May 2002
posts
Angel
question -- JCC, 13:54:19 05/26/02 Sun
I am doing a website on Angel and I want to put some answers
to questions on it.
Angel says in Earshot that Buffy was the only person he ever
loved.
Why didn't Angel love Darla?
Comments, Theories?
[>
Re: Angel question -- Masq, 14:20:42 05/26/02
Sun
Angel answers that in the episode "Dear Boy". He says he
couldn't love Darla because he didn't have a soul. (You can
find the shooting script of this episode at psyche's website
with the exact quote).
This raises the question of how Spike could love with out a
soul. The best answer is that Angelus and Spike are two very
different vampires. Spike was the vampire built on sensitive
poet William and Angelus was the vampire built on the
irresponsible, bitter cad Liam of Galway. Liam without a
soul wasn't someone who loved very well, even though he
found reasons to stay with Darla for 150 years.
I believe souled Angel came to love human Darla in the
second season of "Angel", though. By then, he was a very
different vampire than Angelus.
[>
Re: Angel question -- yabyumpan, 14:28:32
05/26/02 Sun
IMO He didn't love Darla because he believes he wasn't
capable of love because he didn't have a soul.
" Darla: "Oh, you bet your ass it was! There was a time,
in the early years, when you would have said I was the
definition of bliss! - Buffy wasn't happiness. - She was
just new!"
Angel starts to laugh: "You know - you are getting awfully
bent over this, Darla. (Slowly walks towards her) I
couldn't feel that with you, because I didn't have a soul. -
But then I got a second chance - just like you have."
from Dear Boy c/o psyche's site
I think that not having a soul had very little to do with
it, look at Dru/Spike and James/Elizabeth. He didn't love
Darla because it wasn't that type of relationship. It was
S&M, each using the other. I think one of the reasons they
stayed together so long was because together, neither of
them would have to confront any complicated love issues.
Both prided themselves on NOT loving, they were cruel and
mean vampires who created a myth around themselves and did
all they could to live up to it.
I'm sure that other people on this board with better working
brains can offer more well constructed thoughts but I do
find it a very interesting subject and one that I'm actually
looking into for a fic I'm working on.
I guess the short answer is that he didn't love Darla
because he chose not to IMHO
[>
Re: Angel question -- SugarTherapy, 17:04:24
05/26/02 Sun
The reason Angel gives is that he didn't have a soul and
without one you aren't capable of love. I personally think
that's a load of crap that Angel made up to make himself
feel better. As a souled vampire, loving an evil demon
wasn't something he could deal with... especially after he
met Buffy, so he just told himself he never loved her
because he wasn't capable of it.
Also, I think he might've denied loving her - even as
Angelus - because he didn't get a whole lot of love as a
human.... Sex, yes, plenty. But sex isn't love and I suppose
you could speculate that the reason Liam slept around so
much was because he craved love - his father's specifically
- and was trying to get from someone else because he just
wasn't seeing it coming from his father. Darla was kind of
his parent figure, so it's entirely possible that he avoided
and denied loving her, for fear of the same rejection he saw
from his father. As Darla told him, "what we once were
informs all that we have become." The proof of his father's
impact on his life is shown numerous occasions - his
reaction the the Master when he meets him for the first
time, his denial of his love for Darla, and even in the way
he treats Connor.
Of course, this is only my opinion...
Sugar
[>
Angel and Darla -- Rufus, 20:36:00 05/26/02
Sun
We know that some vampires are capable of love. Capable of
doing things out of love. It was established that Liam had
problems with love before he ever became a vampire. Once
Angelus was created the idea of love was a weakness to be
scorned, laughed at. Darla had her own problems as she saw
all men as customers who paid her for sex but never gave any
emotional sustenance in return, deserted her as she was
dying. Both Darla and Liam were wounded people, as undead
vampires they seems to excell at destroying anything that
reminded them of what they were incapable of feeling soulled
or not. Angel began to understand love when he first saw
Buffy, he had a soul then and had been wandering, lost in
remourse for what he had done. It hasn't been an easy road
for Angel because he fears love as he feels he will never
deserve it. The reason he couldn't love Darla was at the
time he had no soul but more importantly as a person he
didn't understand and was afraid of love. As a vampire he
feared it as it was the one weakness that had some power
over him and Angelus being all about power and domination
couldn't allow love to exist, so he compulsively destroyed
it.
Can I ask a
question to those who don't believe in hell? -- The Last
Jack, 14:30:56 05/26/02 Sun
First of all, let me say that I am not particularlly
religious; in fact it is often my view that many of the
world problems are based on people taking their religion to
seriously. Please believe me when I say I do not say this to
offend anyone or to redicule the faith of those who read
this. I have never gotten much out of religion, which is my
own spiritual shortcoming, nothing more.
Okay, now that I have gotten that out of the way, I will say
that I believe in the basics of the Christian religion.
There is one God (who goes by many, many names), a good life
is rewarded by heaven, and a bad life is punished by hell. I
believe in hell as the ultimate justice for those whose sins
are unforgivable. This makes me curious then about people
and religious groups who don't believe in hell. Where is the
justice then, if people like Hitler and Stalin not are
punished for their sins?
Again, I am not trying to put down anyone's belief or
anything like that, I am just genuinely curious about this
aspect of faith
The Last Jack
[>
Re: Can I ask a question to those who don't believe in
hell? -- Alice, 14:43:40 05/26/02 Sun
Not really answering your question, but offering a
perspective on hell:
As a (kind of) Christian, I was always taught that hell
isn't about punishing those who had led bad lives, because
God loves us all and if you you believe in God as all-loving
how can you justify the existance of a firey hell. In fact
if you believe God is all powerful, how can you justify a
place that is out of God's reach?
I was taught that 'hell' is something we create for
ourselves, that if we have led a bad life, when we meet God
at the end of it we will not be able to face him. Hell
isn't a fiery place full or torture and punishment, it's the
absence of God - always running from him because you can't
face him.
I'm not sure what I believe, but I think this view of Hell
is alot easier to fit into a view of God as all-loving and
forgiving.
[> [>
According to Jean-Paul Sartre, Hell is other people
-- Sophie, 15:15:06 05/26/02 Sun
Try reading his play "No Exit". Then apply it to the song
"Hotel California" by the Eagles.
This of course, implies that Hell is now and on earth. I am
not so sure that I agree with this, but it is hard to resist
accepting as an answer. Most days, I subscribe to the
Catholic point of view: Heaven, Limbo, Purgatory, and Hell,
which doesn't answer your question, but makes my life simple
- i.e., with the exception of Limbo, it's your choice and
you're responsible for it.
[> [> [>
Hey Buffy asked the same question -- Dochawk,
15:42:17 05/26/02 Sun
And I wonder how she would have answered at least until
Giles showed up in Two to Go.
[> [> [> [>
Personally... -- AngelVSAngelus, 22:19:56
05/26/02 Sun
As a fairly Agnostic person, I don't rule out the
possibility of a Hell or any other number of after life
planes, or the very existence of life after death in the
first place. However, I am inclined to theorize that there
isn't any externalized, metaphysical justice for any crimes
committed here in life.
It seems to me that one doesn't avoid immoral behavior
simply out of fear of punishment, metaphysical or otherwise.
I would certainly hope this wouldn't be most people's
reasoning.
[>
A follow up to your question. -- A8, 16:28:06
05/26/02 Sun
I'm curious why you didn't ask a similar question to those
who don't believe in heaven either. At any rate, to those
who do believe in heaven, hell, purgatory and so forth: why
is it important (or essential, for that matter) to you that
these things exist? In your beliefs, are these things
geographic places (if so where are they?), states of mind,
planes of spiritual existence, or what? Any definition would
be helpful to those of us who believe that all there is for
us is here and now and then our imagination regarding all
the other possibilities.
[>
"They're in the bloody ground!" (S6 Finale
Spoilers) -- Buffyboy, 16:38:52 05/26/02 Sun
As a long time atheist here is my answer to your question.
What Hitler and Stalin and countless others have done was of
course cruel, barbaric and completely unjust to say the
least. They can be condemned and vilified in our historical
memory and their victims can be remembered. But once
there’re dead, then nothing more can happen to them. There
is no justice or injustice in the universe as a whole.
Nature, the cosmos, the universe or whatever you’d like to
call it intends nothing and thus it is only from a human
point of view that we can ever have a concept of justice.
Did Stalin and Hitler then get away with something? Yes.
They did in fact get away with murder and barbarity because
we human being let them get away with it.
Finally, what earthly good would someone burning in hell do
for us, his or her victims or just about anyone else? The
usual answer: revenge—it makes us feel better. Two to
Go/Grave have shown us what this desire for vengeance reaps.
Would it really be a better world if Hitler had been skinned
alive before he died or if he were being continually skinned
alive over and over again while in Hell? Would it really
make us somehow better persons for it? Here I’m reminded of
the long quotation from St. Thomas (sorry about that Masq)
in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals where the blessed Saint
tells us how the enjoyment of those souls in heaven will be
increased by their observing the torture and torment of the
souls in Hell. The “immoral “ Nietzsche of course finds
this appalling. So do I. Stalin and Hitler: “There’re in
the bloody ground!”
[> [>
Very well said! I'd like to add... -- yuri,
17:15:12 05/26/02 Sun
to anyone who may say fear of ending up in hell is positive
because it inspires people to do good, I would like to say
that that is a terrible way to enforce good. People should
do good because they want to, not because they're afraid of
being punished if they don't. This is idealistic, and almost
always people do good because it somehow benefits them, but
to so blatantly teach people that they should do good so
that they won't suffer seems counterproductive to me.
I am interested in Alice's perception of "hell," and though
I'm not about to convert, it seems a much more believable
and reconcilable situation than some actual place where you
are punished for eternity.
[>
Great responses, all. Thanks -- The Last Jack,
17:27:48 05/26/02 Sun
[>
Re: Can I ask a question to those who don't believe in
hell? -- Lyonors, 18:32:53 05/26/02 Sun
As a Pagan(and there are many kinds, so my version doesnt
constitute _all_ Pagan's thoughts on the subject), I do not
believe in Hell, or Satan. I believe in reincarnation, and
within that, a bit of karma thrown in for good measure. I
believe in the Three-fold law, that many Pagans believe in.
That (in a nutshell) means that whatever energy you put
forth into the world will come back to you three times--
whether good or bad energy. I also believe in a kind of
"Spiritual Waiting Room" that is sometimes refered to as the
"Summerland" To me, it is a spiritual place the soul goes
to after death and before rebirth. This is a time to
reflect on the life you led, and what kind of person you
became. No vengency-hell like place, just a place of peace
and reflection. There. I hope that makes sense. Its one
thing to know you belive something in your head, but as soon
as you try to explain it, it gets confusing!
Ly
[>
Re: Can I ask a question to those who don't believe in
hell? -- LeeAnn, 19:15:28 05/26/02 Sun
There is no justice. Haven't you noticed?
[>
Another answer -- Sophist, 21:57:18 05/26/02
Sun
The promise (?) of Hell may encourage people to accept their
fate passively here on earth, believing in some future
punishment for the wrongdoer. If people recognize that this
world is all there is, they may be more motivated to resist
evil.
The concept of Hell also creates problems for believers. If
you believe only because of fear of punishment, you may be
misled; most doctrines say that such a basis for faith is
insufficient. The concept can be a trap for the
unsophisticated.
[>
Re: Couldn't agree more with Buffyboy -- Rahael,
00:11:01 05/27/02 Mon
I just wanted to add that it was this precise question which
caused my faith to waver when I was very young.
(Evolutionary theory then demolished it completely.) I just
could not believe in hell, and even more importantly heaven.
I just didn't understand how hell and heaven would work.
Now as a wavering Christian who really is just in love with
the poetical and prose works of great Christian minds, I can
only call myself this, if I don't believe in any kind of
afterlife.
To my mind, Heaven and Hell exists because human beings had
to invent it. I know next to nothing about Medieval
Christian theology, but I am more confident about early
modern Christian theologies. As the populations of Europe
exploded (recovery from Black death), as people started
living in large, overcrowded cities, early mortality,
insanitary conditions, war, rulers starting to throw their
weights around, and the sheer closeness of lots of other
human beings took their toll, the conditions were set for
certain elements of Christianity to become more attractive.
To my mind, this was the fertile bed for the hugely
divisive, apocalyptic and destructive religious
wars/divisions of the early modern era. Heaven and Hell were
burning questions [Hell was a burning question; Heaven a
more cloudy issue -- d'H], and they were worth killing
other people for. The religious imperative was all.
Hell exists because we think a whole lot of other people
deserve to be there. Even now, the desire to consign entire
groups of people, entire countries, faiths, religions as
'not like us' 'evil' to the dustbin of hell seems to prove
irresistable. I'm always amused by how many more graphic,
powerful and compelling visions of hell and judgement we
have floating around, then we have of heaven.
Many posters here have pointed, in Season 6, to the theme of
otherness. Buffy, Willow and Xander try to repress within
themselves the idea that they are other. They focus evil
outwardly, externalising it. It is here where I believe
dichotomies of thought are so destructive. We start dividing
up human nature, human lives into discrete categories.
'Good', 'evil'. All these people belong in hell, all these
people in heaven. In fact, it is not enough that we go to
heaven, it is essential to our peace of mind that we know
that certain other people are going to hell. Buffy ties up
her friends in the basement/hell, because that is the only
way she can ensure her ascension into the heaven of the
asylum. NA highlights the sterility of the idea of heaven;
Dawn's plea that Buffy not kill ker because she would be
good, highlights the inhumanity of those who set themselves
up as a spiritual judges.
It seems to my mind far more productive to try to challenge
and mitigate evil actions, to make sure that you are not the
cause, than to spend time trying to decide who should go to
hell and heaven.
The reason I get most depressed about the world is in fact
this: by those who have faith and those without. Not so much
a literal belief in heaven or hell, or redemption or
damnation, but a belief in the superiority of some over the
many others, because this is the common root I can see
connecting the 17thC with the 20th. An excessive concern
with the sin of others, and the certitude in rightness of
'me'.
[>
More Questions... -- AgnosticSorcerer, 04:32:50
05/27/02 Mon
"This makes me curious then about people and religious
groups who don't believe in hell. Where is the justice then,
if people like Hitler and Stalin not are punished for their
sins?"
-- For the most part, I am pagan, but the closest religious
affiliation I would have, specifically, would be Kemetic.
Kemeticism claims that the highest principle, the highest
morality, and the highest spiritual duty is to live in,
uphold, and maintain Ma'at (Ma'at being both a Netjeru
[Goddess] of and concept of cosmic order, cosmic justice,
and eternal truth). All will have their hearts
[consciousness] weighed upon the scales of Ma'at by Yinepu
[Anubis] and will be judged by Wesir [Osiris]. Anyone found
guilty of intentionally living their lives against Ma'at
will have their hearts devoured by Ammut [half-hippo, half-
lion, crocodile-headed demon] and the evil will be
obliterated from existence. Now, do I believe this? Time has
yet to tell. For the most part, right now, I am in religious
limbo.
"why is it important (or essential, for that matter) to you
that these things exist? In your beliefs, are these things
geographic places (if so where are they?), states of mind,
planes of spiritual existence, or what?"
-- Why is it important to me that the sun exists? The
Kemetic afterlife, Duat, is a place only accessible by your
ethereal aspects (i.e. ba and akhu).
On a related topic, who is to say (other than Joss and ME)
that vengeance is not justice? What if, in the great scheme
of the universe, that justice can only be acheived through
human means and what if, sometimes, that means is vengeance?
Mind you, I do not believe in karma or the Three-Fold Law as
I find these principles to be just as invalid as Christian
Hell and Heaven (no offense intended, but this is my own
personal belief).
What if justice is simply a "baneful reaction to an action
upon those who acted"? In other words, what if justice is
that in which, to employ a quote from _The Mummy_, "nasty
little buggers [...] always get their come-uppins"?
Any thoughts?
[>
Re: Can I ask a question to those who don't believe in
hell? -- bookworm, 10:16:16 05/27/02 Mon
My beliefs have evolved over the years and would probably be
called heresy by the old Catholic priest who taught my
confirmation class. Hell is the endless, eternal absence of
God, and the understanding that nothing you do will can
change your fate. Hell is also your own conscience; your
awareness of guilt and belief that you cannot be forgiven.
That conscience will exact the last measure of penance from
us, but it will also save us, even after death, by bringing
us closer to God. If God is infinite love, and if love can
save anyone or anything, He can save and forgive even a
Hitler after death. I think everyone could eventually be
saved if they were sorry enough and fully conscious of their
sin. So, to make a long answer short, the evil men and women
of the world will be in hell as long as they fail to
understand how wrong they were, fail to feel sorry for it,
AND believe they cannot be forgiven for it. They will punish
themselves by their own consciences and separation from
God.
[> [>
this is now basic Catholic teaching. -- FriarTed,
09:56:33 05/28/02 Tue
Pope John Paul II & many modern Catholic authorities have
defined Hell as Exile from God (I would add- perhaps Exile
from God even in the Presence of God) & have suggested an
even wider embrace of God to all souls than has previously
been taught.
[>
There isn't any justice -- vampire hunter D,
12:17:17 05/27/02 Mon
[>
Another perspective (long) -- redcat, 12:58:06
05/27/02 Mon
I’ve read with interest the discussion above and
would like to expand on parts of Rahael’s very important
post, in which she notes that many traditional
conceptions of heaven and hell rely on the division of good
from evil, in which evil, at least, is described as a
discrete and separable ”thing.” This is why it has
historically, and tragically, been so easy to use the
concept of evil to label people-who-are-not-us, those
“others” who challenge “us” in some (economic,
political, religious, cultural) way.
Yet, as Rahael also notes, much of the “lesson” of S6, at
least for the characters, has been the need to integrate the
full spectrum of human possibilities, including
their shadow selves, into their fully adult self-
understanding. They have each been challenged to
acknowledge, accept and integrate the “bad” parts of
themselves into both their private self-conceptions and
their public personas. This integration, in fact, has been
the path to them being able to come into a fuller
awareness of their complex and (in each case) quite powerful
true natures.
This in some ways reflects at least one thread of
contemporary pagan metaphysics and is, perhaps not so
surprisingly, also reflected in parts of the liberal
Christian view of heaven and hell that Alice so elegantly
describes in her post above, in which hell is the state of
being closed out of the presence of God by one’s
*own* sense of shame, that one literally cannot “face
God.”
