability, and
he felt that whatever ultimate destiny Willow had
set in motion, that it was something that he personally had
no future control over-- Willow will either
survive or not, someone else will either die or not,
‘prophesies are tricky things’, etc.
Now if I were the forces of darkness, the life that I would
claim in return would have to be the one that
would have the most impact on the spell-caster. When Willow
performed the resurrection spell, it seemed
clear to me that she understood and accepted the possibility
that she herself could die as a result of calling
on forces this powerful. (Question-- who was the
metaphorical fawn? Did Willow see it as herself,
and therefore ‘accept’ its death if it brought Buffy back?).
Willow accepted this risk because she thought
she could beat the odds and win. Suppose the metaphorical
fawn was Tara? This seems obvious at this
point in time, but would Willow have taken the chance on
resurrecting Buffy if she had been told that
there was a 90% chance that the price of ‘success’ would be
Tara’s life?
60% chance? 20% chance? 5% chance? Any chance at all?
The road to hell, indeed.
Willow is in no position at the moment to appreciate that
her actions seven months ago may have doomed
Tara from the moment that she cast the resurrection spell.
She will surely pursue Warren, perhaps other
members of the Troika, and make him or them ‘pay’. Warren,
however, is but a tool. It is even possible
that the forces of darkness saw the potential in him and
decided to nurse him along. Some viewers have
been debating technical details such as whether or not
Warren’s last few shots could have formed the
correct trajectory to angle up to the bedroom and pierce
Tara exactly through the heart. What would this
matter in a magical universe? If the PtB can make it snow in
southern California, how much effort would
the FoD have to make to deflect the path of one single
bullet that was already headed in the general
direction? In fact, Tara could have been killed if the
bullet had passed through her head, or even her neck,
or even a major artery somewhere else on the body. Why the
heart, and right in the center of it no less?
And why don’t the FoD arrange for Warren to take Buffy out
as well? (It’s obvious that she survives the
shooting attempt, based on the scenes from the preview.)
Because in a manner that Angelus would have appreciated,
this is truly an instance of ‘death as artistry’. It
isn’t enough to exact a price on Willow for her temerity in
trying to produce unfettered good from dark
powers, the price has to be searingly appropo-- the death of
her lover, at a time when she has just returned
into her life after a period of sorrowful seperation, from a
cause easily blamed on the evil dwelling within a
‘souled’ being, Warren. Nor is that alone sufficiently cruel-
- the physical agent of death isn’t magical at all,
just cold hard steel through the heart of the lover, the
metaphorical residence of the soul. The blood
spatters Willow much as the blood of the fawn would have,
and the circle is complete, the innocent
sacrified. Forces of darkness or no, apparently a deal is a
deal-- Buffy gets to live, Tara does not.
And no, I don’t think that she will come back, although I’m
not spoiled for the last two episodes (and
intend to stay that way) so I admit that (almost) anything
is possible. While I love the character deeply, and
will miss her greatly, it would, IMO, seriously diminish the
moral lesson ME is trying to impart if there is
an ‘easy’ out of some kind. I would like to see her appear
again as a spirit guide of some sort, to either
Buffy or Willow or both. The scenes in which Tara appeared
in Restless could suggest that this is a
possibility, and Tara has certainly turned out to be the
most ‘spiritual’ of the Scoobies.
During last week’s review, I mentioned (mostly in passing)
that there was a moment when Dawn and Buffy
were walking together in the Sunnydale Mall, and Dawn had a
certain ‘Faithlike’ appearance to me
visually. The ‘essence’ of Faith-- whatever that actually
is-- seems to be reappearing in the Buffyverse at
increasingly greater intervals, and maybe this is a portent
of some kind for next season. In Seeing
Red, it appears again in yet another way, one I strongly
suspect will become even more apparent in
Villians. This current story arc mirrors the Faith
arc of a few seasons ago, when Faith turned to the
‘dark side’ and joined forces with Mayor Wilkins.
We should recall that Willow despised Faith, saw her
as out of control, ungrateful for her ‘gifts’
and arrogantly misusing them. Now there is the supreme irony
that Willow’s own ‘arrogant misuse of her
gifts’ has resulted in the death of a lover and a powerful
force for good in the Buffyverse. As Faith was
about to turn away from Angel and his offer to help her seek
redemption, Angel soberly remarks to her,
‘You thought that you could just touch the darkness, but
it swallowed you whole’. Faith pauses,
reconsiders, relents. If Willow had informed Giles in
advance about her plan to resurrect Buffy, do you
think he might have had something along those same lines of
advice to present to her?
So is Willow now going to become like Faith? Perhaps yes,
perhaps no. Will her rage at the cruelty of ‘the
fates’ possess her and turn her to greater darkness? This
could certainly be. How will ME pull off a
resolution in just three more episodes? I have absolutely no
idea, but if Faith can turn her back to the FoD,
surely Willow could do the same.
On to Warren, whom no one, including Buffy, took seriously
enough as an evildoer. Suffice to say that’s a
mistake that won’t be repeated anytime soon.
The idea that Warren is responsible for Tara’s death, and an
attempted if unsuccessful killing of Buffy as
well, brings up numerous possibilies, all of them logical
progressions from what has happened so far this
season. In one of my episode reviews of a few months back, I
commented that, IMO, Warren was
unquestionably evil. Will Warren be the ‘big bad’ of the
season? Early on, we would think this unlikely, but
it is in perfect sync with the progression of the ‘big bads’
over the course of the series’ first five years. All
of the monsters of seasons one through five were either
bereft of souls, or somehow sold or lost the ones
they had. From the simple vampire threats of S1 to the
‘immortal and invincible’ hellgod Glory of S5, the
power of evil has escalated, but it is still soul-
less evil. In S6, we meet the next level, one
commensurate with the SG’s entry into young adulthood-- true
evil in a souled being, a human, no less.
Now, I realize that many will be speculating that
Willow will become the Big Bad of the season,
but I’m not sure that is entirely true, even if she does go
on some kind of vengeful rampage and try to
punish or kill Warren. The reason I say this has a great
deal to do with Tara, and one of her greatest
qualities-- the ability to offer forgiveness.
A short time ago in the Angelverse, we discovered that the
character of Charles Gunn made a pact to the
demon Jenoff to exchange his soul for a truck. This is one
of those classic ME moments where you want to
laugh and cry at the same time. On the face of it, how could
someone of sound mind be willing to sell his
soul at all, let alone for a truck? But Gunn explains that
a) he was able to do a lot of good and help a lot of
people with that truck, and b) he didn’t expect to ever
amount to anything anyway. His decision was a
foolish one, but he meant well. In the strict sense, he made
the bargain of his own free will, but should he
be held to it? The FoD would obviously say yes, but the
opposite side would argue that the choice was not
truly a matter of free will, because if you feel you are of
little value to the world, and act accordingly, you
may be selling yourself short. The world may have, or come
to have, a very different sense of your worth.
Willow may have been foolish to make a ‘deal’ with the FoD
to bring Buffy back, but she meant well. Ego
trip aside, Buffy was and is a powerful force for good in
the human world. If Willow had found a way to
bring Buffy back to life that didn’t entail ‘selling
her soul’, would we be having this discussion? I
don’t think so. There is a very thin line between heroism
and foolishness, and Willow came down on the
wrong side of that line. Is it necessary for the penalty to
be so harsh?
Warren’s greatest evil is not in killing Katrina, or even
Tara, it’s that he enables the potential
moraldestruction of Willow or Buffy. You can kill an
innocent person, and that is a sad event, but
killing an ideal is even worse, since the day-to-day
adherence to even one single, benevolent ideal
can ultimately affect the actions of millions of people.
That ME accepts this principle as gospel was plainly
evidenced at the end of last season by Buffy’s refusal to
kill her sister, even to save the universe. While I
personally think that she would have done so if there was
simply no other recourse, it would have meant
her own death spiritually, and for all practical purposes
the end of her role as a warrior for good-- Buffy
stated as much in her conversation with Giles in the
training room before her battle with Glory. I believe
that the PtB understood that she would feel this way, and
honored her integrity by giving her an ‘out’,
which she willingly-- even gratefully-- accepted.
Another mid-season speculation I had was what would happen
if Buffy came into the position of having to
kill Warren? The writers may have taken exactly this theme,
but twisted it so that it is Willow who may kill
Warren. I now believe that this may be exactly where they
are headed with the story, and it would make
perfect sense.
I personally do not think that Buffy would ever
willingly kill Warren, no matter what he has
done,
or how angry she might be. Further, I think that her
encounter with Spike in this episode confirms that.
Buffy makes mistakes, which has always endeared her
character to me, because it makes her human. But
her inherent moral core is unshakable, which is why Giles
rightly called her a hero. Even though Spike has
now done what he said he would never do since openly
confessing his love for Buffy-- namely hurt
her-- she still will not dust him. It could be
very reasonably argued that this is foolish on her
part, but it is completely consistent with Buffy’s past
behavior.
We have always trusted Buffy’s moral center, that seemingly
unerring inner guide that when ultimate push
comes to shove, she will make the correct choice. ( “You
are full of love-- it is brighter than the fire.”
) But can Willow do the same? Certainly, in Warren’s
case (and after all, he has already killed Katrina),
one could very reasonably argue that the death penalty
becomes an applicable option. The only question is,
who will be the judge, jury and executioner? I suspect Buffy
might beat the crap out of Warren and then
turn him over to the human authorities-- something (beatings
or no) she has already done with Andrew and
Jonathan. I likewise suspect that Willow will want to kill
Warren slowly and painfully, and with a passion.
If I were Warren after he finds out about Tara’s death at
his hands, I think I would run like hell, or else
hope and pray that Buffy finds him first.
Speaking of running like hell, or maybe to it, we have
Spike. Buffy may eventually forgive him, or at least
just write off his behavior to the fact that he is still an
‘evil, soulless thing’ but Spike isn’t looking for
forgiveness right now. Exactly what he is looking
for, I’m not sure even he really knows, but I
believe he thinks that if he can only get the chip out of
his head, all will be right with his world. I’m not
really going to speculate at what the next turn in the road
will bring for Spike, but I am fairly sure it won’t
be what he expects. I’m not even very sure it is a subject
that will come up until next season.
I do find it significant that he left his coat behind at
Buffy’s house. I wonder what she will do with it? I
have also always wondered if she will ever find out that it
was a ‘trophy’ from the last Slayer Spike killed,
and what her reaction would be. Is the coat foreshadowing of
something, and if so, does that something
relate to Buffy, or to Spike?
As to ‘the scene’, I appreciated the realism of it, making
it crystal clear that this wasn’t just another SM-ish
game the two were playing at. One thing I very much
didn’t appreciate was the interminable
number of commercials that seperated the two parts of the
scene. If the network insisted that the scene be
split to help diffuse the intensity of it, then ultimately
there wasn’t much the writer could do except write it
the way it was eventually presented, but if this was not the
case, then for shame! This part of the
story was meant to be shocking, and every time I see
this trick being pulled I always flash back to a
holocaust drama several decades ago where after a horrifying
shot of people being herded naked into the
gas chambers, we cut to a commercial of ‘snoopy sniffer’
hawking air freshener. Dear Lord, there are no
words to describe how sickeningly perverse that is.
There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not
Spike was ‘in character’ in attempting to rape
Buffy. You could very well argue either side of this, but
I’m not sure that ‘in character’ is the point to
address as it relates exclusively to Spike. It seems to me
that one of the major themes of the whole season
is that people can arrive at circumstances in their lives
(or un-lives) where they find themselves doing
things they never thought they were capable of doing. In the
case of basically ‘good’ people like the
Scoobies, it is a question of doing evil. In the case of
Spike, it is a question of doing good. So, all of the
regulars have been guilty of being ‘out of character’ this
year, and for that matter many times in the years
before. Some may say that Buffy will never forgive Spike for
his attempt to violate her, but Buffy has
forgiven Xander for dumping Anya, and Willow for the far
more serious crime of ‘mind-raping’ not only
Tara but herself as well. (It is likely she won’t forgive
Warren, but she isn’t likely to kill him in retribution,
either). If she can forgive ‘good’ people, why not Spike?
He’s ‘evil’, after all, he has an ‘excuse’. Whether
she should or not is another matter, and frankly will depend
on what happens when Spike returns. If he is
unencumbered evil again, I think she won’t make the same
mistake she did with Angelus and give him an
opportunity to harm anyone else
Finally, on to some happier thoughts, and yes, there was
reason to be happy with at least some of the
events in this week’s show. I was pleasantly surprised at
what the network allowed ME to get away with in
the scenes with Willow and Tara. Marti Noxon had stated in
an interview a while back that it was her goal
to eventually treat W/T just like any normal heterosexual
relationship is depicted on contemporary
television, and the opening teaser and first act went a long
way towards portraying just that. I especially
liked that the writer took the opportunity to tweak the more
homophobic members of the television
audience by directly challenging one of their primary fears,
that gay individuals are somehow out to
‘corrupt’ the youth of America (or wherever) and ‘turn them’
to a life of ‘perversion’.