In at least one branch of pagan metaphysics, evil is not
understood as a “thing,” but rather as ignorance, as the
absence of awareness of and connection to all the
processes of the universe. In most descriptions, this
ignorance is at least a somewhat conscious choice, in that
we choose to not look, to not pay attention, to
not be aware. Within Hawaiian epistemology, to be aware, to
be connected, is called being “pono’ -- that is, the state
of being in balance, in harmony with the
universe, being in a state of truth and clarity,
understanding and EXPERIENCING perfect connectedness to
everything and everyone in the universe. This seems
very much like, if I’m understanding Agnostic Sorcerer
correctly, what Kemeticism calls “Ma’at,” and what the
Navajo call “walking in beauty.” Within this
balance, both life and death, growth and decay, power and
helplessness, light and dark, all are necessary and equal.
Thus “evil” is really ignorance of the balance,
and “good” is a state of connected awareness within the
balance. In Hawaiian metaphysics, one is pono when one
realizes AND NURTURES all those people
and things with whom/which one is connected. Being pono
requires that one acts with full acknowledgment of one’s
“kuleana,” one’s rights and responsibilities,
as a conscious being among conscious, as well as non-
sentient, beings and processes.
Similarly, in some branches of pagan metaphysics, this
belief that evil is really ignorance -- i.e., selfishness,
lack of connection, lack of balance – is the basis of
the
understanding that we create our own hells, just as we
create our own heavens, both here on earth during specific
temporal lifetimes, and in whatever other
place/no-place, time/no-time precedes and follows it. Hell
is therefore the small, tightly-bounded prison that we
squeeze ourselves into when we put up our
walls of bigotry, hate, self-loathing and fear, when we
close ourselves off to each other and the universe out of
selfishness and greed, when we *forget* that we
are not only connected to the balance, we *are* the balance
– and so is everyone else. In this branch of pagan theory,
what we have forgotten is that we *are*
the goddess/god, that s/he is immanent in us. (In this
sense, perhaps, the pagan understanding is somewhat
different from Alice’s, since most pagans don’t
believe in an externalized God, as do Christians, Jews and
Muslims, but in goddess/god as Immanent, always present in
all things, including us.)
When we are connected, when we are “pono,” therefore, the
“reward” is not eternal residency in some cloud mansion, not
is it merely being in the presence of a
God who exists outside of us, but rather it is the very
experience of *being* pono. That is, the "reward" is itself.
The experience of being so connected, so
expansively aware, so in balance, so integrated, is in and
of itself “good.” To be closed off, isolated, out of
balance, can only happen when we are ignorant --
when we **choose to ignore** the good -- and that always
feels bad.
I once had a stunning and awful experience of the difference
between conducting one’s life based on this philosophy and
living within a punishment/reward
system. Several years ago, I was on a faculty committee
charged with adjudicating student misconduct against the
college community. Because of the
complicated and sensitive nature of a specific case, the
college brought in a lawyer to advise us on how to conduct
the investigation and judgement process.
Apparently, a few years before, the college administration
had “lost” a case because a faculty member had identified a
witness for the defendant (in a similar
hearing) as “that big-breasted colored woman” in his (the
faculty member’s) notes. The defendant had been able to
get a copy of the notes and sued for
discrimination; his suspension from college was overturned
and the school had to pay him, his family and the African-
American woman witness big bucks over
the incident. The lawyer told us to be careful about what
we wrote down, as any notes that might be considered
offensive might eventually hurt the college.
Now, while that might be necessary legal advice, I remember
raising my hand and suggesting that the problem was not
whether or not we would write such a
thing down, but whether we would think to identify a member
of the college community in such terms. I noted that such a
racist and sexist attitude would not
allow us to make a fair judgement in the case before us, and
that if someone felt that they were likely to have those
kinds of prejudices, they should excuse
themselves from the committee. Having said this, I looked
around to find a dozen disbelieving faces. Only one other
person on the committee got what I was
trying to say, the rest treated me as though I was simply
being naive. They saw no problem with the grand lesson of
the lawyer’s story being “don’t write bad
stuff you think about people down on paper,” rather than “we
should actually try to do our jobs in a fair and honest
manner.” As you might suspect, I didn't last
very long in that faculty community...
But you know what? I’m much happier as a person
understanding that if I keep trying to *be* good -- to be
open and in balance and connected, to be aware and
compassionate and loving -- that I will probably, in that
process, *do* good, rather than trying to live my life the
other way around. Besides, I don’t really
know how to play the harp...
Just my two cents worth. Thanks for reading!
rc
[>
Buffyboy and yuri have the right slant,as far as I am
concerned -- AurraSing, 13:32:37 05/27/02 Mon
And while I have a sneaking suspision that karma may have
some play in our lives,I do not believe in hell.Or
heaven,for that matter.
[>
Re: Can I ask a question to those who don't believe in
hell? -- anom, 22:58:05 05/27/02 Mon
I have 2 answers to this, both of which are no more than my
own opinion. First, I think it's the opposite of what we
usually hear: rather than that if you do bad things you'll
end up in hell, it's that if you start out in hell you'll do
bad things. The "hell" I'm talking about is an abusive
childhood. Of course, it's not that simple, but that's the
general principle. The only "justice" in it is that the
society that denies it pays the price...after the kids
already have.
Second, I think some of the "hell" is in our own heads. Not
after we die, but here & now. I've read & heard some
accounts by people who've been involved in war, & even in
torture, who talk about their reactions after the 1st time
they did something horrible...& the 2nd, & the 10th.... The
1st time, they can't sleep, can't eat, can't even sit still.
Can't deal w/what they've done. Then they bury those
feelings under drinking, smoking...drugs of one kind or
another. Eventually the very acts they couldn't face become
the drug, as they harden themselves by doing worse & worse
things.
Being out of touch w/your deepest self is a kind of hell. If
you deny what you've done to other people, you're denying a
part of yourself, cutting yourself off from the most
sensitive part of your psyche--from your very soul. You may
be suppressing the knowledge of the pain this causes, but
the pain is still real, & it affects your life.
Unfortunately, it also affects others' lives.
Wish I had time to go into more detail on this idea, which
is considerably more complex than I can go into right now--&
on how the 2 answers are related--but I'd better post this
now & hope the thread's still there when I have more
time.
[> [>
Re: Can I ask a question to those who don't believe in
hell? -- Ronia-just keeping the thread alive,
06:58:11 05/28/02 Tue
the question is for those who don't believe in hell, I
believe in hell and am therefore disqualified. However, I
want to hear the rest of anom's post.
The Fine Art of
Torture (Spoilers for seasons 2, 3, 4, and 6) - Long --
Sophie, 20:29:04 05/26/02 Sun
Willow's torture of Warren is significantly different from
other torture scenes in BTVS in that Warren, the victim, is
tortured to death. This bothered me quite a bit, and got me
thinking about fine art of torture. To get a grasp on why
this scene bothered me so much, I reviewed a couple of
torture scenes outside the Buffyverse, then compared them to
BTVS.
***
Many years ago, I stumbled upon the opera "Tosca" by
Puccini. In the opera, Tosca and her lover are both
captured by the enemy, Scarpia (not to be confused with the
Italian architect, Scarpa), tortures both by placing them in
separate rooms. Tosca's lover (whose name I have
forgotten), is placed in one room, out of Tosca's sight, but
not out of earshot (he knows Tosca is near). Tosca and
Scarpia are in the second room. One of Scarpia's flunkies
beats Tosca's lover while Tosca gets to listen to him
scream. Scarpia stands around and enjoys Tosca's pain.
(Later, Scarpia attempts to rape Tosca, and she fatally
stabs him.) We see someone, Tosca, being tortured
emotionally, without even being touched physically. No
marks on her body afterwards for proof. This is a
refinement in the art of torture, which makes legally
proving the event of being tortured nearly impossible
afterwards. Both Tosca and her lover resist, and both die.
(Tosca commits suicide, but she would have been killed if
she hadn't done the deed herself, first.)
This weekend, I watched "Le Petit Soldat" for the first
time. The movie has a lengthy torture scene in it. (This
was not why I watched the movie. I am trying to learn
French this summer by watching movies in French. One per
weekend. This was only the second, so don't ask if it is
working.) The scene was really hard to ignore because we
are shown everything that is done to cause Bruno pain and
fear - he is threatened with being burned, drowned,
suffocated, and electrocuted - while he is in a tub,
handcuffed to the plumbing fixtures (they move him to the
living room for the electrocution part). We see his
torturers smoking cigarettes and realize that Bruno is not
allowed this or any other pleasures. He cannot leave and
has no control over the events. He "lets go" by mentally
disengaging and passing out, but his torturers spray him
with cold water to revive him. Throughout the movie, we see
Bruno doing things, going places, and listening to his
narration - his thoughts. We sympathize with him, and as a
result, feel his pain, his fear, and his humiliation. That
sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. After he escapes,
he is left with nothing to prove harm - no marks on his body
- the torturers were careful, the movie focuses on this
detail - nothing left but a pair of handcuffs and
humiliation. Bruno knows that he was setup and double-
crossed. As a result of the torture, he changes his
behavior.
The residual lesson is that the point of torturing someone
is to humiliate them and change their future behavior, not
just cause pain. Torture also gets used to illicit
information from somebody who doesn't want to give the
information. If you resist giving the info and endure the
pain, you can brag, but if you give the info, then you're
back to that humiliation thing. More humiliation if you cry
or scream. Much of the mental humiliation occurs afterwards.
(Now I am super-indebted to my spell-checker because I
apparently can't spell "humiliation".) When you are
tortured, you are forced to let someone have control over
what happens to your body - a very physical and intense
transgression - which becomes a sick memory that you find
impossible to tell anybody afterwards. You are forced to
"let go" control of everything. By passing out, you escape
your body. But that is only temporary.
In the Buffyverse, we see this type of torture. Infliction
of physical pain, and later emotion or mental pain/anguish.
The victim of the torture is threatened with death, but
allowed to live - which is important.
So let's make a list:
<> Angelus being cursed with a soul and turned into Angel -
who is left to suffer for eternity mental anguish for his
previous evil deeds - deeds that he cannot undo or be
forgiven for.
<> Dru torturing Angel in "What's My Line", part II - Dru
pours holy water on Angel while he is tied to the bedposts.
Physical pain during the torture, and mental humiliation
afterwards. There is a threat of death, but not as a result
of the torture.
<> Angelus torturing Giles in Passion - Angel kills Jenny,
who Giles loves, and then leaves Jenny's body in Giles'
apartment. Here, Giles is tortured by the brutal murder of
someone he loves dearly, right at the moment when the
relationship was about to consummated. Giles is never
touched physically, no marks, but he suffers considerable
ongoing emotional pain.
<> Angelus torturing Giles in "Becoming", part II to get
info - Angel threatens Giles with death and causes pain by
some un-shown means. He also gets Dru to cause Giles to
hallucinate and give up the info.
<> And the recent Willow torturing Warren in "Villians" -
she ties him to trees, threatens him verbally with death,
magickly causes him pain, then skins him, and kills him
Ok, that's enough. I omitted Angelus torturing Buffy and
her friends, as it is somewhat oblique and is more like
stalking. Season 3 is hazy in my mind, though I do remember
something about Angel in chains. And I will skip Season 4's
torture scenes with Spike chained up in Giles' tub, too. We
never see any real harm come to Spike here; they even feed
him.
The torture scenes in Buffy, with the exception of Willow
and Warren in "Grave", follow our guides for the fine art of
torture, but are prevented from being really jarring as
details are removed or hidden or never mentioned. We never
see what Angelus does to Giles to cause him such pain in
"Becoming II". We are sheltered from clearly viewing
Jenny's body in Giles' apartment. The only time the gut-
wrenching after-effects of being tortured are even mentioned
is in " Revelations" by Giles, when he learns that Angel has
returned and Buffy wants to forgive him. Giles says
"...you've jeopardized the lives of all that you hold dear
by harboring a known murderer. But sadly, I must remind you
that Angel tortured me... for hours... for pleasure. You
should have told me he was alive. You didn't. You have no
respect for me or the job I perform",
as Giles understands the latent humiliation and anguish of
being tortured.
But when Willow tortures Warren, we do get to watch and see
everything. But it loses half of the point when Willow
murders Warren. It also lacks the fine art of torture.
Willow's torture of Warren is short and continuous. She
doesn't leave and let him think about the mess that he has
gotten into. Bruno was left to reflect a couple of times.
Mostly he sleeps/passes out to get through. He thinks about
roses, and other beautiful things to mentally escape.
Warren is given no time to reflect. We also don't get to
hear Warren's thoughts like we do Bruno's. Nor do we
sympathize with Warren like we do with Bruno. Willow drags
up a walking, talking embodiment of Katrina, who Warren
killed, to scare him into regret for his actions, but the
effects are lost because Katrina is dead - she cannot feel.
Tosca's lover knows that Tosca can hear his screams. He
knows that she feels pain upon hearing them because she
hates the thought of her lover being injured. He is also
humiliated by her hearing his screams. It is unmanly to
scream or cry from pain. Bruno is also concerned about this
even though his only witnesses are his torturers. Katrina
cannot be caused pain by Warren's suffering (she probably
would have enjoyed it, since she hated him) and Warren
cannot be humiliated by her seeing him show fear as she is
not real.
***
This was a pointless effort to evaluate torture in BTVS, but
it bothered me. I don't know that I want to see more
realistic torture scenes, but this one was just off the
mark, and felt forced. It didn't accomplish anything,
really. It showed Willow being cruel, proving that she had
turned evil? Somehow making Warren's murder more evil?
Don't know.
Sophie
[>
Re: The Fine Art of Torture (Spoilers for seasons 2, 3,
4, and 6) - Long -- Dochawk, 23:31:38 05/26/02
Sun
Interesting. I think Willow was just interested in causing
Warren some of the pain she was feeling. You missed one and
it seems like its important given everything. VampWillow
torturing Angel in The Wish. It was also done just for the
fun of it. But, Willow was a vamp then, but it certainly
reveals some of her tendencies.
[> [>
oops! -- Sophie, 06:31:19 05/27/02 Mon
And I was thinking about that the other day, too!
Thanks.
[> [> [>
Another scene I forgot! (Spoiler S5) -- Sophie,
15:15:34 05/27/02 Mon
This is becoming a catalogue!
Season 5 - Glory captures Spike and tortures him to get him
to tell her where/who the key is - Spike doesn't squeak and
takes quite a bruising.
Soph
[>
More torture...mostly by Buffy -- LeeAnn,
09:53:42 05/27/02 Mon
There was the time Buffy repeatedly tortured a vampire by
putting her crucifix down its throat and holding its mouth
closed while smoke and strangled screams issued forth.
There was the time Giles threatened to torture Glory's
minion for information.
Plus all the times Buffy beat Spike for information then
beat him a little more for fun.
SPIKE: Well, speaking of dishes, to what do I owe this
unpleasant- (Buffy hits him in the face) Ow! Bloody hell!
BUFFY: (grabbing his shirt) I don't have time for banter,
Spike. Where's Harmony's lair?
SPIKE: Haven't seen her in months. How should I know- (Buffy
hits him in the face again) Ow!
BUFFY: Where is she?
SPIKE: At least lay off the nose. (Buffy pulls back her
fist) Okay! Okay! Used to have a cave in the north woods.
About forty meters past the overpass construction site.
Buffy punches him in the nose again, then lets go and turns
to leave.
SPIKE: Ow!! I was telling you the truth!
BUFFY: (leaving) I know.
Spike rubs his nose and glares after her.
Our girl's got a little Nazi in her. But hey, it's okay
cause vampires are evil and Spike is evil and torturing evil
things is okay, right?
[> [>
Yet again, we drag someone down to justify Spike
... -- Earl
Allison, 12:35:31 05/27/02 Mon
"Our girl's got a little Nazi in her. But hey, it's okay
cause vampires are evil and Spike is evil and torturing evil
things is okay, right?"
Perhaps I should answer that with this;
Sure, Spike's led a life of torture, death, and destruction.
But hey, it's okay because Spike LOVES Buffy and any slip
Buffy makes should be magnified a hundred-fold while
ignoring anything Spike does or did that could even be
CONCEIVED of as wrong, right?
LeeAnn, I get it, you love Spike, and for whatever reason,
you're going to hold Buffy to a standard Spike could never
reach -- at least admit your bias when you make these
statements. And using "Nazi" is a poor tactic, since it
invokes the same disturbing image you complain about with
Spike as a potential racist ...
Yes, Buffy hit Spike, and it was wrong. Perhaps you could
explain the loving attentions behind these magical post-chip
Spike moments?
- Spike, upon realizing his chip might be failing, goes to
the Bronze and tries to bite a girl. Now, we as viewers
KNOW that Spike would feel pain from a simple punch, or even
pointing a weapon at someone -- why go for a kill? Sure,
Spike had to talk himself into it, but he TRIED to bite her,
didn't he?
- Spike, after being told by Warren that his chip IS
functioning, states something to the effect of "nothing's
wrong with me, it's HER," and promptly goes off to exploit
the knowledge Buffy gave him about where she was after death
-- what does he do? He tells her she's a thing, that she
"came back wrong," and KNOWS what it will do to her.
- Spike persists in trying to break Buffy away from her
friend when it suits him -- such as in the Bronze, telling
her about what her friends would think if they knew, how she
belongs in the dark with him, and so on. In short, he
continues to manipulate her, to torment her, and to hurt her
with words, preying on and compounding her issues -- but
hey, he LOVES her, so it's okay ...
- Harboring demon eggs. What's up with that? Sure, to
many, "As You Were" was horribly written, but there's not a
single excuse I can come up with to justify Spike's actions.
Even if he was holding them to make money to give to Buffy,
was that any less wrong?
- The bathroom scene, one specific piece. Buffy NEVER
cried before in their twisted foreplay, NOT ONCE. Yet our
perceptive, charming, beloved anti-hero presses on, despite
this. Why?
You seem to have a massive blind-spot for Spike. I
understand that, as I have my own favorites as well, but the
amount of venom you have for Buffy is really disturbing.
Why do Buffy's acts that are, shall we say, unheroic,
justify your accusations against her? Especially when the
bulk of her actions ARE heroic, quite unlike Spike, who has
only recently done anything heroic (when he received the
chip)? And yet you totally ignore anything negative Spike
may have done while railing against anything Buffy does --
why?
And if abuse is so wrong -- why is it okay (or at least okay
with you) for Spike to have abused and manipulated
VampHarmony? Was it because it was handled comically? Or
is it another double standard?
Take it and run.
[> [> [>
Re: Yet again, we drag someone down to justify Spike
... -- Dochawk, 12:50:45 05/27/02 Mon
I'll add another, chaining Buffy up and threatening to kill
her in Crush (post chip).
And Earl, I am not quite sure why hitting a vampire for
important is torture. LA's right about this, it is
different when the creature is a vampire and not a
human.
[> [> [> [>
Wasn't the point I was trying to make -- Earl Allison,
12:59:14 05/27/02 Mon
Dochawk,
First off, thanks for the support :) Nice to "talk" with
you again.