So, we have Dawn suddenly realize that Willow and Tara are
sleeping together again, and not only does
she not freak out, she gets all super-happy and offers to
‘go downstairs’ so they can uhh... fraternize?
(Sorry, still back at the Classic Movie and the French flag
theme). Then, in the first act, Dawn watches
Willow and Tara kiss much the same way she watched Buffy and
Riley kiss. This is one of those occasions
where I think that having the show on at 8:00 o’clock is a
good idea, it’s just too bad the violence and
mayhem that comes later makes the case for it being on at
10:00 o’clock.
Dawn continues the maturity thing in other ways, also good
to see this may be an ongoing change. Her talk
with Spike was calm and controlled and very adult, although
of course it does bring up the question of
whether or not the attempted rape would have occurred
without her visit inspiring Spike to ‘explain
himself’ to Buffy. Please note that I’m not blaming Dawn
for that, this is just another example of
how the best intentions to do good things can backfire
horrifically.
Another happy thing was to see that Jonathan has had enough,
and helped Buffy to win the battle with
SuperWarren, and did it cleverly enough so as not to tip off
his ‘partners’. I’m wondering if he will spend
the rest of the season in ‘the big house’, or if he will get
a chance to help Buffy in some other way. Also,
the scene where Andrew does his best movie-villain speech
and then promptly rocket-packs into the roof
was hilarious.
I loved the use of the color red in this episode, it was in
fact the impetus for dumping the planned Classic
Movie choice I had previously picked and selecting
Kieslowski’s Three Colors: Red in it’s place.
From the red sheets of passion (and ‘fraternity’, with a
gender twist?) to the frightening spattering of blood
on Willow’s white shirt, it was perfectly utilized
metaphorically.
This was a frightening episode, but it was a beautifully
realized one. The Clone may be a little perversely
off-center in his appraisal, not overly surprising seeing
how his knowledge of the fine details of
Shakespeare isn’t any better than mine, but he’s right about
one thing-- he knows a good, literate tragedy
when he sees one.
Out, damned spot, yea and verily...
*******
[>
Note: Spoiler material includes scenes from *Villians*
promo at end of *SR* -- OnM, 21:10:48 05/12/02
Sun
[> [>
Ooooo, you said Spoilers.....you may become impure
yet....;) -- Rufus, 21:47:56 05/12/02 Sun
Printing now.
[>
Brilliant stuff... -- Rob, 22:58:50 05/12/02
Sun
I particularly liked what you said about Willow having,
however indirectly, caused Tara's death by resurrecting
Buffy. Although this was staring me in the face the whole
time, I had not quite connected those dots, and this makes
perfect sense that Tara can be linked to the fawn. I'm
remembering now the scene in "After Life" where the demon-as-
Buffy screams at Willow about killing the fawn, while Willow
is next to Tara. It all makes sense now...
You also made a good point about how every character has
behaved a way we never thought they would...Xander, Anya,
Buffy, Spike, Willow, Tara...and that "out-of-character" is
a hard judgment call. I agree. Personally, I think that the
fact that a character can do something that could be
perceived as "out-of-character" only makes that fictional
character all the more three-dimensional and human, because
real people do not fit neatly into their set character
traits. Now, Buffy killing a human but showing no remorse
would be out of character...Xander beating up Buffy would be
out of character. Spike sexually attacking Buffy? No. I
don't think so. Perhaps unexpected, almost
unbelievable...But not impossible, nor out-of-character.
Anyway, I'm rambling, and I have to go to sleep. But just
had to tell ya how much I loved the essay. My printer hasn't
had a good workout in a few days, what with my school
semester being over, so I appreciate it. ;o)
Rob
[> [>
Re: Brilliant stuff... -- DEN, 06:30:44 05/13/02
Mon
Thanks for expressing in such detail ideas I'd been
entertaining since the first word on a BSD. I particularly
admire your interpretation of Willow's addiction as a red
herring. I also agree with your point that Spike's "price to
be paid" would be the life that would hurt the spell's
author the most. Willow was, IMO, ready to die to restore
Buffy. But if Tara becomes the stake....
I too am surprised at the relatively few posters linking
Tara's death with Buffy's resurection. Again IMO, that
reflects 9even for the board's secularists and atheists) the
heritage of a Western Christian ethos that allows scope for
repentance and redemption. The concept of an exchange of
lives that you describe,with no mercy and no way out, is the
product of a Jossverse that is MUCH harsher.
[>
been converted! -- Off-Kilter, acolyte of OnM/
shadowkat (others too), 03:34:51 05/13/02 Mon
Worship at many altars here on this board. Your essay is
great brain food and just keep eat it up. I only hope my
processor is up to absorbing it all instead of making it
into mash. Please keep writing.
Blood on Willow's hands all season it seems. I have a
spoilery quote that would bolster that image, but I'll be
good. *bad, bad, bad girl - showing your spoiler whore
ways*
Keeping the faith, still enjoying the "scenic route" ME is
taking us on, even if it's not the ride I thought I signed
up for.
[>
Great Essay -- LeeAnn, 07:19:20 05/13/02 Mon
[>
Was Buffy really in heaven? -- skeeve, 09:16:12
05/13/02 Mon
If so, how would the forces of darkness have gotten her out?
If Tara's death was really the price of bringing back Buffy,
the setter of the price was certainly a force of darkness.
It therefore follows that Buffy was somewhere from which the
forces of darkness could get her. Heaven wouldn't seem to
qualify. The forces of darkness would seem more likely to
have plucked Buffy out of a hell dimension and edited her
memory to annoy the Scoobies.
I have a suspicion Willow will be making an explicit deal
with the forces of darknsss: Tara comes back for a few
years, after which Willow leaves with her.
BTW why don't they ever look these things up? My
recollection is that Willow did look up the thaumogenic
creature that tried to kill Buffy, but only long after the
spell that created it.
Masq, if Tara's death really was the price of Buffy's
return, does that say something new about Osiris?
[> [>
The answer to Tara will be on...... -- Rufus,
13:55:32 05/13/02 Mon
Villians, the answer is very simple and you will find it if
you read any of the Wildfeeds out there.
[> [> [>
Rufus, you tease! (I will not spoil, I will not
spoil) -- ponygirl, 14:19:45 05/13/02 Mon
[> [> [> [>
I so are a tease.......;) -- Rufus, 16:13:34
05/13/02 Mon
[>
Wow! Thanks -- Vickie, 09:59:42 05/13/02 Mon
One thing you said brought up an echo: Angel soberly
remarks to her, ‘You thought that you could just touch the
darkness, but it swallowed you whole’.
In The Dark Age, Giles tells Buffy (regarding the demon he
and his cronies had been summoning): One of us, Randall,
he lost control. Eyghon took him whole.
I think it's likely Giles has a much better understanding of
all of this than he has said out loud. Hope he shows up to
help very soon.
[>
Awesome as usual -- Liq, 10:07:19 05/13/02
Mon
[>
Amazing post - agree on all the points (spoilerly
speculation) -- shadowkat, 10:08:50 05/13/02 Mon
Okay - like you I'm spoiled generally not specifically.
I don't know what will happen in the next episodes -
well
outside of where Spike is going and what happens to
Warren
which I will not mention here - because that's not what
interests me most about your post.
"Willow accepted this risk because she thought
she could beat the odds and win. Suppose the metaphorical
fawn was Tara? This seems obvious at this
point in time, but would Willow have taken the chance on
resurrecting Buffy if she had been told that
there was a 90% chance that the price of ‘success’ would be
Tara’s life?
60% chance? 20% chance? 5% chance? Any chance at all? The
road to hell, indeed."
That comment interests me because I've long held the same
belief. From as far back as Restless I knew Tara was a
goner, most likely due to something dealing with Willow's
magics. But it never occurred to me that Willow would
inadvertently trade Tara's life for anothers - not realizing
what she was doing in the process (it should have, because
Willow has never considered the consequences of her magic
until after the fact)- until Flooded and Afterlife,
where it is clearly pointed out in three lines first
by Spike, then by Tara herself when Xander confronts her
and she says it's odd to see the sunrise from the other
side, and finally by Giles in Flooded - when he tells
Willow
there was a price for what she did. Both spike and Giles
have experience on this score - Spike possibly with his
ritual to heal Dru in What's My Line which puts him in a
wheelchair and Giles with the Eyghorn thing as explored in
The Dark Age. Two episodes that ran pretty closely together
in Season 2 btw.
But back to Tara - the gun shot is interesting - she is hit
in the heart and remember what Willow calls the blood?
Wine of the mother - or hearts blood? She takes it from the
fawn's heart. And is criticised by the ghost in
Afterlife
for this - when Tara asks what the ghost is talking about,
she denies any knowledge of it.
So both Buffy and Tara are shot in the chest. Buffy lives.
Tara pays price for Buffy being brought back in Bargaining.
I'm not sure if Willow gets that "this is the result of the
Bargain she made" immediately. What happens when
she does? Will she try to reverse what she did in
Bargaining? There are a bunch of vengence demons
wandering
about - will Willow attempt to sacrifice Buffy who was
happier in heaven anyway for Tara? And will Buffy be
willing
to do it to save everyone, Willow, Tara, Giles, Xander
and Dawn all over again? As Spike notes in NA - Buffy
likes
the matyr role - she calls herself Joan in TR. And she
certainly tried to do it in OMWF.
Just random speculation. Great review on episode btw -
best
I've read to date and that includes ten on B C & S board
and several on other sites.
[> [>
Fascinating spec, shadowkat! Can't wait to see how it
compares to what happens on the show! -- Rob,
10:41:28 05/13/02 Mon
[> [>
Re: Amazing post - agree on all the points (spoilerly
speculation) -- Ronia, 11:13:19 05/13/02 Mon
On your speculation(?) of what willow will do...I think it
an interesting and entirely possible that she may try to
undo the Bargainning spell. However, Buffy no longer wants
to die. She also has questioned the value of her sacrifice,
something to the effect of, I gave up my life and there's an
apocolypse next week anyway. It was not an ultimate
sacrifice for all time, just the end yet another slayer. I
wonder what all the others who have gone before her would
have to say. Would they be pleased that they gave up their
lives, literally and figuratively, for a world that went on
as usual anyway? I think if she were looking deeply into
her identity as a slayer she almost couldn't avoid the
martyr=expendable. I wonder would she feel the need to rise
to the occasion for willow's selfish desire to construct the
world around her to suite her. I wouldn't be. I also liked
that you picked up on Tara's sunrise statement. I noticed
it, but couldn't put my finger on where they were going with
it, in retrospect it seems kinda obvious...the other side of
the sunrise
[> [>
Re: Amazing post - agree on all the points (spoilerly
speculation) -- Rufus, 14:12:42 05/13/02 Mon
The ingredient is called "vino de madre"....from the
Transcipt of "Afterlife"...........
WILLOW: (nervous) The last spell ingredient.
XANDER: Okay, right. What is vino de madre anyway?
WILLOW: (walks over to them) Wine of the mother. Kind of ...
black market stuff.
TARA: Black market, you-you didn't tell me that. You
shouldn't have gone alone, it could have been dangerous.
WILLOW: Sorry. I didn't ... I was careful.
That wasn't a ghost that spoke to Willow in Afterlife but a
demon they had created by doing the spell with Buffy.
Transcript from Afterlife.........
WILLOW: I'm not possessed. I-I think I figured it out.
This demon, i-it's not a demon we let out. It's, it's a
demon that we made.
XANDER: We made a demon? Bad us.
WILLOW: Thaumogenesis is when doing a spell actually creates
a being. In this case it was like, a, a side-effect, I
guess. Like a price.
DAWN: What?
WILLOW: Think of it like, the world doesn't like you getting
something for free, and we asked for this huge gift. Buffy.
A-and so the world said, 'fine, but if you have that, you
have to take this too.' And it made the demon.
ANYA: Well, technically, that's not a price. That's a gift
with purchase.
WILLOW: Well, I, I think it's out of phase with this
dimension. Like, its consciousness is here, but, but its
body is caught in the ether between existing and not
existing.
TARA: It doesn't have a body, so it's borrowing ours. I-it
borrowed Dawn and Anya...
WILLOW: Wait. Wait. Dawn. Everybody hold on. (smiles)
ANYA: What? Why are you smiling? That's inappropriate.
WILLOW: Because it's temporary.
XANDER: What is?
WILLOW: The demon. I-it's gonna dissipate. The only way for
it to survive on this plane is if it were to kill the
subject of the original spell.