I'm not stating one way or the other that torturing a
vampire (or a demon) for information is wrong, at least, not
here. My point was to at least attempt to show what I am
seeing as a massive double-standard; that Spike can
apparantly do no wrong wheras Buffy should be condemned for
any negative action she takes. Or worse, that Buffy should
be considered something other than the hero -- it's getting
rather tiresome
Thanks for the backup, though. I did think of "Crush," but
was going to leave it out.
And going out on a limb, I HOPE Spike and Buffy don't end up
together -- but that's me, and not part of this thread
:)
Take it and run.
[> [> [>
The double standard. -- LeeAnn, 13:25:00
05/27/02 Mon
Sure, Spike's led a life of torture, death, and
destruction.
He has? The only torture I remember him involved in was of
Angel.
Spike, upon realizing his chip might be failing, goes to
the Bronze and tries to bite a girl. Now, we as viewers KNOW
that Spike would feel pain from a simple punch, or even
pointing a weapon at someone -- why go for a kill? Sure,
Spike had to talk himself into it, but he TRIED to bite her,
didn't he?
Spike is evil. I get it. Let's kill him.
Spike, after being told by Warren that his chip IS
functioning, states something to the effect of "nothing's
wrong with me, it's HER," and promptly goes off to exploit
the knowledge Buffy gave him about where she was after death
-- what does he do? He tells her she's a thing, that she
"came back wrong," and KNOWS what it will do to her.
He knows what it will do to her? So that wasn't surprise I
saw on his face when she started kissing him? Or shock and
amazement when she unzipped his pants and staked herself?
Spike planned that, knew it would happen? God, but he's
evil.
Spike persists in trying to break Buffy away from her
friend when it suits him -- such as in the Bronze, telling
her about what her friends would think if they knew, how she
belongs in the dark with him, and so on. In short, he
continues to manipulate her, to torment her, and to hurt her
with words, preying on and compounding her issues -- but
hey, he LOVES her, so it's okay ...
Buffy made it clear she was ashamed of her friends knowing
about their relationship, made him think that her friends
were standing between them so, yeah, he tried to get her to
choose him instead of them. Unheard of behavior in a BF. Is
there no end to how low Spike will stoop?
Harboring demon eggs
In denial about the plot hole we call the demon eggs.
The bathroom scene, one specific piece. Buffy NEVER cried
before in their twisted foreplay, NOT ONCE. Yet our
perceptive, charming, beloved anti-hero presses on, despite
this. Why?
Because Marti Noxon was controlling his chip.
Besides he committed suicide to make amends. He's dead now.
Be satisfied. Whatever comes back this fall will no more be
Spike than Angel is Angelus. He's over.
the amount of venom you have for Buffy is really
disturbing.
I have a minor amount of venom for Buffy. Quite minor. And
nothing compared to the venom you hold for Spike. I'm just
not blind to the wrong things she does. Spike is supposed to
be evil so when he does evil it's no surprise. Buffy is
supposed to be good so when she does something evil it's
like it's being redefined as good. When Buffy tortures that
makes torture okay. Then I read justifications for her
torturing.
And yet you totally ignore anything negative Spike may
have done while railing against anything Buffy does --
why?
Because Buffy is supposed to be the hero, and beyond that
she's supposed to be the ROLE MODEL. For the hero,
for the role model, to behave in these ways is far, far more
disturbing than for an evil vampire, that NO ONE takes as a
role model, to do the worst he can.
And if abuse is so wrong -- why is it okay (or at least
okay with you) for Spike to have abused and manipulated
VampHarmony? Was it because it was handled comically? Or is
it another double standard?
It is definitely a double standard. There being one standard
for a hero and another for evil vampires….and everyone
else.
[> [> [> [>
Thank you for proving my point -- Earl Allison,
13:34:09 05/27/02 Mon
You just can't let it go, can you.
You make two really big errors that pretty much nullify the
rest of any potential points.
"Sure, Spike's led a life of torture, death, and
destruction.
He has? The only torture I remember him involved in was of
Angel."
Remember "Lover's Walk"? That he was going to torture Dru
until she loved him again? Are we ignoring things that
actually happened now? Did Spike NOT say that, or are you
going to complain that since we didn't see it, it doesn't
count?
"Harboring demon eggs
In denial about the plot hole we call the demon eggs."
No, unlike you, I watched the episode. Hey, dislike it all
you want, it happened, and until and unless Joss or ME tells
me it didn't happen, or clarifies the episode, he DID harbor
the eggs. Denial doesn't wash here.
And, if I recall, I ADMIT that Buffy has done bad things. I
have no venom for Spike, merely for the "arguments" that
drag other characters down to boost Spike -- like you
do.
And Buffy doing bad things makes her more REALISTIC -- if
she was a do-no-wrong type, the show would have failed long
ago.
Take it and run.
[> [> [> [> [>
I think each of you proves the point that the other is
making. -- Traveler, 16:21:35 05/27/02 Mon
Both of you obviously have a pet character and defend
him/her in all circumstances. Both of you twist and/or
highlight the details that suite your argument. Niether of
you tries to see things from another perspective. When it
comes down to it, Spike has done some incredibly evil stuff,
most of which occured years ago. Buffy has also done some
pretty nasty stuff, most of which occured this season. I
think both of them can become worthy of forgiveness, and I
think that both of them can be worthwhile "human" beings.
Season 7 will tell us whether it actually happens or not.
Any argument about which character is "better" will
ultimately prove futile, since they are both constantly
changing and redefining themsleves. Fury mentioned in an
interview that the writers have played around with the idea
of making Buffy a vampire. Wouldn't it be funny if Buffy
lost her soul at the end of season 7, while Spike retained
his? I would laugh, and I bet the same people who are
defending Buffy now would continue to defend her then, and
vice versa. So just let it go. I am a Spike fan, although I
sympathize with Buffy, and I love a good debate, but even I
am getting tired of the whole Spike vs Buffy argument.
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Apologies. -- Earl Allison,
16:32:02 05/27/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Now I feel bad... -- Traveler, 16:44:58 05/27/02
Mon
I'm not trying to squelch all discussion about Buffy and
Spike; it's just that I'm tired of the oppositional rants
that have been going on forver. I would like to see more
people approach BOTH characters sympathetically and
realistically, rather than choosing a favorite to champion.
If we talk about Spike, let's discuss him as a vampire
and a man. Let's talk about what he's done in the
past and how he's changed since then. What does that
tell us about who he is and where he's going? The same goes
for Buffy. I just want to see more well-rounded, complete
discussions, rather than people recycling the same points
over and over again to "prove" that their favorite character
is the best.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Don't, you had every right to say what you did. --
Earl Allison,
16:51:40 05/27/02 Mon
Please don't feel bad for what you said -- I didn't mean to
come across as unyielding.
For what it's worth, I don't actually champion Buffy, I'm
more against the St. Spike viewpoint is all -- and certain
posts here just begged to be replied to.
If I were championing anyone, it'd be Faith or Drusilla
:)
But never apologize for having a view or an opinion -- I
wasn't hurt, I just felt that, if my posts came off that
arrogant, an apology was in order.
Again, no harm, no foul, and no offense taken.
I agree that one should take the SUM of what someone has
done -- I merely see a different total in the ledger for
Spike than others -- when and if I see him behave better
consistently in Season Seven, I may have to amend my
comments.
Thanks, and again, no apologies needed. And if you like,
feel free to email me -- that's why it's there :)
Take it and run.
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Shades of "Gift of the Magi"! -- Deeva,
20:06:03 05/27/02 Mon
Wouldn't it be funny if Buffy lost her soul at the end of
season 7, while Spike retained his?
Now that would be interesting to watch. Spike supposedly
gets his soul because it's what Buffy deserves, while Buffy
loses her's (How, I wouldn't even begin to know.) That would
be, to quote Angel, "a tragic farce".
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Shades of "Gift of the Magi"! --
skeeve, 08:36:10 05/28/02 Tue
Well, there are vampires in Sunnydale.
If Buffy were vamped, that would provide her friends with an
interesting decision.
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Thank you -- verdantheart, 07:40:56 05/31/02
Fri
Me too. I feel that Spike has been painted in a more
sympathetic light than Buffy this season. However, that
said, I agree that this debate is pointless. People have
their opinions, and obviously, they're strong ones!
[> [> [> [>
Human, all too human - Season 6's deconstruction of the
hero -- Rahael, 14:56:46 05/27/02 Mon
I've always seen Buffy as an inspiration, rather than a role
model.
That said, I think Season 6 really went after the idea of a
'hero', knocked it down and left it as a rubble. What is a
hero? Someone with superpowers? Someone wise, compassionate
and kind beyond their years? Someone who is terrified and
alone but still struggles to do what's right? Who stands
against the wreckful siege of battering days, trying just to
remain human?
Isn't Giles a hero, ready to risk his life to save Willow,
who taunts him with his uselessness? Isn't Dawn a hero,
ready to jump off the platform so that her death will heal
the universe? Isn't Buffy still a hero when she sobs in
Dawn's lap? Isn't Xander a hero while he gives Willow
everything he has, love to meet her rage? Isn't Anya a hero,
standing in the wings, hidden, but risking everything to
perform a counterspell?
In the Buffyverse, there are no role models, only a story.
The story, in unity, can inspire us. Sol wrote a great post
about Buffy being like a set of complex harmonies. The
narrative comes not from one single melody, but from the
harmony of everyone singing, even if the story we are being
told is one about dissonance.
[> [> [> [> [>
Great post. -- Earl Allison,
15:10:11 05/27/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
ahhhhh...... you've such a lovely way with language..
wonderful post, Rahael! -- rc, 16:06:28 05/27/02
Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
Exactly! -- ponygirl, 06:51:20 05/28/02 Tue
Sigh, wonderful writing as ever Rahael. I have gone through
many phases with this show where I have preferred one
character over the others and it always leads to
frustration. All the characters on this show will suffer,
grow, triumph and fail, all have their moments in the sun
and episodes in the dark. To watch the show for the story
though, well, I've never been disappointed.
[> [>
You've exceeded my definition of torture -- Sophie,
13:49:50 05/27/02 Mon
I don't consider fighting in the alley, with neither person
restrained, to be torture. Buffy and Spike can fight and
f*** mutually without it being torture. If it mutually
results in one of them handcuffing the other, then it is
S&M.
Spike chaining up Harmony and Buffy in the basement of his
crypt - never was sure what that was about - sex? Love?
Indecision? I would consider it a borderline torture scene.
Spike restrains the women, but he is mostly bark and very
little bite. Seems to me the chains weren't too secure,
either.
As for Spike biting someone against their will in the alley,
I don't consider that torture, either. Murder if the victim
dies, rape if you buy the "vampire bites gets someone off"
theory, and just plain rude if the vampire turns the person
without giving them "the choice".
Giles threatening Glory's minion - didn't consider this one
torture, either. Giles didn't tie the poor creature up,
leaving him with no control of the situation. I have a hard
time imaging Giles really torturing anybody. Now, Wesley,
on the other hand...
Soph
[> [> [>
Thank Glory.. -- LeeAnn, 14:29:59 05/27/02
Mon
True, Giles didn't torture Glory's minion, but I was afraid
he was about to and was dreading it. (SLOOK: I will not
betray Glorificus. I will never talk, no matter what heinous
torture-) Thank Glory the minion caved.
[> [> [> [>
innocent Lee Ann :) -- Etrangere, 15:12:05
05/27/02 Mon
We never saw what Giles exactly did while Willow
and Anya had their back turned but someway, I don't think
the hobbit just "caved".
[> [> [> [>
There was a crunch... -- Arethusa, 10:28:34
05/28/02 Tue
although I can forgive Giles anything.
[> [> [> [> [>
...& a scream! -- anom, 16:59:53 05/30/02
Thu
[> [>
You're all missing the biggest torture scene... --
Malandanza, 16:50:49 05/27/02 Mon
In In the Dark Spike hires Marcus, the child-eating
vampire to torture Angel:
Angel opens his eyes, looks around. He's in a large
room in an abandoned building. Tin roof overhead.
Now we see that he's CHAINED UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM -
each arm strung out to overhead restraints.
Marcus picks up an old-fashioned phonograph needle. Places
it on a record. The soothing sounds of Mozart's Symphony #41
play forth.
Angel watches. Marcus opens a battered old trunk filled with
torture instruments - among them we may see a cat's paw, a
breast ripper, a heretic's fork, "the pear", etc. Spike
moves to Angel.
SPIKE: Marcus is an expert. Some say "artist," but I've
never been comfortable with labels. He's a bloody king of
torture, he is. Humans, demons, politicians, makes no
difference. Rumor has it he invented several of the
classics, but he won't tell me which ones.
(confidential) Beneath the cool exterior, you'll find
he's rather shy... except with kids. You like kids, don't
you Marcus?
Not only does Spike hire this monster to do his dirty work
for him, but he clearly enjoys the unfolding scene. Here
are some snippets where Spike impatiently waits for the
torturer to get to work or offers to help:
MARCUS: His skin...
SPIKE: Annoying, isn't it? Still attached...
...
SPIKE (picking up breast ripper) Do you two need to be alone
or can we get on with the ouchy part?
...
SPIKE: Souls, fingers, toes, let's get choppin', shall we?
I want me damn ring.
...
Marcus heads for Angel with the poker. Spike, crossing in
f.g., blocks our seeing the poker go into Angel's thigh.
Angel, this time, cries out in pain.
SPIKE (cont'd): Now that's music.
...
MARCUS: It won't be long now.
SPIKE: Well, what say I break out the needle-nose pliers
and give a hand? I'll have to go in a while...
So why does Spike get let off the hook for the gruesome
torture of Angel? Because he hired someone vile to do the
work for him? How is that better?
As for some of the other incidents, like Buffy's "torture"
of Spike when she interrogates him -- I'd hardly call that
torture. Buffy did the same with Willy and Angel with Merle
(although Angel's behavior eventually did go too far). She
is treating Spike like every TV or movie detective treats
his informants. There is a tacit understanding between
these petty criminals and the authorities -- they get to go
free, unprosecuted, but when the police need answers, they
must provide them. The beatings provide plausible
deniability for their underworld friends -- they didn't
want to cooperate, the cops made them
cooperate. It's not betrayal, not really. Spike has the
same problem that the informants have -- hated by both
sides. As long as he's useful to Buffy, he is tolerated but
he needs occasional reminders that he buys the blind eye of
the law with his cooperation. And in the example you cite,
I think a bruised ego was worth saving Dawn's life.
The beating in the alley has also been misused by the anti-
Buffy people. Spike was not Gandhi, passively resisting an
unwarranted attack. Buffy was at a serious crisis in her
life -- the most serious since Bad Girls -- should
she hide the accident or turn herself in? She made one
decision and Spike decided to make another for her. What
would have been the consequences if he has accepted his
advice? We saw in Bad Girls how the guilt ate away
at Buffy and that was Faith's fault. How would she have
handled knowing that she had killed a girl, lied about it,
buried the evidence and gotten away with it? Spike's offer
would have destroyed Buffy. Add to that the blackmail we
subsequently saw with Spike and the sex -- how much more of
a hold would he have had over Buffy with the knowledge of a
murder and cover-up?
Neither Spike nor Buffy was going to back down in the alley
-- it's not in their characters to do so. When Spike chose
to block Buffy, the fight was inevitable. Buffy took no joy
in the attack and beating had very close resemblance to the
Faith vs. Buffy battle in the church. Buffy's blows and
words were aimed at herself. Furthermore, Spike could have
stopped the fight at any time by stepping aside instead of
forcibly restraining her.
And I agree with Etrangere, Giles did do something to minion
to make him talk -- we heard the crunch.
[> [> [>
Were I cruel, I'd say most of Season Six was the
torture scene :) Just kidding! No Kill I! -- Earl Allison,
16:54:04 05/27/02 Mon
[> [> [>
Re: You're all missing the biggest torture scene...
-- Sophie, 17:10:30 05/27/02 Mon
Spare me having to search all of the scripts at Psyche's
(wonderful) website - but what episode was this in???? I'm
sorry, I really don't remember this...
Thanks,
Sophie
[> [> [> [>
Here's the link (if my HTML code is right) --
Malandanza, 17:32:24 05/27/02 Mon
http://studiesinwords.de/shooting/inthedark1.html
In the Dark
The torture actually begins in part two of the shooting
script.
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Here's the link (if my HTML code is right) --
Sophie, 17:41:08 05/27/02 Mon
Thanks - now I know why I don't remember the ep - it is from
the early Angel series stuff, which was before I started
watching Angel. I actually read through most of the Angel
eps from seasons 1 and 2, but have never watched any of
them.
Soph
[> [> [>
Another biggie -- JBone, 18:06:37 05/27/02
Mon
I'd just add one more significant torture scene, which is of
course, Faith's torture of Wesley on AtS in the episode
5X5.
Faith: "All these little cuts and bruises - just bring out
the mother in me. (She takes his face between her hands and
slaps his cheek) Come on. Now, now, don't poop out on me,
damn it! Otherwise this all just going to be over too fast,
and you'll be dead and I'll be - bored. - Come on, Wesley!
Where is that stiff upper lip? (Get off him) Now, we've
only done one of the
five basic torture groups. We've done blunt - but that
still leaves sharp, cold, hot and loud. Have a preference?
(Wesley looks at her and nods. Faith pulls the gag out of
his mouth) Well, that great! It's always better with
audience participation. - May I take your order please?"
Faith seems to break the most rules when she tortures
Wesley. She is a Slayer gone bad torturing a human without
powers. A human whose only crime was of inexperience and
incompetence. And she's thought it through too. I had no
idea that there was five basic torture groups, but it
probably been established somewhere else. I remember a
episode of some show, probably Star Trek (TNG or DS9?) were
there were a few crew members were being held captive, and
one of them is dragged back from being tortured and is asked
by his crew if he talked. The part I remember for sure is
his answer, "They didn't even ask a question."
[> [> [> [>
Faith gets Blue Ribbon -- Scroll, 19:43:49
05/27/02 Mon
I agree that Faith's torture of Wesley is definitely the
most horrendous of all torture scenes in the Buffyverse
because it's done by a person with a soul who, as Slayer, is
actually supposed to be dedicated to protecting the
innocent. And the victim is not a vampire who has blood on
his hands (souled or unsouled), but is someone who should've
had the respect and loyalty of his torturer. Wesley's
ability to move past Faith's torture of him, helping Angel
to protect her from the cops and the Watchers Council,
proves how strong he really is.
[> [> [>
Re: You're all missing the biggest torture scene...