TARA: It would live if it killed Buffy?
Everyone assumed that the demon that Willow and co. had made
was the only price of the spell with Buffy. I think that
Willow owes a bigger debt to the dark magics because she has
tempted it so many times like in Tough Love and Something
Blue. I don't think Willow understands that magic isn't like
a tool to put back in a kit when she is finished using it.
Giles called it "primal powers" I wonder if each time she
did a spell if it didn't just take a stronger hold on her
like a drug would with a junkie?
Hey! And that is Justice demon if we must keep Hallie
happy with our Political Correctness.....I think anyone who
is vengeful thinks they are only concerned with
justice....;)
[> [> [>
vengeance, er, justice demons (minor quote) --
Vickie, 15:11:24 05/13/02 Mon
"The saints want justice. The rest of us want mercy."
(can't find who said it, but seems to apply here.)
[> [> [>
Re: Amazing post - agree on all the points (spoilerly
speculation) -- shadowkat, 06:57:34 05/14/02 Tue
Hi Rufus - agree - just two nitpicks:
1. vino de madre is french for Wine of the mother (yep
once you learna language it never goes away, translated
it in my head and remembered translation.) Now if memory
serves - in magic rites - wine of the mother or vino de
madre is consider blood from the source or heart. But it's
been a while, so I can be off on that part of it.
2. it was humogensis (sp?) similar to the price in
Angel,
except it was a disembodied demon or ghost because to have
form it had to either possess a SG or get rid of the reason
for its existence, taking that existence instead. Ghosts -
are often just disembodied spirits or "demons" without solid
form. But since that's not a common use of the word - I
should have probably used disembodied spirit or demon.
[> [> [> [>
It's not french, italian or spanish maybe (sights)
-- Ete, 10:29:04 05/14/02 Tue
[> [> [> [>
Ete is correct, "vino de madre" is
Spanish... -- Ixchel, 11:34:55 05/14/02 Tue
But it does mean "wine of (the) mother".
I believe I checked the cc on BtVS and AtS to be sure they
were using the same word and it was "thaumogenesis".
So the word would mean originating or coming into being
through a miracle or magic (a thaumaturgist is a performer
of miracles or a magician).
Hope this was helpful. :)
Ixchel
[> [> [> [> [>
LOL! oh well...must watch myself -- shadowkat,
11:45:44 05/14/02 Tue
Well at least I was right on the meaning? Wine of the
mother? I should get points on that, right???
Sorry - can tell very bad French major...when I was in
Mexico, I ended up combining French/English/and Spainish -
it was quite amusing. (sighs)
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Kat--don't want to pile on here, but it's
"thaumogenesis" -- cjl, 12:11:15 05/14/02
Tue
(n.) an effect which causes creatures to come into being as
a side effect of using dark magicks
Or, as Anya put it in Afterlife: "a gift with purchase."
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: OT - Franish -- Dead Soul, 12:45:14 05/14/02
Tue
I took lots of French and Latin before I ever took any
Spanish and my Spanish professor would read me daily riot
acts about my "Franish."
Dead Soul
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Ah, foreign language trauma... -- Ixchel,
14:56:57 05/14/02 Tue
It was the reverse with me, Dead Soul. I'd had a lot of
Spanish before attempting French (to no result). My poor
professor's nose would wrinkle (she actually seemed to be in
pain) _every_ time I said something. :)
Ixchel
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: I know that pained expression well -- Dead
Soul, 16:06:19 05/14/02 Tue
[> [> [> [>
Re: Amazing post - agree on all the points (spoilerly
speculation) -- Rufus, 13:48:41 05/15/02 Wed
I added quotes directly from the transcripts, unchanged. I
just found the name of the ingredient used, and with ghosts,
I just thought that as ghosts are generally considered human
spirits that the use of the term was confusing.
[> [> [>
Is this totally obvious? -- Isabel, 07:51:22
05/14/02 Tue
We've been talking about that ghost by-product of the
resurrection spell in Afterlife as part of the price
of the spell.
In retrospect, it seems that Anya was completely right, that
it was a 'gift with purchase' and not even the slightest bit
of the debt. The price (or part of it) has just been called.
(What if Tara isn't all that the Powers want?)
[> [>
Thanks, kat-- coming from you that means a lot. :-)
-- OnM, 21:37:41 05/13/02 Mon
I think your analyses are pretty amazing myself, you're
right up there with Age and jenoff as far as I'm concerned.
I always pick up some new insight from your posts, like the
one just now about the 'other side of the sunrise', I had
totally missed that one-- good call.
Also, I only just now got the meaning of the 'vino de madre'
as 'hearts blood'-- Heart = Mother / Wine = Blood?
Whoa!
Now if that isn't Shakespearian, it darn well should
be!
(BTW, that might be an interesting smaller project to do
this summer-- we can all seek out and contribute the lines
from the past 6/3 years of BtVS/Angel that Shakespeare
could have written.)
Tara a goner since Restless? You may very well be
right, but I certainly didn't latch on until early S6, at
the times/eps I already commented on.
Be interested to hear if you have any further thoughts after
reading Rahael's marvelous DVD commentary transcription
above. It appears at first scan that many of us have read
far more into this 'dreamscape' than Joss intended, but even
in my own humble writing efforts, I know that the
subconscious plays a big part-- you write one thing, then
read it over, and suddenly other things jump out at you that
you never consciously intended when first putting electrons
to phosphor.
So are we over-analyzing Restless? I'm not sure
that's possible, but we can certainly try-- somebody has
to!
;-)
[> [> [>
Another thought just jumped to mind re: vino de
madre... -- Rob, 14:26:35 05/14/02 Tue
The "heart's blood" can also be a pun on "hart," another
word for deer.
Rob
[> [>
not sure about heart = mother -- anom, 15:19:40
05/14/02 Tue
"Wine of the mother - or hearts blood? She takes it from the
fawn's heart."
I think the wine = blood equivalency is a lot clearer than
the mother = heart one. Especially since the fawn is a baby,
not a mother. Don't know if it was a female, but if it was,
Willow kept it from ever being a mother. And took it away
from its mother.
As far as taking the blood from the fawn's heart, I'm not so
sure about that either. Not gonna check the tape now, but
from what I remember, what she actually does to the fawn is
off camera. We see its hind legs & its head, but not where
the knife goes in. Then we see Willow's hand come back into
the frame holding something bloody. But one piece of bloody
tissue looks a lot like another. If Willow had cut its heart
out, it would've taken longer, & her hand would've been
bloody past the wrist. Not that the show is generally
realistic about things medical, but I didn't assume from
that scene that the bloody lump was the heart.