-- LeeAnn, 20:38:34 05/27/02 Mon
That scene is why I'm opposed to crossovers. The Angel
writers write Spike as worse than Angelus and then we
Spikoholics are stuck trying to defend something that
contradicts the BtVS canon (Spike: I've never been one for
the pre-show.). That torture is the worse thing we've been
shown Spike doing although his talking to then feeding on
the Magic Shop owner was pretty chilling.
Why Can't
Buffy Gain Our Sympathy. See it's not just me.
[> [> [> [>
Joss Controls All -- Dochawk, 10:27:01 05/28/02
Tue
They wouldn't have created the Marcus/Spike scene without
Joss' approval (especailly since it covered half the
episode). Same reasoning that Joss approved Spike being a
vamp with a soul, despite the fact that it destroys the
entire reason d'etre of Angel and his quest and
prophecies.
[> [> [> [>
Re: You're all missing the biggest torture scene...
-- rattletrap, 13:32:58 05/28/02 Tue
"That scene is why I'm opposed to crossovers. The Angel
writers write Spike as worse than Angelus and then we
Spikoholics are stuck trying to defend something that
contradicts the BtVS canon"
< sarcasm > And so the fact that AtS 1.3, "In the Dark" was
penned by long-time BtVS writer Douglas Petrie and directed
by veteran director Bruce Seth Green in no way compromises
this argument. < /sarcasm > Both of these guys laid the
foundation for Spike's character all the way through Seasons
2 and 3, I think it's pretty fair to say they know the
character very, very, very well.
I really love Spike's character, I always have, and I'm
anxious to see where his story arc is going to go. That
said, the thing I love about him is that he's complex. He
was unspeakably evil for 100 years, engaged in acts of
brutal murder and torture rampagaing across Europe. He was
mean, cruel, scrappy, and fought because he enjoyed the
violence. Seeing him transformed by his inability to pursue
those things and by his contact with Buffy has set up a
fascinating story, made more so because the character is not
static, but evolving and complex. I think it is distinictly
possible that he is on a road to redemption; but I think
that this road will be very long and extremely difficult
with many detours and diversions. If redemption is Miami,
Spike is on a two-lane somewhere outside Seattle; there's a
long way left to go. I think the soul may be a step in that
process.
[> [> [> [> [>
Road Trips and Shallow Graves (JE interview
spoilers) -- Malandanza, 15:39:49 05/28/02 Tue
"If redemption is Miami, Spike is on a two-lane somewhere
outside Seattle; there's a long way left to go. I think the
soul may be a step in that process."
I think one of LeeAnn's main points is that Spike isn't the
one in Seattle -- that Spike is dead.
If Spike is brought back as a human, with the vampiric
spirit removed, I'd have to agree that Spike is dead and
what we have is a new person walking around with Spike's
memories (just as Spike was a vampire walking around with
William's memories). I have to say, this theory appeals to
me in many ways -- especially when Dead Soul brought up that
the chip may prevent Spike from killing himself (can't harm
himself if he's human). Plus, imagine human Spike having to
work for a living -- remember how condescending he was
towards Xander and his jobs back in Season Four? There is
so much potential for comedy (and poetic justice) in having
him be human.
But the writers say he will be a vampire with a soul -- I'm
not sure I believe them, but let's assume they aren't:
1. deliberately lying to us
2. acting on misinformation (JE may not be privy to all of
MN's and JW's decisions)
3. speculating because they don't know exactly how they're
going to work out the details
The problems are that they've done the soulful vampire with
Angel and that a soul is not what Spike was wishing for by
any stretch of the imagination. Add to that, if JM knew he
his character really wanted a soul, that it was his secret
desire, he would have played his character accordingly.
Then there's the lack of logic -- Spike goes to demon to
become evil again and the demon makes him good? Maybe --
the demon might have wanted to see Spike suffer.
So let's say the new Spike (Randy :) is a vamp with a soul,
just like Angel. He's not really dead, just buried, like
Angelus. Except he's not really just like Angel. Angelus
was buried deep in Angel's psyche -- my guess is Spike will
be buried in a shallow grave. Randy doesn't have the same
ability to repress his emotions and darker impulses that
Angel has -- Spike may have a great deal more influence over
Randy than Angelus ever had over Angel. Just consider how
easily Angelus escaped when Angel was drugged -- and think
about how often we have seen Spike drinking (so cheer up,
LeeAnn, Spike may be back the next time Randy decides to
drink himself into a stupor).
But, in any case, Spike is not taking the roadtrip to
redemption -- someone else is. William or Randy. Spike's
just locked in the trunk -- and you can bet every time he
gets free he's turning the car back around to the Hellmouth.
Randy'll be lucky if he makes it as far as Oxnard.
All this assumes that Randy even makes it out of Africa.
I've been wondering what sort of village grows up next to an
evil demon. I see three distinct possibilities:
1. A Shadow Over Innsmouth type of scenario where
the town has become corrupt
2. The villagers are hereditary guardians (like the KoB)
who protect the innocent from the Cave Demon
3. The village is relatively new -- the cave had been in
the depths of the jungle in the past, but recently the area
has been claimed by humans. The village is Sunnydale in
Africa, with most people in denial about the cave.
I like #1 best. The warning may have been intended to stop
Spike from entering the cave without first making the
appropriate supplications (an angry cave demon, disturbed
for no good purpose, might take out his crankiness on the
villagers). #2 falls short because the villager didn't try
hard enough to stop Spike -- but maybe they are more
concerned with stopping evil from leaving the cave than
stopping it from entering. Whatever the truth, the
villagers may have plans for William/Spike/Randy when he
leaves the cave that have nothing to do with redemption.
Then again, maybe he'll just magically reappear in
Sunnydale.
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Anything to back this up? -- Doug the Bloody,
16:40:21 05/28/02 Tue
"Randy doesn't have the same ability to repress his emotions
and darker impulses that Angel has"
Is thereany proofofthis from either shows? are you basing
this on comparing Spike and Angel, Spike and Angelus, or
Angel and Randy?
"But, in any case, Spike is not taking the roadtrip to
redemption -- someone else is. William or Randy. Spike's
just locked in the trunk -- and you can bet every time he
gets free he's turning the car back around to the Hellmouth.
Randy'll be lucky if he makes it as far as Oxnard."
Unless you believe what JE said about Spike actually wanting
a soul. If he did even if he was de-souled by some means he
would just have to either haul his arse back to Africa (and
collect frequent flyer miles) or go get a gypsy curse.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Anything to back this up? -- Malandanza,
21:03:55 05/28/02 Tue
"Is there any proof of this from either shows? are you
basing this on comparing Spike and Angel, Spike and Angelus,
or Angel and Randy?"
I think it is abundantly clear that Spike cannot suppress
his emotions the way Angelus did and Angel has. Angelus was
all about control -- Spike has never been about control.
The sensitive man became the sensitive vampire rarely hidden
for long under his false big bag persona. How many times
have we seen Spike crying? Starting in season two, he was
in tears after he ended up in a wheelchair while Dru made
her mad plans. In Season six he was also in tears when he
found out that Xander and Willow had kept him out of the
resurrection plans. How many times have we seen him turn to
magic or alcohol because he couldn't suppress his feeling?
We saw it first when Dru left him and it continued when he
replaced his obsession for Dru with an obsession for Buffy.
His anger, likewise, is something he finds difficult to
control -- he throws a tantrum in In the Dark when he
loses the Gem of Amara and another in when
Buffy rejects him, he stakes Harmony in a moment of
uncontrollable anger, and in Normal Again just
seconds after Buffy treats him like a friend by telling him
of the Xander/Anya debacle, Spike throws the broken
engagement in Xander's face. Spike continually acts in a
way that is contrary to his own interests simply because he
cannot control his emotions. The best example I can think
of is this scene from Triangle:
SPIKE stands in front of his Buffy mannequin, holding
a box of chocolates. He looks at the mannequin.
SPIKE:
Um... there's, there's something I got to tell you. About
showing you Riley, in that place. I didn't mean to...
Anyway, I know you're feeling all betrayed... I mean, by
him, not me. I was trying to help, you know. Not like I made
him be there, after all! Actually did it to help you. Best
intentions.
He starts pacing, now, talking animatedly with the
mannequin.
SPIKE: Pretty state you'd be in, thinking things are all
right while he's toddling halfway round the bend. Oh, I'll
insult him if I want to! I'm the one on your side! Me! Doing
you a favor! And you being dead petty about it. Me getting
nothing but your hatred and venom and...!
Having worked himself into a good ol' rage, Spike starts
beating the mannequin with the box of chocolate.
SPIKE: Ungrateful bitch--
Eventually he catches himself, breathes deep, calms
himself down. He tries to un-crush the crushed box. He
starts over.
SPIKE: Buffy. Yeah. Something I wanted to tell you...
Shooting Script
So, yeah, I'd say there's support for my theory that Spike
has a hard time suppressing his emotions. As an extension
of this theory, I'd say that the new Spike will be far more
influenced by the old Spike than was Angel by Angelus --
assuming he's still a vampire. If he's brought back
entirely human, I'd say that Spike is dead.
Unless you believe what JE said about Spike actually
wanting a soul.
I don't believe that Spike wanted a soul, but I don't think
it matters. Souled Spike is not the same person. But
perhaps if the souled side of the personality is weak enough
we'd get a reversal of the Angel/Angelus situation -- with
Ran-- I mean, William buried most of the time and Spike
dominant. Which could be interesting. More interesting
than Angel, the Next Generation anyway.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Again, I ask... -- Doug the Bloody, 14:05:52
05/29/02 Wed
...How does this relate? Are you saying that because the
demon had an impulse control problem the soul will beunable
to supress the demon? Is it that one demon is stronger than
the other or are you arguing that thesoul of a druynkard is
better suited to controlling a vampire's urges than the soul
of a poet? We have no evidence about how the RSSE (Re-Souled
Spike Entity) will act, because we've yet to see him.
And with the comparisons of Spike and Angelus: Let's look
at Angelus. When he lost his soul one of the first things
he did was declare to the scoobies quite openly that this
was so to the scoobies. After that, rather than think
rationally and kill Buffy and Co. while they slept (he had
invites to everyone's home except Xander's) he instead
leaves pictures and dead fish around to scare them, (which
gives them time to get get de-invites cast). He may have
been extremely evil, but he was a self-indulgent idiot. I
seen the flashbacks and heard the stories about the vaunted
Angelus, but I have yet to actually see feats of self
control even equalling Spike's admittedly limited command of
this department. I have yet to see souless Angelus perform
a feat of self-control and patience equal Spike's ruse with
the wheelchair (which Angelus bought entirely)
If the evidence can be found please demonstrate it. I
haven't watched seasons 1-2 of Angel:the series (no rerun
scheduale where I'm from) only season 3, so if the evidence
can be found in those seasons I'll have to take your word
for it.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Again, I ask... -- Malandanza, 08:35:11
05/30/02 Thu
"Let's look at Angelus. When he lost his soul one of the
first things he did was declare to the scoobies quite openly
that this was so to the scoobies. After that, rather than
think rationally and kill Buffy and Co. while they slept (he
had invites to everyone's home except Xander's) he instead
leaves pictures and dead fish around to scare them, (which
gives them time to get get de-invites cast). He may have
been extremely evil, but he was a self-indulgent idiot. I
seen the flashbacks and heard the stories about the vaunted
Angelus, but I have yet to actually see feats of self
control even equalling Spike's admittedly limited command of
this department. I have yet to see souless Angelus perform a
feat of self-control and patience equal Spike's ruse with
the wheelchair (which Angelus bought entirely)"
In I Only Have Eyes for You, Angelus' reaction to
being possessed is rather extreme:
Who is WASHING IN THE COURTYARD FOUNTAIN. SCRUBBING his
face and body RAW. Spike rolls over - fascinated.
SPIKE: You might want to let up. They way when you've drawn
blood - you're exfoliated.
ANGEL: (sharply) What do you know about it? I'm the one who
was friggin' violated. You didn't have this thing in
you.
Now Dru drifts over.
DRUSILLA: What was it, a demon?
Angel towels off. Throws his shirt on.
ANGEL: Love.
DRUSILLA: Poor Angel...
Now Angel grabs Dru.
ANGEL: Let's get out of here. I need a really vile kill
before sun-up to wipe this crap out of my system.
DRUSILLA: Of course. We'll find you a nice toddler.
Now consider the restraint he showed when he first lost his
soul -- after the moment of true happiness with Buffy. Why
didn't he just kill her in her sleep? That would have been
his first impulse. The very fact that he decides to inflict
psychological torture (and he didn't just leave "pictures
and dead fish" around -- remember Passions and
Jenny?) upon Buffy and her friends instead of running amok
and killing them argues for self-control.
In the flashbacks we have seen that originally Angelus was a
great deal like Spike -- impulsive, looking for a fight,
acting on his emotions. But he changed -- over time. The
soul didn't miraculously change Angelus from a rash and
impulsive vampire acting on his rage and emotions into a
calm and collected Angel. Angelus learned from his
experiences of being hounded by angry mobs because he acts
without thinking. By the time Spike is on the scene,
Angelus and Darla are disgusted with his rash actions which
leave them hunted. We have even seen Angelus calmly betray
Darla to Holtz to buy himself time -- he does not allow his
affection for her to place his life at risk the way Spike
allows his jealousy for Dru to control his behavior (hence
the wheelchair ploy and Spike's alliance with Buffy).
Angelus makes plans, he thinks before acting; thus, he is
able to lure Buffy away from her friends, enabling Dru to
kill Kendra and his minions to kidnap Giles in B1.
In B2 we have the most telling exchange about Angelus
and Spike during the Giles torture:
ANGEL: All right, that's it. Someone get the chain
saw.
SPIKE: Now now. . .
He rolls in, eyeing Angel.
SPIKE: Don't let's lose our temper.
ANGEL: Keep out of it, Sit 'n' Spin.
SPIKE: You cut him up, you'll never get your answers.
ANGEL (suspiciously) Exactly when did you become so level-
headed?
SPIKE: Right about the time you became so pig-headed. You
have your way with him, you'll never get to destroy the
world. And I don't fancy spending the next month trying to
get librarian out of the carpet. There are other ways.
Both Spike and Angelus are behaving uncharacteristically in
this scene -- and it's not just my interpretation, both
characters recognize the fact with their "level-headed/pig-
headed" remarks. Here, Angelus is acting out of anger while
Spike is calm -- an inversion of the normal order.
"Are you saying that because the demon had an impulse
control problem the soul will be unable to suppress the
demon? Is it that one demon is stronger than the other or
are you arguing that the soul of a drunkard is better suited
to controlling a vampire's urges than the soul of a poet? We
have no evidence about how the RSSE (Re-Souled Spike Entity)
will act, because we've yet to see him."
The soul doesn't act as a lobotomy. It provides a
conscience and an impulse to do good. The same basic
personality is there, with the same flaws -- isn't this the
message we got from Willow's transformation? Souless Willow
from The Wish and Dopplegangland was just
Willow without a conscience and guiding star -- this past
season we have seen that VampWillow was always dormant
inside of Willow. I suppose it's possible that Spike will
magically transform into a calm, rational, supremely
confidant being who has resolved all his insecurities and
self-doubts -- a being totally unlike either William or
Spike -- but I don't see how. My feeling is that the new
Spike will be very similar to the old Spike -- he'll just
feel bad about all the people he's killed for food and fun,
all the times he's betrayed the Scoobies, and all the times
he mistreated the woman he claims to have loved (acting on
his base impulses). If you have evidence that the souls of
poets are somehow different from the souls of drunkards, I'd
like to see it.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
No difference... -- Doug the Bloody, 12:28:48
05/30/02 Thu
...between the souls of poets and the souls of drunkards, I
was trying to understand your thoughts and where you were
coming from.
I have to disagree with you on the actions of Angelus: his
cruelty was nothing but an indulgence, the rational action
woul have been to wipe out threats to him first; threats
like Buffy and the scoobs. By toying with them he put his
desire to see pain over his survival. He lacked even the
self-control of a 17 year old: Finish your homework, THEN
kick back and party.
There are two viewpoints I've seen on the Angel/Angelus
split. One is that Agel is Angelus with a conscience added
o, the other is that the two are separate entities, Angel
supresses Angelus (I believe the term you used was "locked
in the trunk"). I'm uncertain which one is true, and I
think that how you view the split between Angel/Angelus
pretty much determines how you view the split between
Spike/RSSE.
[> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: a clarification (finale spoilers) -- Dead Soul,
16:46:23 05/28/02 Tue
Actually my (completely non-serious) theory was that Spike
still has the chip, yes, to keep him from killing himself,
but assuming Spike is human was not part of the (completely
non-serious) theory.
My two "what ifs" were what if the chip works by sensing
souls - we've never seen if it would work on Angel, and what
if Spike really does want the (expletive deleted) chip out,
at least consciously, whether the motivation is to prove he
can be good without the chip or the be the Big Bad again.
Although I can buy that at the end of the trials with all
his bravado stripped away the cave demon can sense that his
subconscious wants the soul.
Non-serious theories aside, I just want Spike to keep his
edge, I like him bad even when its all bluff. And please,
please, please, please, please, please (insert 80 more
"pleases" here) don't call him Randy.
Dead Soul, Queen of the Parenthetical Clause
[> [> [> [> [>
"No way compromises this argument": heee!
-- Rahael, 21:29:55 05/28/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> [>
So that's the HTML code for sarcasm. Thanks! --
mundusmundi, having a good cackle, 18:42:12 05/29/02
Wed
[> [> [>
With that scene, I'd have to go with the music. --
VampRiley, 06:48:58 05/31/02 Fri
Music, like Mozart's, gives me a headache. Give me
TRUSTcompany, Rob Zombie, Adema or Staind any day.
VR
[> [> [>
Re: You're all missing the biggest torture scene...
-- verdantheart, 07:53:17 05/31/02 Fri
Interesting one. Spike's usually kinda bored with torture,
but I think he wanted a little payback with that one. Even
here, he brings in an expert, perhaps aware that he'd
probably get bored eventually and simply dust Angel.
You don't think that Angelus behavior with Drusilla before
Spike's eyes in S2 wasn't precisely designed to torment
Spike? That was just the sort of "artistic" torture that he
relished. I'm surprised no one brought this up.
[> [> [> [>
Re: You're all missing the biggest torture scene...
-- Sophie, 08:05:56 05/31/02 Fri
you could see it as torment - torture of a sort. I didn't
include it because Spike is not restrained and is free to
leave if he wishes.
Soph
[>
OMG! My thread stayed alive 4 days!!!! -- Sophie,
19:52:55 05/30/02 Thu
Love vs. Irony
and the final act of Grave (spoilers) -- cjc36,
07:18:34 05/27/02 Mon
Reviews of Grave have mostly been positive in regard to the
conclusion: Xander getting through to Willow by reminding
her of her humanity through declarations of his love for
her, and Buffy realizing she wanted to live in the world,
and raise Dawn into the beautiful woman she is to become.