If I had (now that I've written that), I would've seen a
parallel w/Hush & the 7 hearts. Hmmm....
[> [> [>
Re: not sure about heart = mother (spoilers
Villains) -- shadowkat, 11:42:36 05/15/02 Wed
Actually now that I've seen Villains - I think the whole
thing is moot, we were clearly reading way too much into it.
LOL! (ME just isn't as clever as we give them credit
for...mucho disappointing.)
Nope it was simple. They could bring back Buffy because
of the mystical forces. Tara got killed by a stray
bullet.
Can't get brought back because it was done by natural
or human causes. (Okay so if she got killed by a vampire, it
would have been different? And if that's the case - why is
Buffy killing vampires and not humans? Boy am I glad
I don't live in Jossverse - they are mean. ;-) )
[>
Many thanks for your insights -- as usual --
verdantheart, 14:17:47 05/13/02 Mon
[>
Re: That's She in the Spotlight, Losing Her Religion -
Thoughts on *Seeing Red* ... (***Spoilers**) -- Rufus,
14:31:40 05/13/02 Mon
Oh yes...the Cross and Stake, every once in awhile I catch
you when you expose yourself over there......hmmmmm that may
not have sounded right..;)
In the end, I still strongly leaned towards Tara, if for
no other reason than that her
demise would hurt the most, and Joss has said before that if
no one genuinely cares about the death of a
character, than what’s the point?
I think you are right and Steve DeKnight also said in his
interview at The Succubus Club, that no matter who Willow
was going out they would have been dead. It was also an
option they had since Tough Love in season five where we see
that Willow would fight anyone including a God for Tara.
When Joyce died in season five we first had the close call
with the surgery, then the actual death in IWMTLY.
The second major piece of foreshadowing was Gile’s
extreme anger at Willow for bringing Buffy back to
life, which shocked and then angered Willow in
return.
With what Giles has been through in the past, Willow would
have been smart to listen to him. I keep quoting that
because I felt that the demon she made bringing back Buffy
was too small a price. But for that spell, who knows it just
may have been the specific price for bringing Buffy back.
The stuff she is going through now an overall price for
tempting the Primal powers with her arrogance.
I personally do not think that Buffy would ever willingly
kill Warren, no matter what he has done,
or how angry she might be. Further, I think that her
encounter with Spike in this episode confirms that.
Buffy makes mistakes, which has always endeared her
character to me, because it makes her human.
Buffy may be human, but Giles was right when he told Ben in
The Gift that she is not "one of us"....from The Gift...
GILES: Can you move?
BEN: Need a ... a minute. She could've killed me.
GILES: No she couldn't. Never. And sooner or later Glory
will re-emerge, and ... make Buffy pay for that mercy. And
the world with her. Buffy even knows that... (reaches into
his pocket, takes out his glasses) and still she couldn't
take a human life.
Shot of Ben listening.
GILES: She's a hero, you see. (Giles puts his glasses on)
She's not like us.
BEN: Us?
Giles suddenly reaches down and puts his hand over Ben's
nose and mouth, holding them shut. Ben struggles weakly as
Giles keeps him still. Giles keeps his calm expression
throughout.
Giles knows Buffy better than anyone, she has stuck by her
inner self that won't allow her to step over the line, Buffy
metes out judgement on demons, I can't see her killing a
human unless they have crossed the line and become something
other than human, or she kills in self defense or to protect
others. She has a very clear stand on killing something she
considers helpless.
As for Spike's trophy, I don't think Buffy knows he got it
from a Slayer.....I find it more interesting that he made no
attempt to retrieve it before he left town. It was left like
a skin he shed.
Finally, best intentions, that is the reason Buffy can't
trust Spike, even though he will act in the best intentions,
he sometimes does things that prove he has no moral compass
that tells him when he crosses a line. Buffy has feeling for
Spike, she just doesn't dare to get too close to someone she
fears she may have to kill someday.
[>
Bravo! -- Talia, 23:42:18 05/13/02 Mon
Thanks, OnM. You could have put my thoughts and unconscious
intuitions into words, except that your post makes much more
sense than my head does. :)
One small quibble: You say that Buffy could never willingly
kill Warren. I am not so sure. She could not have killed
Ben last season, but Ben was not himself the Big Bad. He
was a regular guy who tried very hard to stand up for good,
but was pushed past his breaking point. If that breaking
point was a little bit lower than we might have hoped, that
alone does not make him evil. Buffy could not kill him for
the sins of his body's cohabitator because he was
essentially an innocent, not because he was human. In
Graduation Day she tried to kill Faith, a human. She had
extra reason to kill Faith--Angel needed her blood--but also
extra reason not to kill her--unlike Warren, Faith had been
Buffy's friend, joined by the bond of Slayerdom. Buffy
certainly considers killing humans an abominable thing to
do. She has changed tremendously since season 3, and quite
possibly she could not make the same decisions now. But in
the last few episodes Warren has proved as dangerous as
Faith ever was. She certainly would rather turn him in to
the police than kill, but never say never.
Of course, although I am blissfully unspoiled I suspect all
of the above may be a moot point since there are more
dangerous people running around than just Buffy.
[> [>
Buffy, Faith, Warren -- OnM, 07:06:44 05/14/02
Tue
Ah, the trouble with quibbles!
Well, I never say never, but I don't think that Buffy has
gone through all of the experiences that she has without
learning some things. The Faith/Buffy battle, and Buffy's
apparent willingness to kill Faith turned into a lesson for
her when after finally delivering the 'death blow' to her
former friend, Buffy immediately and visibly feels shock and
remorse. Her expression always clearly conveyed to me a
sense of 'my God, what have I done?'
Buffy realized that this act violated that 'moral core' I
spoke of in the review. No matter what her issues with
Faith, Faith was still a human. Buffy would only be allowed
to kill Faith in good conscience if Faith has attacked
her and there was no recourse. This is similar to the
situation in the endgame of S5 where Buffy had to kill some
of the knights in order to protect her 'family'.
Faith may have started the battle, but it was clear to the
viewers and clear to Buffy in retrospect that Faith had that
'death wish' that Spike spoke about in Fool for Love.
Helping a troubled person kill themselves in this way is not
a moral act.