Some critics have sniffed that this act let them down. Too
sappy, too sentimental, too simple.
For me, the sappy, sentimental-ness of these two intercut
scenes made all the angst we had to go through since
Bargaining I and II pay off, and wrapped the season as a
hole a box and bow at past times I didn't think was
possible.
My favorite of the two was Xander/Willow. He risks
everything to save his best friend from the abyss. "Crayon
-breaky Willow and Scary-Veiny-Willow." I loved that. And
"I just wanna hang." Suddenly their past history flashed in
my mind, and I saw them all the way back to WTTH, when
Willow says to Buffy Xander hid her Barbie doll when they
were boyfriend and girlfriend in kindergarten.
At the bluff, despite the fact that they are older, despite
the fact that Dark Magick has blackened Willow's hair and
soul, she still is the same character who wore floods and
brought boxed lunches. And Xander - by essentially telling
her that, no matter what, he loved her, always had, always
will - brought her back. And, oh, yeah, saved the world.
Was this sappy? I don't think so at all. I was reminded of
my favorite scene as a kid, from the classic children's book
Wrinkle in Time. Meg tells her brother she loves him and
breaks him from the clutches of the evil uber-brain It.
Return of the Jedi has a similar end with Luke getting
through to his father, Darth Vader, saving his soul at the
last moment.
Anyway, this has been a long way to say this: ME got it,
yet again. The emotional truth. They put the feelings on the
line, and, for this fan at least, it paid off. I was dealing
with a real painful lump in the throat by the credits. And
whoever says it didn't work is just either not familiar with
the characters, or has too much of an irony shield to let it
in.
[>
Re: Love vs. Irony and the final act of Grave
(spoilers) -- maddog, 11:24:20 05/27/02 Mon
I think those that call it too easy are missing the
point...that's exactly what it was supposed to be. Simple.
No crazy magical ending. No Buffy using her superhuman
strength to kick someone's ass. It was simply Xander
telling his best friend that he was going to be her friend
whether she was the old or new Willow. That's the beauty of
it. That's what people overlook because they all want
flashy and complex. Sometimes the simplest answer is the
best.
[>
I can feel the good in you. -- Shul, 17:40:44
05/27/02 Mon
The emperor has not driven it from you fully.
[>
Re: Love vs. Irony and the final act of Grave
(spoilers) -- Rhonda, 23:09:34 05/27/02 Mon
I agree with all you said and I also loved A Wrinkle In Time
especially the scene you spoke of. You said you had a lump
in the back of your throat-I was bawling my butt off. My
eyes were swollen just about shut. To say it touched me is a
major understatement.
Trial, justice
and Mercy -- Rahael, 12:33:25 05/27/02 Mon
Running throughout the season finale was the idea of 'trial'
– mental, physical and legal.
The idea of justice and vengeance is interwoven. Tara's
death, the catalyst for the events of TTG/G was unjust,
senseless and unmeant. It sends Willow on the rampage for
vengeance, which she sees as justice. Her torture of Warren
is a twisted version of a trial, with Willow as judge, jury
and executioner. Katrina is a kind of ghostly witness. We
then see her break Andrew and Jonathan out of jail, so she
can finish of her search for 'justice', and in this idea of
justice is the concept of mental and physical 'trial'. It is
not enough for her to kill them, they must suffer, undergo
physical punishment. Warren is subjected to trail; Andrew
and Jonathan must be hunted and terrified.
There was another resonance for me in Willow's search for
vengeance, and those were lynchings. Often, people were
broken out of jail so they could be lynched. And in Anya's
comment that Willow had bloodied up the forest killing
Warren, there was (to me) an echo of Nina Simone's song,
'Strange fruit'. Twisted, blackened bodies hanging on trees.
Blood at the roots. Scent of magnolia, and then the sudden
smell of burning flesh.
The whole of season 6 is about 'emotional' trial. About
choices, and about how the characters conducted themselves.
At the moment of their trial, would they be found wanting?
This climaxes in the finale. Buffy and Spike the two
warriors, have physical trials. At the core, however, these
have at their heart a moment of immense choice. I'm still
not convinced that Spike knew what he was getting himself
into. But it seems to me that it reflects life yet again –
sometimes we make our choices, other times, we have it
thrust onto us. Did Angel choose to see the young Buffy, to
fall in love with her? No, he found himself unable not
to.
Xander and Willow, of course have the most obvious moral and
emotional trials. The final, triumphant moment Xander and
Willow overcoming everything, is actually a sign of their
previous failure. If Xander and communicated his love for
Willow earlier, if Willow had succeeded learning from her
previous 'trials' she would not be standing on a cliff about
to destroy the world. Every lesson the Scoobies learn in the
finale was already known to them. Throughout season 6, the
Scoobies seem to know where they should be getting too, and
yet, they keep getting stuck – they haven't grasped the
spirit of the law. (I think it was Anya who succeeded, and
who showed the most grasp of 'oh grow up'. She didn't voice
these lessons, she just acted in their spirit).
I want to point to a theme of 'scarring'. Emotional scars,
which seem equated to 'Experience' which ME keeps
demonstrating 'on the body'. Willow showed black veins over
her face. Spike's body was scarred all over during his
trial. Xander's body becoming marked during his conversation
with Willow. This goes back to the very beginning of the
season, where the common experience of death shared by Spike
and Buffy was demonstrated by their mutual wounds. I really
like Age's point that becoming a demon could be equated to
the process of growing up, becoming an adult, and that the
scar tissue, the toughening and roughening up of your flesh
equates to the necessary marks of experience.
There was another very physical theme – that of 'heart'.
When the Demon gave Spike his soul, he places his hand
directly over Spike's heart. Willow puts her hand into
Giles's heart to reach his 'good' magic. This echoes
previous episodes. Buffy reaches into Adam's heart to kill
him. She reaches into the demon-in-the-basement's heart to
kill it. And of course, Xander's speech about Love comes not
only from his heart, but gives Willow the other powerful
'magic from the heart' which finally stops her in her
tracks.
Another theme running through the finale, is Regeneration.
Where the beginning of Season 6 spoke about death, the
finale talked of new life. Both Spike and Buffy are
underground. This not only resonates of 'hell', the basement
and crypt they both keep spending their time in during
Season 6, but of seeds, hibernating during winter. When
Buffy crawls out she sees green everywhere. The demon's eyes
are green.
And the final outcome of everyone's trial is mercy. The song
at the end talks about the meeting of hatred with love,
peace with discord. The search for vengeance, judgment in
the Season finale is met with the gentle quality of mercy.
There has been an interesting trend in season finales, to
show people being most powerful when they are at their
weakest. When they are emotionally strong, but physically
weak. Buffy in the Gift gives away all her strength and
triumphs. In this season, force cannot stop Willow, she must
be stopped with pure emotion. In Primeval, Buffy turns
bullets into doves. In Restless, Joss says he deliberately
had a non-climactic ending. Buffy simply gets so annoyed by
the First Slayer, she refuses to fight her, and wakes up.
Buffy never defeats the earth monsters in Grave, they simply
disappear. Her real struggle throughout Season 6 is to
accept corporeality. To evade the lure of the grave, which
is signified by her affair with Spike. He is her death wish
personified. And this is why she feels so guilty about their
relationship. Because she didn't go looking for hearts and
flowers. She went looking for 'darkness and death, things
which are not'. Sophist wanted me to repost somewhere, my
view that Spike's journey to Africa, his tangling in the
Heart of Darkness is the whole Slayer/Vamp encounter in the
minature. Buffy is the one character who has been most
firmly identified with Africa, who has been called 'primal'.
Her power arises from a dark, old, neutral force, which is
beyond good and evil....
My personal view is whatever Spike's journey, it will not
involve a romantic liaison with Buffy again (or anyway, I
hope not!). And the fact that he obtained his desire through
physical combat, in a season finale which emphasized the
importance of emotion over force, of helplessness over brute
strength, seems interesting to me.
I rewatched some parts of Season 6 last night. (Staying well
away from Smashed and Wrecked!) What a fabulous episode
Tabula Rasa was. I can't wait to see more eps written by
Kirshner. I really liked the Halloween episode. That
together with Dead Things and Seeing Red means that De
Knight is becoming a big favourite with me. I am also now
totally converted to the idea that Diego Guitierrez is just
a nom de plume for Joss Whedon. Joss with his Philip K Dick
hat on.
[>
Re: Trial, justice and Mercy -- redcat, 14:20:38
05/27/02 Mon
Ah, Rahael, I do love how you write and enjoy many of your
insights. Now that I've finally seee the finale (!), I,
too, am intrigued by, as you say, "the fact that he [Spike]
obtained his desire through physical combat, in a season
finale which emphasized the importance of emotion over
force...." Am still thinking this through, but I think it's
significant.
However, dear one, I do have one tiny correction for you.
'Strange fruit' was written by Billie Holiday, not Nina
Simone. Simone did a great cover of it, but it was
Billie's personal signature song.
She sang it at nearly every public performance from the year
she wrote it until her death. She recorded it over and
over, re-worked the phrasing and the vocal intonations; she
sometimes had to fight fiercely to get it recorded and, on
more than one occassion, had to fight to be able to sing it
at certain venues. Her first written work on the lyrics
came during a tour (she was the "colored-girl-singer" with
an all-white male band) through the American South in the
mid-1930s. She often spoke in interviews about the
experience of being on the band's bus and driving past the
bodies of several lynched Black men hanging from the trees
along the road. -- Just FYI :)
[> [>
Thanks for putting me right! -- Rahael, 14:36:31
05/27/02 Mon
I'm sure I've heard both versions, but the only one I've had
on tape for a while was the Simone version. Now I'm eager to
find Holliday's version.
[> [>
Re: Spike's Day -- Brian, 14:40:47 05/27/02
Mon
Rahael, you got my thinking with that thought about Buffy's
search for death leading her to Spike. It echoes Spike's
words that when her death wish becomes manifest, he'll "slip
in and have a real good day." Neither realized that their
sexual adventure would be the result. Now they need to move
on to the next level of their relationship.
[> [> [>
I should have said - Spoilers for TTG/G in my post, and
in this thread. -- Rahael, 14:42:20 05/27/02 Mon
[> [>
Actually -- ponygirl, 17:20:18 05/27/02 Mon
Strange Fruit was written by Abel Meeropel, a Jewish
schoolteacher and songwriter. Billie Holiday was definitely
the most well-known singer of the song and she apparently
did little to discourage the belief that she wrote it.
There was a doc on this at a Jewish film festival in Toronto
which I didn't catch but it sounded like an interesting
story, since it also dealt with the prejudice Jews faced in
the Deep South in that era as well.
[> [>
The real writer of Strange Fruit. -- darrenK (being
pedantic), 19:00:32 05/27/02 Mon
First off, I wanted to give a shout-out to Rahael. Haven't
exchanged messages in a while, hope you're doing well. Now
on with the show...
Below is info on the writer of Strange Fruit that I pulled
off the internet. He was a really interesting man.
Schoolteacher, Abel Meeropol, who wrote under the pen name
"Lewis Allan," did not write the song for [Billie] Holiday;
several others, including Meeropol's wife, Anne, had sung it
before her. And yet, so completely did Holiday come to own
"Strange Fruit" that Meeropol--who is better remembered
nowadays for adopting the orphaned sons of Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg following their parents' execution than for his
thousands of other songs and poems--spent half a lifetime,
starting with the moment the song became famous, reminding
people that it was really his creation, and his alone.
"I wrote 'Strange Fruit' because I hate lynching and I hate
injustice and I hate the people who perpetuate it," Meeropol-
-a political activist whom Margolick calls a "closet
Communist"-- said in 1971. Meeropol's occasional
collaborator, Earl Robinson--who himself wrote "Ballad for
Americans" and "Joe Hill"--admired Meeropol's "inexhaustible
ability to turn out topical lyrics." Meeropol "wrote
incessantly--poems, ballads, musicals, plays--all using the
nom de plume 'Lewis Allan,' the names of his two natural-
born children, neither of whom survived infancy." Apart from
"Strange Fruit," he is also known for his lyrics to "'The
House I Live In' (a paean to tolerance co-written by Earl
Robinson and sung by Frank Sinatra in a short film that won
a special Oscar in 1945)."
[> [> [>
thanks for the correction, ponygirl and darrenK! --
redcat, 08:38:06 05/28/02 Tue
And apologies to Rahael. Guess I got taken in by Holiday's
oft-repeated story of scribbling lyrics for "SF" on the
band's bus. I rechecked and you both are absolutely right.
Meeropol/Allen did write the song and Holiday even
sporadically acknowledged his authorship. So thanks!
[> [> [> [>
another triumph for the pedants! ;) -- ponygirl,
08:54:15 05/28/02 Tue
[> [>
Re: sorry for looking like a picky nerd -- zooey,
02:23:56 05/28/02 Tue
definitely billie Holiday's signature song, but she didn't
write it, a poet wrote it for her (I can't rem,eber who at
the moment) came up and asked her to set it to music and
sing it. One of the most beautiful songs she sang.
[>
Re: Trial, justice and Mercy -- Caroline,
07:13:47 05/28/02 Tue
Excellent post, as always.
I think you're right about the trial being a theme that is
running through the entire season. Part of growing up is the
process of being tested, of being forged in the fires,
stripping away the unnecessary and getting to the core of
what is most important. In this season, what has been most
important is the Self, and the characters have been going
through an alchemical process towards 'coniuncto', a union
of the different parts of their psyche to become Self.
Each of the main characters has been stripped of something
they deeply desire, and each has made a journey through the
darkest recesses of their identity as a result. I think this
is why the imagery of Inanna's descent to the Great Below
and Persephone's abduction by Hades ring so true for me.
Each of these myths is about losing parts of oneself so that
one becomes transformed to something greater than one could
have imagined, or even wanted. Growing up feels like that
kind of process to me, Hopefully, the trials they have
experienced and the scars they have borne will lead them to
a greater understanding of Self.
And understanding the Self means looking past notions of
oneself as good and evil and going beyond society's norms of
good and evil and recognising that one is neither good nor
bad, one just 'is'. And that is when the true treasure or
fruit of the Self becomes evident. I think this is the stage
that Buddhism speaks to - when one gets beyone attractions
and repulsions, good and bad, happiness and sadness and sees
all polarities and oppositions as an essential unity. I
wonder what if the writers will go this far and what
implications this will have for good humans and bad demons.
As for Buffy and Spike, I'm quite happy to go where the
writers wish to take us - I'm indifferent to a continuation
or cessation of a sexual liaison - but I also feel that it's
really not the point. The point, for me, is that Spike may
have been part of Buffy's journey into the underworld where
she did go seeking death (like Inanna and Persephone) but,
like these two goddesses, she also found a process of
transformation and rebirth. And she will become something
greater than she ever imagined.
Why is Drusilla
the way she is? -- Earl Allison,
17:02:12 05/27/02 Mon
We know, or at least assume, that most of the behaviors and
personality evidenced by a vampire is a morals-free version
of their original -- where did Drusilla's come from?
We've seen that Drusilla is sadistic, murderous, has SERIOUS
Oedepal issues in regards to Angel, and a rarely seen
recollection of the pains she suffered before being driven
mad and turned.
Is Drusilla's insane vampire personality a warped reflection
of the repressions of her day? Or are many of the
undesirable traits the result of Angelus' torments? Not so
much true reflections of repressed traits, but new ones
brought to the forefront and then warped by the demon once
Drusilla was vamped?
We see that Drusilla harbors some resentment for the actions
Angel committed on her and her loved ones -- it's evident in
the fact that she asks to torture Angel, and in what she
says while doing so in Season Two.
However, we also know that she has an intense sexual/Sire-
Childe attraction to Angel, frequently shown when she calls
him "Daddy," or mentions playing with him (implied sex), or
her far racier comments in Angel S2 about promising to be
bad if he spanks her and Darla. Some of that MIGHT be
chalked up to the repressive attitudes of the day -- and
Drusilla's taking Vows at the convent, but it also might be
a result of her torments by Angel.
So, in a very odd way, is Drusilla the vampire at all a
reflection of Drusilla the woman, or did Angel's torments
warp her beyond the standards of vampirization (if there is
such a word)?
Take it and run.
[>
Re: Why is Drusilla the way she is? --
Bellagracelyn, 20:02:24 05/27/02 Mon
I have always wondered 'bout Drusilla myself. This doesn't
answer your query but how is it that vampire Dru retained
the psychic abilities of human Dru? If Dru's pure soul is in
the ether, and a demon now inhabits her body with just the
her memories-are psychic abilities not linked to the soul
but to memory? Huh?
[> [>
Dru's Psychic Abilities -- O'Cailleagh, 20:33:18
05/27/02 Mon
This is something that is probably far too convoluted to go
into in detail here, but I'll give it a go!
Metaphysically speaking, we have a larger number of 'bodies'
than is generally thought. these overlap and interact, and
are effectively what people know as the aura.
On the 'lowest' level, we have the physical body- this
comprises of our flesh, blood, bones, organs, etc.
Surrounding this are other layers such as the
mental/emotional bodies, the astral body, the etheric body,
and the soul. The body utilised would vary depending on the
type of psychic work that you were doing, i.e.
telepathy/empathy would use the mental/emotional bodies,
clairvoyance would use the spiritual body, and astral
projection, the astral body. The soul is not used in such
ways, it is the body that forms the link to, or *is* the
Divine. As this seems to be the only body that is 'removed'
upon becoming a vampire (to be replaced by the demon), it
should have little bearing on the psychic abilities of the
other bodies. Hope that cleared it up for you! One thing
I don't get though is, how come vampires minds can't be
read? I don't buy that 'minds not casting a reflection'
thing...especially with Dru's abilities, and the fact that
Spike could hear Willow's telepathic commands.
The Ballad of
Railroaded Buffy / We Can Be Heroes - Thoughts on *TTG /
Grave* (*Spoilers*) -- OnM, 17:38:48 05/27/02
Mon
*******
Apologies to Andy Breckman...
*******
Now Sunnydale Buffy was a hard-workin’ Slayer / Used to take
her vamps two at a time
Everybody said she was the very finest Slayer / Ever slayed
along the Sunnydale line
Her name was known from the malls in the valley / To the
tippy-top of Kingman’s Bluff
And all the little girls when they were sneaking cigarettes,
/ They used to dream about bein’ like Buf.
Now one day Buffy was walkin’ along / And she saw a nerd
stuck up in a tree
When she saw what was the matter she ran to get a ladder /
And set that li’l nerd free
And Buffy said “No-- I’m not gonna do it. / I’m not gonna
climb up some tree”
“This is a stupid stupid story / And no TV writer’s gonna
make a fool out of me”
Uhhh... Now one day Buffy was walkin’ along / And she saw
a nerd stuck up in a tree
When she saw what was the matter she ran to get a ladder /
And set that li’l nerd free.
Buffy said, ‘No, I am NOT going to do it. / I’m not
going to do what you said.”
“This is a stupid stupid arc, and as far as I'm concerned, /
That nerd can stay there 'till he's dead."
I said, "Wait a minute, Buf, you can't argue with me. / For
God's sake, I just made him up!
I got keyboard under hand, I want you up in that tree, / And
I want that nerd unstuck!"
And Buf said, "No! I hate schlock! / I’m not gonna slack for
no hack!
Why don't you have me save some handsome Groosalugg, /
Metaphorically tied to a railroad track?"
I said, "Well, the gender-reversal is clever, agreed, / But
right now I want you up in that tree.
I'm the writer, goddamn; I give the fans what they
need, / And you're supposed to listen to me."
“Listen to you? Why should I listen to you? / You
should be listening to me instead.”
“I'm a Post-Modern Superwoman, and if I were real, / I could
separate your neck from your head!”
“Why, you ungrateful bitch!” I cried, "You've pushed me too
far! / I'll show you I can do as I please.”
Just then an earthquake came and shook the whole terrain /
And brought poor young Buf to her knees.
And then a mudslide slid and everything got hid, / And Buf
was almost buried apace.
And then a big ugly Quellor from an asteroid landed / And
slimed Buffy S. on the face.
“I got keys under hand! I can do what I want! / I'm a bright
new young writer on the rise.”
“So get your ass up that tree, or I swear you ain't gonna /
Get out of this season alive.”
She said, “You don't scare me. / You may be funny, but you
don't scare me.”
“And if you don't leave me alone, I'm gonna tell everybody /
Where you stole this parody.”
But before she could speak, her voice was hushed, / And she
could not make a sound.
Then she jumped on top of me and she grabbed me by the
throat / And she pulled me to the ground.
And then she kicked me in the stomach and punched me in the
face real hard
And I think she almost broke my nose.
Just then a glowing dimensional portal came out of nowhere
and enveloped her in it’s mystical energies
And killed her instantly.
Well, the nerd came down from the tree, / Ate some pizza,
went to sleep for the night.
Buffy Summers is survived by a vamp and several small
Scoobies. / Dear God, I love to write.
*******
Uhhh... Mr. Smarty-Pants Writer... Seems you forgot about
one little thing...
Oh sh*t... it’s Darth Rosenberg...
*******
Buffy: I guess I wasn’t ready before. It took a long
time for that feeling to go away. The feeling
that I wasn’t really here. It was like... when I clawed my
way out of that grave... I left something behind. I
just... (much longer pause) I don’t understand why I’m
back.
Giles: (kindly) You have a calling.
Buffy: But it was my time, Giles. Someone
would have taken my place. (very long pause)
So why?
Giles does not respond. He looks pensively distracted,
unable to present any logical reason.
Buffy: Right.
*******
Moments like the scene above are one of the many reasons why
Buffy the Vampire Slayer still
stands head and shoulders above just about any other past or
present television drama. Sarah and Tony
Head were absolutely perfect in this scene, just as they
were in the one that mirrors it exactly one year ago
in The Gift, when Buffy and Giles talk about the
coming apocalypse, and how many others they
fought to defeat before, how they always were triumphant in
the end.
Buffy is running largely in warrior mode, because her
thoughts are so dark that she can’t bear to let the
human side have dominance. She is angry at Giles for
suggesting that it may be necessary to kill Dawn,
although she realizes that he is very likely right. She
calms somewhat after talking quietly with him, as he
puts himself into ‘father mode’, allowing her a sounding
board for her inner anguish. He allows her space,
and he allows her to do things her way, even if that way is
counter to his beliefs. He respects and trusts his
‘daughter’, and she gains a sense of that. She gathers the
resolve to do what must be done.
Many fans have asked the question, what does Joss Whedon
have against fathers? It’s a completely valid
question, seeing as how often throughout the course of the
series he and many of the other writers who
write in his image have left the viewing audience with the
clear impression that fathers are somehow
morally corrupt and abusive at best, outright evil at worst.
Well, the man’s entitled to convey his
impressions of the world, good or bad, but if there is one
thing that I believe that Joss has made abundantly
clear, it’s that his ideal of a father figure is represented
by the character of Rupert Giles.
This ideal image, strangely (or perhaps not so) is not of a
perfect person. Giles has flaws, some benign,
some occasionally more glaring. One flaw he does not harbor
is the open admiration and love he expresses
for his ‘daughter’ and her friends.
*******
Restless:
[Interior; Giles’ apartment; night. Camera angle - A pocket
watch swings before us, catching the light. We
hear voices, far off and echoey.]
Giles: You have to stop thinking. Let it wash over
you.
Buffy: (amused) You don’t think it’s a little old
fashioned?
Giles: This is the way men and women have behaved
since the beginning, before time.
[Camera angle - Giles and Buffy. We are as far from them as
we can be, they are a tableau within the
arpartment, all the furniture gone except the chair Buffy
sits in, primly, erect.]
Giles: (in voice-over): Now look into the light.
[Camera closes on - Buffy, as the light gambols about her
eyes, and she laughs, playfully.]
*******
In Grave, there is no residual anger to dissipate
before a connection is made. Buffy is overjoyed to
see Giles again, and the feeling is obviously mutual.
You’ve cut your hair.
Willow is (temporarily) trapped in a binding spell, and
Buffy and Giles retreat to the training room behind
the Magic Box storefront. This time there is no hesitation
when Giles asks to be filled in on ‘what’s gone
wrong’-- Buffy spills it out quickly and concisely,
including the most humiliating confession of all-- her
sexual relations with Spike.
We wait, anticipating a baleful look, a critical,
disappointed glance. Instead, yet another high point of
the
entire series comes when Giles laughs, not cruelly, but
gleefully at the inherent absurdity of it all. Buffy
looks momentarily bewildered, then starts to giggle, then
also can no longer contain herself. A season’s
worth of high angst brought to earth in a matter of less
than a minute. Buffy has regained her perspective
and her sense of proportion. The spiritual healing process
that began in Normal Again is now nearly
complete. There is just a few small remaining acts necessary
to complete the long journey and bring our
heroine to full awareness, and those will come very
soon.
I’m not going to spend much time on Two to Go, since
while it’s certainly necessary, it’s largely a
connective episode, much as Villians was. Willow
continues her vengeful rampage, as I expected,
now with non-Warren folks as the targets. On the surface,
the three endseason eps would seem to be all
about Willow, and superficially they are. I think that what
has gotten lost in the midst of the attention paid
to the emergence of the S6 ‘real’ big bad is that
this story is still primarily about Buffy. It is a
glorious irony to end all BtVS ironies that as a paramount
personal moment in the entirety of the life story
of Buffy Summers comes to the fore, that Buffy herself is
not the active element in reaching that
moment. It strikes me that she is instead somewhat analogous
to the concept of ‘The Fifth Element’, a
focal point that enables other ‘elements’ to achieve power
and determination of their own spiritual selves.
Restless:
Buffy: Now give me back my friends.
The Primitive is defeated. Buffy wakes up. Buffy’s friends
come back to her. Did Buffy make this possible?
Yes. Did Buffy do it single-handedly? Never. In each and
every year for the past 6 years, Buffy triumphs
because of her friends, and her love for them, and they for
her. In year one, she defeats the Master because
Xander revives her after the Master has brought about her
‘prophesied’ death. In year two, Willow saves
her (albeit with a horrible price) by restoring Angel’s soul
and thus preventing him from destroying her
(and the rest of the world). In year three, the motif
changes as the entire high school-- many of whom
‘don’t know you very well’-- bands together under Buffy’s
leadership to defeat Mayor Wilkins, and
coincidentally both literally and figuratively end the ‘High
School Years’
Now, the ‘College Years’ begin. In year four, the Scoobies
‘seperate’ and then ultimately come together to
create an ‘uber-Buffy’ capable of defeating the man-demon-
machine hybrid Adam. The key to his defeat is
an idea suggested by Xander, mirroring year one of the High
School Years. In year five, Buffy fights-- and
defeats-- a god. Willow is again the ‘big gun’, her magical
abilities acting to put Glory ‘on the ropes’,
retrieve Tara’s mind, and also restoring the Buffybot, a
point seemingly trivial at the time, but key to the
beginning of the events of year six. Buffy dies of course,
but dies a very inspiring, righteous, warrior’s
death. (Buffy, therefore, has every right to ask why she was
returned to the land of the living.)
In year six, there are no other external monsters to defeat.
Where do you go after conquering a god? It’s
the junior year of the College Years. The realization dawns
that soon the ‘schooling’ process will be over,
and then it’s time to ‘make your way in the world’. It’s
also become very painfully evident that doing so
might not be all that easy. It is natural to want things to
stay the way they always were-- we fight, we win.
Now the idea that we might not win is rearing it’s
ugly self. This makes a fertile breeding ground
for insecurities, and lacking external leadership or
suffienct self-awareness/confidence, they multiply with
all due speed.
Willow returns Buffy to life, but Buffy seems
unappreciative. Xander offers to marry Anya, but now
hesitates, and at length disengages from the plan. Giles
feels his presence is inhibiting the maturing of his
charges by making them, especially Buffy, excessively
dependent on him, and leaves Sunnydale. Dawn is
whiny and erratic in her behavior, a reflection of her older
sister’s listlessness and lack of genuine focus.
Buffy is hurt worst of all, feeling cheated of her just
reward for serving her calling, although she never
freely chose it. Nothing she can do, no matter how
‘passionate’, restores her sense of purpose.
But now she laughs at herself. In one of those strange and
synchronistic happenings that pervade the
Buffyverse, Giles returns at exactly the right
moment. Had he returned even a short time before,
Buffy would not have been ready to accept the absurdity that
the perspective of higher self-awareness has
now made clear to her. The needs of the moment are no less
pressing, to be sure, but it isn’t ‘the end of the
world’-- it’s just another difficult problem to solve, and
she is the Slayer, The Chosen One. She can handle
it.
In the Buffyverse, nothing ever gets better before it gets
worse; generally much, much worse. The final
episode follows this pattern, as did the entire season.
Willow escapes from Giles’ binding spell (as we knew
she would). Having already killed Warren, terrorized Andrew
and Jonathan, killed Rack, threatened to turn
Dawn back into an energy ball, threw Buffy’s weaknesses in
her face and subsequently ‘kicked every
square inch of her ass’, Willow has ascended the ranks, from
the pathetic losers of the geek chorus up
through Dawn and then Buffy, and now there is only one
person left to put down, to pile all of her anger
and self-loathing onto-- Giles, the father figure, the
‘Watcher’, the source of wisdom and guidance. She
appears to succeed, and as the final coup, takes his
‘borrowed magicks’ to use for her own ends.
The power is overwhelming, but the magic, as do all serious
magicks, comes with a price. The price puts
Willow in ‘contact’ with the minds of the world’s
inhabitants, in a scenario reminiscent of both Cordy’s
ordeal at the end of A:tS season one and Buffy’s in
Earshot. Willow feels the pain and despair of all
those souls, and unlike Buffy and Cordy, her ingestion of
all the dark forces from the books and powers
stolen from Rack does not direct her to want to end the pain
by making the lives of those souls better, but
by ending all of the lives so that the suffering will
eternally stop.
This ‘logic’ is fully in keeping with Willow’s personality
as we have seen it expressed throughout the entire
last six years. Willow doesn’t carry Buffy’s understanding
(aided by the warrior part of her nature) that
pain can be transitory, that sometimes you have to work
through it and just be accepting that it will
eventually pass. Willow needs to stop the pain, now,
and at last she has the power to do so (or
thinks she does). She is perfectly willing to include
herself in the destruction that will stop the pain,
which
makes her even more immune to embracing reason. (In
Villains: ‘I’m not coming back’.)
So the crucial moment is finally at hand, and again
mirroring the events of The Gift, the night has
ended and the sun is rising, but despite the new day
apocalypse appears nigh. Willow conjures the
appearance of a ‘satanic temple’ on a high bluff overlooking
Sunnydale, and is going to pull the mystic
forces from the Earth itself and redirect them through a
demonic visage and turn the world into a cinder.
Buffy and Dawn are trapped in a hole in the Earth, and are
being beset by monsters that emerge from the
ground and seemed to be composed of soil and roots. Willow
remarks that she was responsible for
bringing Buffy up out of the earth, and now she has returned
her to it, back to where Buffy supposedly
longs to be. She says that Buffy is a warrior, and should go
out fighting, thus providing her with the ‘earth
monsters’ to battle.
This is another of those transcendent moments that ME always
manages to pull out of the creative
wellspring. On the one hand, Willow is currently mistaken
about what Buffy really wants, but at one time
she would not have been, Buffy has even said to Giles just a
short while earlier in this same episode that
‘she doesn’t know why she is here, it was her time’ to die
one year ago. On the other hand, Buffy needs
just two more small pushes to make her journey to
‘adulthood’ complete, and if Willow had not acted to
place Buffy in her current dire situation, Buffy may not
have made those last small but imperative jumps.
First, something of staggering importance to the entire
series that Buffy says is nearly buried in some
overlapping dialog, which I think was deliberate on ME’s
part. Willow is chanting, conjuring her
earth-destroying spell. Buffy is speaking to Dawn while they
are trapped down in the pit. Dawn is trying to
remind Buffy that Giles has said ‘no supernatural power can
stop her, the Slayer cannot stop her’, referring
to Willow, of course. Buffy replies, angrily, that:
“I have to try. I’m not going to just sit here while Willow
incinerates something that I have chosen to
protect”.
Whoa! I have chosen. Stop and think
here now... Buffy has always done her duty,
sacrificed herself if need be, answered the call. All well
and good, and frankly as much as we should
expect, in all reasonableness. Slayerhood is a horrendous
and deadly burden to place upon anyone. Who
would willingly choose it? Buffy has never chosen to
be a Slayer, in fact has often lamented that
she didn’t ask for it, didn’t want it.
Willow may never be the same after this season, but neither
will Buffy. Buffy has now chosen to be
a Slayer, of her own free will
Second, I’ll excerpt a section from the end of my review of
Wrecked, in the late fall of last year:
(One remaining, tiny, shift in space finds us...)
In the next room over, Dawn is dreaming, walking down a dark
street late at might, feeling strangely free
of fear in spite of the ominous surroundings. An odd
internal sensation, like a spine-tingle, but not quite,
causes her to stop and look around her. Suddenly, a tall,
powerful looking vampire jumps from a fire
escape down right in front of her, fangs bared, bloodlust
glaring from it’s cold, dark eyes. Without missing
a beat, she kicks it powerfully in the abdomen, knocking it
flying to the hard cement. In a matter of
seconds she jumps and straddles it, her arm swinging up and
just as blindingly fast plunging down, impaling
the creature through the heart, watching it turn to dry
bones and then dust beneath her. She stands, feeling
an immense sense of satisfaction, and strangely, hunger. The
dreamscape bleeds and shifts, and she is
opening the door of a refrigerator. As she sits down at the
kitchen table with a bowl of ice cream and a
very large glass of milk, she feels her body tremble in a
not unpleasant way, and thinks, God, what a
rush that was...
(The Phantoms depart, and we fade to black.)
Now, as usual, I guessed some things correctly, and many
other things incorrectly about what would
happen in this years’s season finale. (One of the occasional
cases where being wrong is often better than
being right, since few things are more boring than
predicability in art). One thing I am able to rightfully
pat
myself on the back about is that Buffy is finally
recognizing that Dawn is no longer a helpless child, but
has
‘power’ of her own to learn to accept and deal with. Buffy
has not only accepted the gift that her mother
bequeathed her in Normal Again, the sense of self-
confidence, but now she has integrated the gift
that Giles has given her, a sense of confidence in
the abilities and future independence of her
metaphorical and (nearly) literal ‘child’, Dawn.
As Giles told Buffy that he still ‘respected and had
confidence in her’ in the wake of Buffy’s ‘loss of
innocence’ to Angel during season two, Buffy symbolically
does the same to Dawn by handing her the
sword and asking for her help in Grave. Buffy is
‘looking into the light’ and ‘letting it wash over
her’ here. The light is the light of the future, the light
at the end of the tunnel. All along this past season,
Buffy has feared the light, thought it was an oncoming
train. Convinced that she would never feel her soul
comforted by heaven again, Buffy has falsely assumed that no
light or heat will ever warm her, she
‘touches the fire, and it freezes me’.
The reaction of Dawn is telling-- this is the moment she has
been waiting for, the moment to prove that she
is her own person, that she can step up to the challenges
presented to her and succeed. Her sister, who has
been nothing but well-intentioned in trying to ‘protect’
her, has nonetheless undermined her sense of self.
Now in this moment, one of supreme importance, life and
death itself, her sister does not offer to ‘die to
protect her’, but asks for her help in conquering the evil
at hand. Dawn proves up to the task, and the look
of astonishment on Buffy’s face after Dawn slays the root-
creature is priceless. Willow may succeed in
ending the world, but if she does, these two young women
will die as equals.
Willow almost does succeed, but then the only person who
could logically stop her-- at least obvious in
retrospect, I admit I didn’t see it coming-- steps
into the fray. Also in retrospect, it makes perfect
sense that Xander would be the last person to face Dark
Willow and the most likely person to succeed.
“Ohh, no. You may be a hopped-up uber-witch, but this
carpenter can still drywall you into the next
century.”
Ah, the carpenter reference. Xander as Christ? Maybe, maybe
not. A few seasons back there was a lot of
speculation that predicted an upcoming ‘Big Scooby Death’
and that Xander was the most likely candidate
for same. Much of the reasoning applied towards that
conclusion related to portents and foreshadowings
that dropped Christ-reference clues in Xander’s direction.
Of course, nothing came of that during the
actual season, but we all know ME plans far, far ahead. On
the other hand, he managed to step right smack
in front of what should have been a helleacios amount of
energy, and it just stopped cold. Powers?
Something power-wise is going on here, no doubt.
Buffy appears to not be the only Scooby who
can alter reality by will alone.
It really doesn’t matter, what does is that Buffy doesn’t
save the day, Xander does. This season sees Buffy
in her future, ‘Senior Year’ role as not just a lone
warrior, but as a true leader who allows others around
her to claim their own gifts and powers, even if those
powers serve in a humble fashion most of the time.
Moments will come and go, and sometimes anyone can be a
hero, if they have the right inspiration. Buffy
has inspired many other people in her time as Slayer, both
directly and indirectly. When Buffy succeeds,
others around her do also. When Buffy becomes a better
person, so do her friends and family. The reverse
is equally true. Xander may have saved the world en masse,
but Buffy has saved herself, and so can go on
to help others ‘see the light’.