Now, was Buffy's realization of this fact 'complete' after
she stabbed Faith? No, that would only come much later,
after Angel intervened on Faith's behalf and Faith later
committed herself to prison. But the unconscious realization
was there, and that was enough at that moment. If you have
any question about Faith's true intentions, just watch the
scene again-- Faith virtually thanks Buffy for her 'death'.
In Faith's mind, only Buffy was worthy of this 'honor'--
a sister Slayer, powerful and with the forces of good
allied with her soul. If Buffy could win the battle and
cause her demise, then 'God has spoken'. This same
thought process was mirrored again in Faith's battle with
Angel. Fortunately, Angel clearly understood Faith's
motivations, and didn't give in to anger.
This is part of the elegance of ME's writing methods--
characters don't often make 'sudden' changes in the way they
view the world, it happens slowly, over a course of several
events, and then at some point we become aware that the
viewpoint has intrinsically altered.
This is happening now with Buffy and Xander. They keep
making mistakes, but they do eventually learn from them. As
for Willow-- great big question mark at this moment. If the
pattern is continued, someone will have to intervene and try
to call Willow back from a lust for vengeance. Who will it
be?
[> [> [>
Re: Buffy, Faith, Warren -- Dochawk, 11:07:19
05/14/02 Tue
Once again a wonderful post, but I have something that is
perhaps more than a nitpick with you. Its about Spike's
comment in Fool For Love that slayers have a death wish.
For some reason everyone excepts this statement blindly, yet
we know that Spike interpets things selfishly and from his
own dark nature (how many times this season has he done it
to Buffy, ""what kind of demon are you" etc). I feel there
is minimal evidence for this interpetation, slayers have a
death Wish". (A different queston would be do slayers tire
of their lonely existence of always fighting for their
lives, but hat's not a death wish, and if so, spike already
tells us Buffy is different in this regard, to the best of
his knowledge). Buffy is the third slayer Spike has met
(that we know of, did he lose to another slayer and run away
for his life? alot of holes in that 100 years), hardly a
sample to make a conclusion about in the first place.
Lets look at the deaths of the two slayers he killed, the
Chinese Girl, fighting Spike during the Boxer Rebellion
loses her fight (it happens to every slayer, it only takes
one loss), but from what we see she fights gamely - when she
dies she says "tell my mother I'm sorry"(yup those are words
a suicide will use) but nothing suggests she fights anything
but her best . As for Nicki, the black slayer, we do not
see what allows them to change position, we lose the lights,
she doesn't say anything, but she also apparantly fought
well. Kendra, the only other slayer we see die, certainly
doesn't give the impression of havign a death wish.
I think Spike is already trying to bring Buffy darker and
seperate her from her friends. He uses the statelemt as a
verbal parry, since the chip constrains him from hurting
Buffy (at this point, or could he already? how could the
chip know there was no intent to hurt her? he whole scene
really doesn't make sense regarding his chip, but we give up
on plotholes).
So Faith may have a death wish (at the point of
GraduationDay I don't think she does, she is recieving the
first love of her life from the Mayor), but I certainly
don't think its inherent in slayers.
[> [> [> [>
Good point. -- OnM, 16:51:22 05/14/02 Tue
On a purely technical/statistical basis, you are absolutely
right, and also right on the basis of whether or not Spike
is ultimately credible in this regard having killed only two
Slayers.
However, I think it was the intention of the writer(s) to
assume that Spike's impression was at least
reasonable. My guess is (and this tends to be
confirmed if you have read the 'Tales of the Slayer' book),
that most Slayers simply don't live long enough to develop a
'death wish', they're too busy fighting and dying to think
much about anything else.
However, Spike's 'logic' is credible if the Slayer did
manage to live past a year or two. The First Slayer tried to
explain to Buffy that she should live only in the moment of
the kill. Was this because The First was basically an animal
with little humanity, a killing machine, or was it because
emotions could lead to loss of focus?
Spike felt that it was not possible to kill day after day,
to mete out so much death, without becoming curious about
what it would be like to experience. Being a vampire, Spike
has already experienced death, so he may no longer feel the
need to seek it out. But Buffy, on the other hand, did not,
at least until this season.
Buffy has always had a conflict between her calling and her
inner self. Faith had the same basic conflict, but buried it
under a mixture of bravado and a genuine desire to
experience the thrill of combat. It could be argued that
this conflict may be primarily an artifact of contempory
human culture-- Up until the last century, most humans did
not have the luxury of choosing between survival and the
espousal of a 'higher morality'. Few would analyse
why someone was out to harm or kill them, you figure
'it's you or me, buddy', and you do what you have to.
In Restless Buffy emphatically tells the First that
she is not like her, she is a child of the modern age:
I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I'm gonna be a fireman
when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since
you moved out, and I don't sleep on a bed of bones.
I do not think you can take Buffy's 'modern' perspective and
not also risk succumbing to a 'death wish'. To have an
understanding that the enemy is not always incontrovertably
evil is to bring into question your role in bringing about
their demise.
This is not to say the wish will occur, only that it is a
risk. I think Buffy has not fallen prey to this,
but that Faith did, and her behavior tends to confirm
this. Also, just because one has a 'death wish', it doesn't
need to be a conscious, active one. As George Orwell noted
in his novel 1984, humans are capable of
'doublethink', accepting two contradictory ideas
simultaneously. On a practical basis, one idea or the other
may be the prevailing one at any given moment, but the
person is inherently on a teeter-totter psychologically.
So, a part of Faith wants to die, and a part wants to live.
Eventually the part that wanted to die took over, but the
part that wanted to live insisted that the death had to be
'righteous', and thus that Buffy, and only Buffy, could be
the instrument of that death.
The 'dance' between Buffy and Spike could be seen by Spike
as similar, that the part of Buffy that wanted to die would
only accept death from a worthy challenger, and whether
Buffy ever saw Spike in this manner doesn't really matter,
since Spike certainly did. This may have accounted for his
rage at finding that she didn't seem to have a death
wish.
Is this making any kind of sense? Sorry if I'm a little more
rambly than usual, kind of knocking this out quick before
8:00 o'clock gets here! ;-)
In short, is Spike right on an absolute basis? No, probably
not. Is Spike's argument a reasonable one, if he's talking
about Slayers from the last century? I would say yes.
Great question, doc! Very thought provoking. Feel free to
follow up.