The season opened with Buffy crawling out of the earth into
the darkness, fearing she was in hell. The
season ended with Buffy crawling out of the earth into the
light, seeing that heaven was all around her. She
walks forward from the edge of the pit, face alive and
radiant with joy. Dawn walks up behind her, and the
camera angle pivots slightly in much the same subtle way it
did when Buffy seemed to momentarily gain
the stone wings of the angel in the graveyard last fall. As
the pivot completes, Dawn is shown standing to
the front of Buffy, even though she is technically still
behind her distance-wise. The child that is the future,
standing tall and unafraid. As they walk off towards the
gloriously scenic view of the valley, Dawn has her
arm around her sister’s back, but still walks slightly
ahead. Then they are side by side. Past is prologue.
So, as I remarked much earlier, this is still Buffy’s story.
It’s just that Buffy’s story is everyone’s story--
her ‘child’s’, her friend’s, even us.
At the end of Becoming Part II, Joss chose to use a Sarah
McLauchlin song as an emotional conveyance
for the season’s ending moments. He chose to use one again
in the conclusion of Grave, a
wonderful choice not only because of the literal
appropriateness of the words, but because the song
represents the conclusion of this very significant part of
the long Hero’s Journey, a return from uncertainty
into enlightenment, as the former denoted a departure from
innocence into uncertainty.
I’ll end this essay, and this season, with another hopeful
tune that still understands that hope involves
struggle, and that the struggle never ends.
*******
I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be Heroes, just for one day
And you, you can be mean / And I, I'll drink all the
time
'Cos we're lovers, and that is a fact / Yes we're lovers,
and that is that
Though nothing, will keep us together / We could steal time,
just for one day
We can be Heroes, for ever and ever
What d'you say?
I, I can remember / Standing, by the wall
And the guns, shot above our heads / And we kissed, as
though nothing could fall
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes, just for one day
We're nothing, and nothing will help us
Maybe we're lying, then you better not stay
But we could be safer, just for one day
We could be Heroes
Just for one day
............ David Bowie
*******
Oh, yeah, then there’s Spike. Howzabout that soul thing,
huh? Far out.
*******
;-)
[>
OnM, as always ... Kaboom! -- julia, 19:57:59
05/27/02 Mon
[>
Re: The Ballad of Railroaded Buffy / We Can Be Heroes -
Thoughts on *TTG / Grave* (*Spoilers*) -- JBone,
20:06:23 05/27/02 Mon
First of all, brilliant and complete analysis, even more so
than usual.
"I have to try. I'm not going to just sit here while
Willow incinerates something that I have chosen to
protect".
I heard and saw this the first time I watched the episode
for a split second, but since it was as you said "buried", I
glossed over it. But you are right, this was huge. It
signals a change in her view of her calling. Shortly after
Giles reminds her that it is a calling that she answers.
[>
A Masterpiece _ Congrats OnM -- Dochawk,
20:28:51 05/27/02 Mon
[>
Re: The Ballad of Railroaded Buffy / We Can Be Heroes -
Thoughts on *TTG / Grave* (*Spoilers*) -- Dochawk,
20:30:46 05/27/02 Mon
And you got Spike's contribution just right! This is what I
have been saying forever, that this is Buffy's story and all
else is nice but incidental.
[> [>
Thanks, Doc! I was hoping I didn't go overboard on the
Spikeage ... ;-) -- OnM, 05:02:44 05/28/02 Tue
'Incidental' might be just a little excessive, but, yeah, I
really wanted to concentrate on Buffy, especially since the
writers structured things to make it look like all the
action was elsewhere.
None of the Scoobies-- and for that matter Cordy, Angel,
Riley, the Sunnydale High Class of '99, even the wayward
Jonathan-- would be where they are today without Buffy.
Buffy enables the heroism within the ordinary human, which
in the long run is just as important as the more showy
apocalypse-ending stuff.
Not to mention that a living hero, albeit a flawed one, is
still a better role-model than a dead one whose human nature
gets buried along with them. History books provide the
safety of distance, many times a good thing, other times
not.
Glad you liked my ramble. Thanks!
[>
Wowza! Beatiful post, OnM! -- Scroll, 20:43:18
05/27/02 Mon
I especially like your take on Dawn as the next generation.
In "Tabula Rasa", Giles tells Buffy that he'd taught her all
she needs to know about slaying, and Joyce had taught her
all she needs to know about life. Buffy has always been able
to apply her Slayer knowledge to herself, and after "Grave"
she's finally ready to apply all she knows about life from
Joyce. And I think Buffy is also ready to teach these two
things to Dawn. I can't wait to see how ME runs with this.
To misquote Tara, everything is turning out so bright. :
)
Oh, and Spike has a soul. Neat-o.
[>
ROFL... and clap!clap!clap! -- Lonesome Sundown,
20:45:28 05/27/02 Mon
[> [>
'A little song, a little dance, a little philosophy
down the pants' -- OnM, 19:21:03 05/28/02 Tue
[>
Ahh, jeez... you guys spoil me rotten! Thanks! :-) :-)
:-) -- OnM, 05:08:37 05/28/02 Tue
[>
Running out of superlatives - that was super freakin'
cool! -- ponygirl, 06:39:58 05/28/02 Tue
[>
That was some wicked good, OnM. Many thanks for the
read! :) -- SingedCat, 09:11:07 05/28/02 Tue
[>
Damn, that was good! ;o) -- dubdub, 09:36:45
05/28/02 Tue
[> [>
And, low in cholesterol and saturated fats, too! ;-
) -- OnM, 19:34:18 05/28/02 Tue
(Almost said 'low in saturated Spikeage', but decided I've
kicked the Spike enough for one l'il essay. Don't wanna be
mean. Mesa likee Spike!)
Now, if I can only get the ones for 'Normal Again' and
'Hells Bells' completed, someday...
20 down, 2 to go...
;-)
[>
Re: Excellent job, OnM! -- Dedalus, 10:02:06
05/28/02 Tue
[>
Poof! There goes my printer! Awesome, OnM! -- Rob,
10:26:51 05/28/02 Tue
[>
Re: The Ballad of Railroaded Buffy / We Can Be Heroes -
Thoughts on *TTG / Grave* (*Spoilers*) -- Exegy *in
awe of OnM*, 10:45:44 05/28/02 Tue
Woah, great post! Wonderfully written!
And nice catch on the "I have chosen" line. I think that
statement illustrates the choice Buffy makes in NA. The
brilliance of NA lies in the fact that both 'verses are real
for Buffy. She must shape her destiny by choosing one or the
other. She could have selected the life of a "normal girl,"
and then the Asylumverse would have become her reality. But
she turns her back on that option, thus denying the reality
of the Asylumverse and reaffirming her existence as the
Slayer. Her duty is not thrust upon her; she accepts it
willingly. She returns to the world in order to protect her
friends (just as Aeneas returns to the world for his
nation), but I don't think she returns out of a joy for
living in the world. That realization comes in Grave.
Thrust into the bottom of a pit, Buffy finally rediscovers
her joy for life. She finds that she really wants to
live in the world, because the world can be a beautiful
place. She communicates her epiphany to Dawn; the younger
Summers doesn't need to be protected from a harsh, cruel
life; she can be shown a world that is beautiful and
wonderful to live in. It's as if Buffy is telling herself
this message. She doesn't need to bury her emotions from the
trauma of life. No, she can show herself to the world,
because life is what one makes of it (she determines her own
reality). By emerging from the grave with Dawn, it's as if
she has brought back up with her the part that she left
behind. She is finally intact and ready to communicate her
experience to others.
For that's the next stage of the hero's journey--spreading
one's inner realization to others. I expect next season to
be much more upbeat as Buffy's joy is reflected in her
friends. Willow will recover, Xander and Anya will work
through their issues, and Dawn will come into her own. Of
course, new difficulties will emerge, but I expect the
conflicts to be mostly external. I think the Scoobies were
brought through the dark of the woods this season; maybe
next season they will approach the wood of earthly paradise.
As Dante would say, experiencing one's sins and purging
oneself of them (working through one's issues) is all a part
of the journey to fully realizing oneself.
Thanks for reading! *back to work I go, sigh*
[> [>
Great Post OnM and Exegy -- Kerri, 12:33:37
05/28/02 Tue
Great review as always OnM...I'm glad that you put the
emphasis back on Buffy and not on Spike....great essay and
great insights.
Same to you Exegy....enlightening discussion of the hero's
journey.
I liked the line "I chose" and while burried in the action
it really does seem important both as a reflection of the
past (in that Buffy despite complaining has always had a
choice) and the future (in Buffy's choice to live, love the
world, and embrace her calling as a slayer and mother).
[> [>
Thanks, Exegy. I've been enjoying your posts also--
keep 'em coming! ... :-) -- OnM, 19:03:08 05/28/02
Tue
Dunno if it'll be all 'shiny happy' time next season, but
certainly it has to be lighter than this past year! I kind
of expected all along that the Aprilbot 'darkness before the
dawn' quotage from last season meant more than just the
events of The Gift.
Going to be very interesting to watch the season over as
they rerun the eps this summer. Just finished watching
Bargaining Pt I a short while ago-- the benefit of foresight
is rather handy, you know? Things you see now have a very
different reading in many cases.
Speaking of 'witch', I noticed how deftly AH played Willow
during the pre-resurrection sequences. It's still very hard
to determine just how much is arrogance and how much is
simple unassuaged grief over Buffy's death. There is some
very righteous pain involved there, no doubt about it. Not
hard at all to see how Willow could easily convince herself
that this was the only possible course of action to
take.
Still say the fawn is Tara, BTW. I also liked how
Grave left this possible angle in ambiguous form,
neither affirming or denying the possibility.
[> [> [>
"Shiny happy" time? In Whedon's world?
Never!! -- Exegy, 20:46:10 05/28/02 Tue
I expect next season to present a lot of challenges for the
Scoobs (the fallout from this season must be addressed), and
I think that a major Big Bad will confront them as they
regroup. It's going to be interesting.
And I enjoy the pain, so I say keep it coming. But lay off
the depression--have the Scoobs face their challenges with a
sense of hope. A lot of fans will like them better (I've
liked them this year, if only because I know how it feels to
have your rose-colored glasses buried under several tons of
dirt).
Oh, and I agree with you about Willow. She needs to believe
that Buffy is suffering in an unspeakable hell dimension;
she needs to justify bringing Buffy back to herself. She
can't admit the possibility that she may be wrong. I believe
that Willow convinces herself (and Tara and Xander and--
well, Anya kinda goes with Xander) of the necessity of her
actions. She wants her friend back, and so in her mind she
creates the situation where Buffy needs to be brought back.
It's all about the loss that Willow feels, but she needs to
make it so that it's about Buffy's suffering. Which shows
that Willow does care about others, even though she reacts
out of her own grief. This all makes the situation rather
twisted; it's hard to place full blame on Willow if she
doesn't know what she is doing. From her POV, she's just
rying to "fix" things (but to her liking).
And I think that last sentence illustrates one of the
problems with Willow. She wants to make the world a "shiny
happy" place. A world where the pain goes poof! And that
world doesn't exist. The pain keeps on coming and coming,
and eventually you have to deal with it yourself. You can't
just make it disappear. And you can't just destroy the world
because there is pain in it. (The "make it go poof!"
mentality sure comes a long way!) That's not the answer.
The answer is to live in the world and deal with the pain.
And if you deal with the pain, you can realize that the
world has its joys, too. It can be a beautiful place. You
just have to open yourself up to its beauty, risking the
sorrows so that you can truly feel the wonders. A full
experience of life, indeed.
Thanks for reading. OnM, you are such a good writer--I am
humbled before your praise. I always look forward to your
posts, and for you to say the same about mine means a lot.
Thank you again!
[> [> [> [>
Spoilers for finale above, I keep forgetting --
Exegy *slightly abashed*, 20:49:54 05/28/02 Tue
[> [> [> [>
Re: "Shiny happy" time? In Whedon's world?
Never!! (S6 Spoilers) -- Jane's Addiction, 21:32:06
05/29/02 Wed
In complete agreement with your take on Willow. This helps
illustrate what is so endearingly human about her. She has
this huge amount of compassion for the suffering of others,
but she can be transference girl. Whose pain is she trying
to ease? Whose problem does she need to 'fix"? So many of
her mistakes seem to be rooted in her inability to give
herself time to simply recognize her pain for what it is and
process it instead of struggling desperately for a way to
fix it. That unconscious pattern certainly seems to be
repeated in the season finale.
I don't mean to suggest that she bears no responsibility for
her actions, simply that her actions were a heartbreakingly
human response to a devastating loss. Her fury, a desperate
if unconscious attempt to hold closed the door to a drowning
swell of sorrow.
I mentioned in a post here a few days back that - if you
were to look at the show's three central characters as a
representation of the human psyche (The Scooby Psyche?) -
Willow would clearly be the Id, running purely on emotional
impulses. Again, the message becomes balance. For the
'Scoobies' to truly heal their emotional wounds and deal
with the day to day work of adulthood, won't we need to see
the group's Id confront her most irrational urges and deep
seated fears, see them for what they are, and finally deal
with them in an adult manner?
I suspect season 7 will be quite a journey for Willow, as we
see her finally make the difficult transition to adulthood
(with all the pain and pathos that implies). Also looking
forward to even more complex, nuanced performances by AH,
who consistently manages to make Willow one of the show's
most likable and interesting characters.
Ooh, and the fawn was Tara? Interesting. I remember my
initial response being that maybe the fawn was simply
supposed to represent Willow sacrificing her own innocence
for what she saw as the greater good of bringing her friend
back.
[> [> [> [> [>
Thank you. Agree with your further discussion of
Willow. Nicely put. -- Exegy, 08:24:39 05/30/02
Thu
[> [> [>
if you're right about the fawn (spoilers for s6)...
-- anom, 20:03:26 05/29/02 Wed
"Still say the fawn is Tara, BTW. I also liked how Grave
left this possible angle in ambiguous form, neither
affirming or denying the possibility."
...how would you say Willow's invocation "Blessed one, know
your calling" applies to Tara? It could be said that the
fawn came forth to an appointed death--certainly to one w/a
purpose; I don't see how the same could be said of Tara. The
fawn's death helped bring Buffy back to life, something
everyone involved wanted (well, except Buffy...), even if
the reality didn't match their expectations. Tara's death
set Willow on a path that nearly destroyed everything. Maybe
it's an other-side-of-the-coin situation, but otherwise I
don't see it. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I don't
get it.
I wish I had time to address all the points you, Exegy, &
others have brought up in your thought-provoking posts.
Right now all I can do is make brief forays around the
edges. With a split weekend away coming up, it'll only get
harder to keep up, let alone contribute.
[> [> [> [>
Again, this is completely speculation, but... --
OnM, 07:00:27 05/30/02 Thu
*** It could be said that the fawn came forth to an
appointed death--certainly to one w/a purpose; I don't see
how the same could be said of Tara. The fawn's death helped
bring Buffy back to life, something everyone involved wanted
(well, except Buffy...), even if the reality didn't match
their expectations. ***
... if you need a 'purpose' (and I admit, they are rather
nice to have! ;-), first consider why the PTB would have
brought back Angel, then made it snow in Amends, put
Faith on the dark path and then had her eventually repent,
not to mention resurrecting Buffy from death several
times.
Perhaps it was predestined that Tara was to die. I've
speculated before that she may have even known this
subconsciously (also note that she is the one that appears
as the 'interpreter' for the First in Restless, and
also gives the now-famous "You have no idea who you are,
what you are to become" speech to Buffy in the very end of
the ep. All of these things harken strongly of some kind of
predestination, a malleable one, methinks-- free will and
all-- but predestination nonetheless.
For example, if Buffy was saved to bring about the setting
of Angel (or maybe even Faith or Spike) on a course of
action as a warrior for good, Willow may have an eventual
destiny that requires that she beat the magic
'addiction'/power hunger weakness so that she could use her
phenomenal powers wisely for genuine good in future (think
Ripper/Giles for precedence). Sadly, the only way that this
could occur is for someone near and dear to her to die. It
could have been Oz, it happened to be Tara. It is a bitter
lesson but Willow will eventually learn from it. Perhaps
there was no other way for her to learn.
Thus the Question-- why give Willow all that power, then
throw it away? At the moment, this is my answer.
Speculation all, nothing confirmed, just suggested by past
events.
[> [> [> [> [>
Yes, agree that this is where ME & Joss were going with
Willow (Spoilers) -- Exegy, 08:52:16 05/30/02 Thu
I think that if Oz had remained, the writers would have
taken him away as well. It's about Willow's journey in the
end. Not that Oz and Tara aren't wonderful characters (and a
testament to ME's ability to create fictional beings that we
can care about so much), but Willow remains more central to
the narrative. And she has to deal with her power issues,
and the only way she can do this is by owning up to her full
potential to abuse power.
She needs to finally accept the pain; she can't have Tara
(or Oz) still around, offering the possibility of a salve to
her psyche. She needs to fill the holes in her self-esteem
herself (Xander's intervention tells Willow that she has
been a good friend and loveable person all along; now she
just has to realize his words herself).
A hard journey lies ahead for Willow. She must learn to love
herself and use her powers (magickal or technological)
wisely. My current guess is that her magickal abilities are
restrained (Giles mentions that the Devon Coven has worked
out a way to do this). I think that Willow and Giles will be
in England when the season opens, working on a way to find
her center and harness her abilities (reminds me of the
balancing energies scene in Dopplegangland). This is
probably how Willow spends her summer, trying to come to
terms with herself (with help from friends).
Ooh, wouldn't it be cool if the whole Scooby Gang were to
visit Willow in England? For once everyone wouldn't be stuck
in Sunnydale! And maybe Spike would be there, too, trying to
make something of himself now that he has a soul. All
wishful thinking on my part, I readily admit, but it would
be fun to see everyone in England (and I'm sure the actors
wouldn't mind the experience, either).
[> [> [> [> [> [>
making sense of what you said (future spoilers ? )
-- dochawk, 18:51:04 05/30/02 Thu
E assume from what you said that you know that at least a
few of the actors are going to England to film. i don't
think they are all going though. And I agree, whomever
Willow happened tolove at the time would have been killed.
You've done a nice job talking about her journey.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Thank you, Dochawk (Spoilers) -- Exegy, 19:38:39
05/30/02 Thu
I've heard that several scenes will be shot in England at
the opening of the season. I'm assuming that Giles and
Willow are the most logical candidates for a change of
scenery (Giles and the Devon Coven perhaps trying to help
Willow control and balance her energies). As for the other
Scoobies popping up in Devonshire--that's just some wishful
thinking on my part, as I've said.
But I'd guess that the actors would like to shoot in England
(budget allowing).
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Thank you, Dochawk (Spoilers) -- Dochawk,
21:35:01 05/30/02 Thu
there is also the speculation that Amber will show up on
Ripper (which is about Giles and Ghosts supposedly) as a
friendly ghost. (like phantom dennis but not so
phantom?)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Re: Spoilers and speculation -- SpikeMom,
21:50:55 05/30/02 Thu
I like this idea of Willow going to England to learn to
control her magic from the Wisewomen of the Devon coven. It
parallels nicely with Oz's journey to Tibet/Nepal to seek
guidance from the Holymen in controlling the Wolf within
himself. BTW there's a new paperback just out telling the
story of Oz's journey and experiences during this time
frame. Don't have the title handy but I'm sure it can be
easily found on Amazon.
I am also rooting for Tara to come back as a ghost/spirit
guide on either BtVS or Ripper. Her role in Restless was
definatly a forshadowing.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [>
Ooh, good parallel! I like that! I would like to see
some change of scenery, also. -- OnM, 04:37:57
05/31/02 Fri
[> [> [> [> [> [>
making sense of what you said (future spoilers ? )
-- dochawk, 18:52:57 05/30/02 Thu
E assume from what you said that you know that at least a
few of the actors are going to England to film. i don't
think they are all going though. And I agree, whomever
Willow happened tolove at the time would have been killed.
You've done a nice job talking about her journey.
[>
Didn't she choose once before? (spoilers for season
3) -- dochawk, 12:49:27 05/28/02 Tue
Didn't Buffy choose once before. In Anne, Buffy has
sucessfully built a life for herself. NOt a very worthwhile
one, but she had a job a place to live. She could have
turned her back on Lily. She had denied who she was for 3
months. But, Buffy choose to help. Eventually she made the
choice to return to being the slayer. But in Dead Man's
party, her right to that choice was totally negated by Joyce
and Xander (Xander's 2nd worst moment in my opinion, only
surpassed by the lie that lead to this situation) and to a
lesser extent Willow. Only Giles understood what had
happened and why Buffy needed to be allowed to make the
choice herself. I think that the actions of Joyce and
Xander in this episode contributed mightily to Buffy's
questioning of her slayerness and 4 year descent into a
living hell.
[> [>
Re: Didn't she choose once before? (spoilers for season
3) -- Lonesome Sundown, 15:16:49 05/28/02 Tue
Got to rush. but quickly...
In Anne Buffy found that she couldn't escape her destiny
even if she tried. In The Gift she chose of her own free
will to save the world.
[> [>
Ya know, that was something that always bugged me.
-- OnM, 18:49:00 05/28/02 Tue
And in fact it reminds me of where Wesley is in A:tS right
now. All of his supposed 'family' assumes the worst of him,
despite all evidence of his previous loyalty, and kicks him
out without even letting him have a chance to explain
why he took the actions that he did. If the
explanation turns out to be bigus, that's one thing, but to
not even extend the courtesy of asking? Some 'family'.
While not applied to the same extreme degree with Buffy when
she returned home after the events in Anne, I really
felt that they weren't giving her much credit for maybe
having a good reason to leave Sunnydale. It seemed to be
more about how her friends felt than concern for her.
Presumptuous, ya know?
[>
Existentialism, anyone? -- warped, 15:53:20
05/28/02 Tue
Actually, I don't know what you'd call it. But it's
something. My two favorite moments in the S6 finale:
1) the Giles and Buffy laugh-fest over the more soapy plot
points of the season.
Buffy gets it. Finally. You don't mull, mope, and lose hope
when you make mistakes. You laugh at them, learn, and move
on. That's what adults do. (That's what Giles did anyway and
I think he's a great adult figure for Buffy. God, I missed
him.)
2) Buffy telling Giles she doesn't understand why she was
brought back.
I agreed with her- it really was her time when she
sacrificed her life for Dawn. So why? Yes, because of
Willow. But really, in the cosmic scheme of things, what was
the purpose? Willow just seemed to unbalance the
forces of nature instead of rectifying them as she thought
she would. Is this existentialism? Growing up? Realising
that there is no logical purpose to events in human life?
That we can't control any of it? Giles couldn't come up with
a reason. Buffy's resurrection is, well, absurd. I
like to think so in the vein of Camus' The Stranger
or even the intrigue in Candide's Voltaire. Tara
dying, Spike's AR, Xander leaving Anya, plus everything else
Buffy recapped for Giles seems also another account of the
absurd happening in everyday life. Isn't that why Giles
laughs? Gone, it seems, are the prophecies and "destiny"
concepts we saw in the previous seasons. OnM brilliantly
points out that Buffy says to Dawn that she chooses
to protect the world. If Willow was acting childishly at the
beginning of the season by thinking she could control the
world and Bring Buffy Back, than is the grown up view the
one that says we are ultimately powerless in the world
(except when backed up by our friends) ?
And then you have the whole Sartre "Hell is people" thing. I
think I saw that brought up here before.
So that's my theory. Did anyone else see the existentialism
(or whatever; the absurd, the shedding of institution, etc.)
in these scenes? Or can someone elucidate what I'm trying to
say...'cause, heh, that would be helpful...
Thanks
(Small nitpick with the Giles/Buffy dialogue-can someone
explain to me why Buffy said someone would replace her? Did
she mean as a slayer? Faith's in jail. Did she or the
writers forget the one-replacement-a-slayer rule?)
[> [>
Re: Existentialism, anyone? -- Sophie, 18:46:59
05/28/02 Tue
Uh, that was me who wrote about “hell is other people”.
The roots of the Existentialism philosophy is the
“chicken/egg” thing – which came first? The essence (idea)
of mankind or the existence of mankind? The Existentialists
decided that man existed before the idea (if that makes
sense!) or that man’s existence is more important than the
idea of mankind. Mostly I have read the Existentialist
philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and a little Albert Camus.
Existentialists basically believe that you are responsible
for every action that you take and the direct and indirect
actions/consequences. Period. Under no circumstances can
you be excused. (You can be forgiven, of course.)
Existentialists also believe that you decide who you are –
you define yourself, your beliefs, and if you let anyone re-
define you/these beliefs, then you are acting in “bad
faith”. I, personally, agree with the basics, but I find
them a little strict in reality if you want to truly love
another human being or be loved by another human being,
and/or have a sharing experience in the relationship. I
thought Sartre was too extreme, and Camus too depressing.
I’ve always wondered what happens if you cross quantum
physics with existentialism… But nevermind.
Below is excerpted from a post that I posted mid-April
regarding “Normal Again” and Buffy’s need to know what is
real. The philosopher, Schopenhauer, was not an
Existentialist as he was dead by the time the movement
really got started.
“First, the concept of Continuity of existence. I’m
thinking this was Schopenhauer, but I could be just
dillusional. The idea being that I cannot prove that
somebody or something exists when I cannot see or touch it.
For example, I “know” that my Mom still exists despite the
fact that she is in Tucson and I am in NYC and I cannot see
or touch her.
And second, in “Nausea” by Sartre, his main character
Roquentin stabs his hand with a knife (or scissors or
something) because he can no longer accept that he exists
without solid proof. The pain he feels from the stab wounds
are a proof of sorts of his existence.”
So to answer your question:
Willow takes Warren to task for his responsibility in
murdering Tara despite the fact the he did not intend to
kill Tara. So Tara’s death was an indirect result of
Warren’s action to shoot Buffy. We will have to wait until
next season to see if Willow is held responsible for her
torture and murder of Warren.
Obviously applying all this to Spike will result in another
moody, brooding vamp, which I hope to not see happen. Angel
was awesome, but he was also enough.
Sophie
[> [> [>
Isn't Sol using one of Sartre's books as a
doorstop?...;) -- Rufus, 00:36:38 05/29/02 Wed
Mostly I have read the Existentialist philosophers Jean-
Paul Sartre and a little Albert Camus.
I've read a bit of each guy and both had some worthwhile
things to say. My problem is with the fact that some of
these guys have a different way of saying the same word. I
like someone who gets to the point instead of making me wish
bloody vengeance upon them for rambling on so.....;)
Buffy had to get on with living instead of spinning her
wheels trying to figure out why she is here. First she tried
to play hookey, and then she was more content to think she
was nuts. Life went on around her and her distress over her
situation just kept her out of the living of life, enjoying
it while she can, cause we all die. I'm glad at the end of
Grave she finally took the weight of the world off her
shoulders and had a look around and found life can be
good.
[> [>
Perhaps that is the reason she is brought back --
Dochawk, 19:02:52 05/28/02 Tue
Perhaps Buffy is brought back because there is no active
slayer. Yes, Faith is alive, but she's in jail and unless
the demons come to her aint much she can do. So the world
needs an active slayer, and Buffy is the most qualified.
[> [>
'Replace her?' ..... Yeah, wondered about that too.
-- OnM, 19:46:53 05/28/02 Tue
Some possibilities...
1) Buffy doesn't know that she only gets one replacement per
death.
2) Buffy assumed that Faith would be sprung from jail by the
council, assuming she's 'rehabbed' enough.
3) Buffy is thinking long-term, like after Faith
expires.
4) Buffy assumes that someone non-Slayery will take her
place, like the Scoobies (which in fact, they did).
5) Buffy somehow knows that Dawn will become a Slayer
without actually 'knowing' it-- Freudian slippage, or
somesuch.
6) Before someone complains about #5, is it possible that
Dawn, being made from 'Summer's blood', specifically
Buffy's, could sort of 'bypass' the normal 'calling'
process? I.e., she is already a Slayer, she doesn't
need to be 'called'. Think clone analogies, or mitichlorians
or whatever the hell they are.
"The Primitive is strong in this one..."
Dunno. Good question there, warped.
:-)
[> [>
Re: Existentialism, anyone? - yes please (Spoilers for
all aired eps (North American) for AtS, BtVS) -- Rahael,
21:16:37 05/28/02 Tue
I'm very persuaded that even right back to Prophecy Girl,
we've seen that the Buffyverse is governed not by fate,
destiny or prophecy, but, just as our universe, governed by
chance, by accident, by cruel irony.
Buffy's pain at trying to understand why a 16 year old girl
had to die. Tara's accidental and meaningless death. Faith
happening to run down the alley, expecting to meet a Vamp
just as Finch turned the corner.
In fact, all my posts assume that this is the case. And that
all action in such a universe become inherently more
meaningful. Prophecy, authority, those structures which seem
to say "there is authority and power and order at work here"
- all those are challenged consistently. The prophecy which
leads Wesley astray in AtS was made up by Sajhan. The
Prophecy in PG was actually necessary to make Buffy free the
master. The Watcher's Council don't have a clue about
anything.
The biggest exponents of the "Hell is other people" line is
Glory - her words to Dawn about everyone in the world being
so miserable, they are trying to get off it - and Willow, in
TTG/Grave. All she senses is the utter pain in the
world.
So when people talk of journeys, paths to redemptions, what
people wanted, what they recieve, I remember Giles' lines
"Her path's unbeaten, and it's all uphill".
[> [> [>
Re: Existentialism, anyone? - yes please (Spoilers for
all aired eps (North American) for AtS, BtVS) -- redcat,
11:14:53 05/29/02 Wed
While I’m generally a myth-junkie and revel in the
Hero’s Journey aspects of the Jossverse, I think you are at
least partially right, Rahael, when
you argue that, “even right back to Prophecy Girl, we've
seen that the Buffyverse is governed not by fate, destiny or
prophecy, but, just as our
universe, governed by chance, by accident, by cruel irony.”
Reading the Buffy-text as a philosophical discussion, I
think it’s clear that Whedon
is fascinated by the narrative possibilities of
existentialist questions. And in support of your argument,
I would point out that Buffy’s “choice” of
her Slayer-hood begins not in “The Grave,” but in “Prophecy
Girl,” when she *chooses* to fight the Master, even
believing, as she does at the
time, that her choice will thus fulfill a prophecy. (Sorry,
OnM, this is the only part of your fabulous post that
started this thread with which I’ve a
real quibble.)
However, I would argue that even in *our* universe, there’s
some pretty significant interplay between “chance” and
“fate,” and that the link
between them is usually “choice.” We are, after all, each
born into a specific historical moment, in a particular type
of body (sexed, colored,
sized), to specific parents in a unique culture or set of
cultural conditions, operating at a specific place on the
planet. We inherit not only DNA
but the human history of our direct ancestors and our entire
species. While each individual’s particular “givens” are
rarely changeable (a 6thC
Chinese peasant woman really can not choose to reinvent
herself as a 21stC Wall Street broker), we do have some
options in terms of affecting
the social meanings assigned to some of those components –
i.e., we can fight racism, be part of the active
redefinition of gender, struggle
against colonialist appropriations of our cultures, fight
hegemony, etc. But we must still act within at least some
of the “fated” parts of our lives.
As the moral of existentialism notes, how we choose to act
does matter, whether we live in a cruelly ironic universe or
a world where identity
seems assigned at birth. In other words, while a Wall
Street broker may find that she cannot become a 6thC Chinese
peasant either, she CAN
engage in contemporary business practices that encourage
self-sufficiency among peasant agriculturalists world-wide -
- or not. Her choice will
make a difference, both to her and to others, EVEN IF she is
hit and killed by a taxi on the same day she makes that
choice.
Further, I would argue that it is at least part of Joss’s
philosophy in BtVS that making choices based on only one
aspect of what he has defined
as the necessary four parts of the greater self – Hand,
Mind, Spirit and Heart – will result in bad choices. This
is why I’m not convinced that
Joss is, in fact, completely sold on the existential
perspective. Classic existentialism, like much Western
philosophy, epistemologically
assumes the hierarchical separation of mind from body, with
mind the dominant partner. The assumption by Sartre’s
character in “Nausea” that
physical pain proves existence is based on such a division
(see Sophie’s post, above) ( i.e., the mind can “know” what
the body experiences,
but the reverse is not understood as also true). What Buffy
and crew seem to be learning, especially in S5 & S6, is
that such division is both
limiting and dangerous. Buffy’s path, as Rahael notes, is
“unbeaten, and it's all uphill.” But she doesn’t travel it
alone, none of us do, and
Joss seems intent on reminding us (or perhaps himself?) of
that.
Speaking of Joss’s intentions, I agree that, at least
earlier in the series, he directed us to the existentialist
philosophers. We actually see Angel
reading Sartre's "Nausea" in an early ep (sorry, don't
remember which one but the book's title is clearly visible).
I think it quite possible that
Angel is *supposed* to be seen as acting within some sort of
existentialist narrative, especially given his famous speech
to Fred in AtS that
(paraphrasing here) ‘what we do is all that matters.’
However, three years later in AYW -- when the story has
evolved and we're about to see
another, far less philosophical, vampire get a soul -- we
see Spike reading a book in the scene in his crypt when B
storms in and says, "Tell me
that you love me." But did anyone see that book's title?
(If so, please post - thanks!) That mis-en-scene struck me
as odd at the time. We're
used to seeing Spike watch TV, and are often allowed to
identify what's playing. It seems to be exceptionally
significant, for example, that Clem
is watching "Meet John Doe" in Spike’s crypt when Buffy and
Dawn find out that he is gone. While the movie may certainly
be read as raising
existentialist questions and the crypt scene therefore may
possibly act in a similar way to Angel’s scene reading
Sartre, I wonder if such an
interpretation might be creating either a more limited or a
more grand sub-text than the (movie) text supports. Frank
Capra’s “Meet John Doe”
is a complex and multi-layered tale of political corruption
and human greed (if a bit on the cheesy side - I’m not one
of those who think it’s
Capra’s best work), but I don’t think even Capra would argue
that it’s in the same league as Sartre’s “Nausea”; more
importantly, the film’s basic
over-text is not concerned with Sartre’s questions, but with
issues grounded in a critique of American political and
social life. I suspect that
Joss is going to be pushing the existentialist envelope with
his characters in S7, perhaps especially with Spike, but I’m
not so sure that he is still
as enamored with the narrative possibilities that the
emotional despair often associated with existentialism
brings. If the darkness of S6 can be
read as representing his exploration of the existential
dilemma, then his (at this point, provisional) answer seems
to refute the wisdom that “hell
is other people” by quietly proclaiming (and from a cliff
top, no less) that heaven is, as well.
But Rahael, as I've said before, I do so love how you write
and even more how you think, so even when we disagree as we
do today, I send you my hearty thanks!
rc
[> [> [> [>
Actually, I think I agree with you! -- Rahael,
16:26:53 05/29/02 Wed
It seems to me, that throughout the seasons, for Buffy, for
ME and for the viewers, we see this conflict of who we are,
and our encounter with the universe.
Do we have something within us, a special purpose, duties,
to offer others, and the world? or is it totally random?
You are certainly right that in the Buffyverse there is a
central place for real meaning. Buffy is the Slayer, a
special position. Dawn is the Key. All the Scoobies have
something special within them. I don't know if I'm an
existentialist or not! I certainly believe, as Joss does, in
agency, in our ability to shape our lives in significant
ways.
I really like your point that Joss likes playing around with
narrative possibilities. And that he is a consumer of all
good narrative stories floating around.
A major argument against a existential Buffyuniverse is
'Amends', and also Angel saving Kate's life in an ep last
season. I think that Joss just goes with the best dramatic
possibility.
I love when I get such disagreement, Redcat!! The best thing
about this board is the opportunity to discuss and change
your views.
[> [>
Credit where credit's due...thanks to Sophie for the
Sartre reference -- warped, 23:22:18 05/28/02 Tue
Thanks guys, you helped clear up some stuff. I've always had
trouble grasping the fundamental concept of existentialism,
perhaps because it is so broad. (Don't get me wrong- I love
it all. Nietzsche's a personal fav.) I've taken the classes,
read the books, but it's not something I'm an expert on. I
just reread "No Exit" the other day and that's probably why
I'm on this existentialism kick. But then it's pretty much
ubiquitous in Buffy... :::smiles:::
Nice meeting you all
[> [>
i wondered once before... -- anom, 17:25:44
05/30/02 Thu
...in an open-ended kinda way, months ago during a
discussion of the writers' explanation of why Buffy
wouldn't be replaced (only the most recent Slayer's
death calls the next), if the characters realized that was
the case. I think Buffy's question answers mine.
"(Small nitpick with the Giles/Buffy dialogue-can someone
explain to me why Buffy said someone would replace her? Did
she mean as a slayer? Faith's in jail. Did she or the
writers forget the one-replacement-a-slayer rule?)"
I think the characters never knew it. After all, the rule
never came into play before the 1st (maybe the 2nd!) time
Buffy died. So unless it's addressed in prophecy (think
we'll see that sometime?), who's going to tell them?
[>
Lovely! Thanks for the wrap up. -- Tillow,
11:16:33 05/29/02 Wed
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