[>
I see all of that, but I'm just not liking it as much
as I thought I would -- OtherEric, 21:23:12 05/14/02
Tue
I still think it could have been executed better. The
overall ideas and story arcs are okay...but (and I can't
really put my finger on it), I haven't been wowed in a big
picture way this season like I have for all the others. I
have really liked some episodes this season, but as a whole,
the season seems okay, but not great. Maybe my expectations
are too high, but it looks like we're heading to a showdown
between members of the scoobies in a slayer vs. big bad type
of fight and the way we've led up to it, its just not
'hitting' me like it should.
I think I feel this season the way I heard that most people
felt about season 4 (which ironically enough, is probably my
favorite--also, I really like Riley, who I hear like,
probably only 5 other people do)----pretty good ideas, but
not decent enough or well realized enough execution of those
ideas.
I get to this point with most shows and things, and just
didn't think Buffy would ever be something that would give
me the slightest doubts--thats what feels different this
season. I guess that is what really surprised or shocked
me and it all sort of hit me at once after SR, though
looking back, the feelings had been there all along.
I know we've got to hit rock bottom before things start to
get brighter and that this is about growing up and facing
life and that the magic has a price and issues with being
yanked out of heaven and the wedding falling apart and
everything dark that has been happening, but instead of
'breaking my heart' like its supposed to, I instead feel
myself not really caring and becoming critical over small
details or inconsistencies (some of the things that a lot of
threads have been started about recently) in a way that I
wouldn't have before when I was more invested in what was
happening on the show. Somehow the fire went out of it for
me this season--its had a really different tilt than what I
became used to in seasons 1-5, and I haven't liked it as
much. Its been a weird climax somehow, different from
before. Maybe I feel like too many themes and competing
elements have been introduced into one season--I don't have
a lot of issue with most of the character arcs and season
themes, but haven't enjoyed each of them as fully as I have
the arcs and themes from seasons past, perhaps because each
one feels just a little under realized or maybe deserving
further exploration that there just wasn't time for do to so
much going on this season. I am left feeling not drained,
but instead simply empty. Not wowed like I thought another
season of Buffy would wow me. I haven't changed, the show
has, and I didn't expect it wouldn't since they are growing
up (and it already did shift kind of when they went to
college and it worked for me then), but this time, it
changed into something I like, but just not as much--its
suddenly (this season-not the others) something that I don't
love anymore. How could this have happened? I'll still
watch, and maybe fall in love with it again. But my heart
was supposed to be broken, like at the end of 2, and it
wasn't. I just became disinterested. All I can say is that
somehow, if they were better at doing the show, it wouldn't
have happened. And it happens to me for a lot of shows.
One day, the writing and execution is just weaker and not as
fulfilling for me. Something I eventually lose interest in-
-I just thought this was one of the few things that wouldn't
do that (to prove I'm not a fatalist, DBZ and SouthPark have
never lust their luster or caused me a single doubt even
though their are episodes not as good here and there)---but
I hope I feel differently after the end of this season and
the next and that somehow, I was supposed to stop caring for
a little while (even if they didn't break my heart like they
intended, and which I do know they succeeded in doing for
many here), so that later on, I will care all the more. I
still have some hope after all.
[> [>
Re: I see all of that, but I'm just not liking it as
much as I thought I would -- Ronia, 10:25:43 05/15/02
Wed
No, you are on to something here, I think. Other seasons
have literally brought me to tears, either with laughter, or
grief. Now this season has sported several good laughs
(imo), but the shows that were supposed to move me...didn't.
Why is this? I am still as manic as ever about watching,
but sometimes, halfway through, my mind starts to wander.
Something is off with the execution of the show
or.......something. Any thoughts?
[> [> [>
(Spoilers SR + Vs) Re: I see all of that, but I'm just
not liking it as much as I thought I would -- OtherEric,
18:03:07 05/15/02 Wed
Most things eventually lose some of their power. I've
noticed that a lot of the action sequences accompanying the
various character and story arcs seem abbreviated to what
they have been in the past. Two examples would be Warren's
fight with Buffy and also his fight/running away from
Willow. The action just wasn't captivating the way it has
been in the past, and while I know Warren is a minor
villain, he's still the most major minor villain we've had
this year. The amusement park fight seemed a bit rushed,
and not very dynamic--kind of forced, as if the thinking
was, "we need to get a lot into this episode and we need
this to lead up to Tara's death, so the fight can't go on
too long" and maybe in approaching it like that, not enough
creativity was interjected into it (the fight) due to lack
of focus, and it was enough of a let-down that it cheapened
all the trio stuff leading up to it. It really was a quick
and over and not a show-down, and if it wasn't important
enough to make it into such, then whats the point of doing
all the things that lead up to it. It was the climax (or
first of two, followed by the shooting) of the whole trio
vs. scoobies arc and it didn't feel overly climactic. Same
thing with Willow killing Warren. I just felt like what I
was seeing was okay, but that there was more I needed that
wasn't there.
A lot of this show has been fighting, but they seem to have
scaled back a bit on that aspect this year. Not that I want
pure hack and slash. Thats what movies like Resident Evil
and Blade II are for (and bless them for it).
I think I can put it best by saying that battles with a
context on a show like this are pretty boring and I don't
need them, but context and story capped off by battles that
are pretty boring are just as disappointing to me.
A good example would be the duel at the end of the becoming.
It was just awesome, and it had so much power because of the
story behind it. If the battle had been not very good, it
would have made everything somewhat anti-climactic for me.
Other stuff I really liked include the Spuffy fight in the
Gem of Amanara episode, Willow's duel with Glory, Angel
fighting Riley due to that misunderstanding, and of course
the gang's fight against Glory and the dark hobbits at the
end of season 5.
The fights have either been too far and few between, not
done well enough, or sometimes just misplaced in where they
end up in the episodes.
I think that thats at least part of it.
[> [> [>
Psychological vs. Metaphorical -- Dochawk,
18:20:37 05/15/02 Wed
I think the difference this year vs past years is that this
year is about the psychological horrors of life and past
years have been about the metaphorical horrors of life. But
to do this, we had to be banged over the head to a much
greater degree. Also to make the psychological come alive
at all we had to be made to not like our favorites (or in
the case of Tara like her too much). they had to go too
dark. ME admitted they tried somethign different. They
wouldn't admit, but I am not sure they are much happier with
the results than we are.
[> [> [> [>
Yeah--thanks for mentioning it. That makes a whole lot
of sense. -- OtherEric, 18:27:26 05/15/02 Wed
Yes. That articulates the difference I sensed very well.
As a result, the show feels like less of an escape and more
grounded in real life this year. And for a fantasy based
show, that feels weird to me. It just doesn't sit quite
right.
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