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snick_backupNow in the middle of S3 with the housemate. A burning question, and one thinkier topic:
1. Why does Anya give her power center thingy to Cordelia at the beginning of "The Wish"?
2. Once Giles gets it off Cordelia's corpse, HOW DOES ANYA GET IT BACK?
3. So, Faith. I've been watching things very carefully this time, trying to spot just where the Faith/Scooby relations soured. Certainly "Revelations" was key, although I can't quite put my finger on why - was Faith really that peeved about being left out of a completely inappropriate and mishandled 'intervention' in Buffy's personal life? Does she really feel that threatened by Angel? Does she have a phobia of people keeping secrets, even if they're secrets that don't have anything directly to do with her?
Or is it Gwendolyn Post's betrayal that Faith's really upset over, as Buffy seems to think at the end of the ep when she brings it up?
Anyway, Faith still bothered to come to the Summers' for Christmas in "Amends," and later on there's "Bad Girls"/"Consequences", so clearly not all friendliness is gone yet.
4. I'd forgotten what a bore Angel is in "Amends." Redemption arc, bleah. Whatever.
And the First, too - which I'd find totally terrifying if only there was some kind of metaphysical basis for it at all. Buffy's quite right in being so flip about the fact that it's evil, because in the Buffyverse, 'evil' doesn't mean anything in particular, other than a collection of actions that most humans (not even sentient beings, just humans) find unpleasant and distasteful. It's not like there's any spiritual reality at stake.
My issues with Buffyverse metaphysics, let me show you them.
1. Why does Anya give her power center thingy to Cordelia at the beginning of "The Wish"?
2. Once Giles gets it off Cordelia's corpse, HOW DOES ANYA GET IT BACK?
3. So, Faith. I've been watching things very carefully this time, trying to spot just where the Faith/Scooby relations soured. Certainly "Revelations" was key, although I can't quite put my finger on why - was Faith really that peeved about being left out of a completely inappropriate and mishandled 'intervention' in Buffy's personal life? Does she really feel that threatened by Angel? Does she have a phobia of people keeping secrets, even if they're secrets that don't have anything directly to do with her?
Or is it Gwendolyn Post's betrayal that Faith's really upset over, as Buffy seems to think at the end of the ep when she brings it up?
Anyway, Faith still bothered to come to the Summers' for Christmas in "Amends," and later on there's "Bad Girls"/"Consequences", so clearly not all friendliness is gone yet.
4. I'd forgotten what a bore Angel is in "Amends." Redemption arc, bleah. Whatever.
And the First, too - which I'd find totally terrifying if only there was some kind of metaphysical basis for it at all. Buffy's quite right in being so flip about the fact that it's evil, because in the Buffyverse, 'evil' doesn't mean anything in particular, other than a collection of actions that most humans (not even sentient beings, just humans) find unpleasant and distasteful. It's not like there's any spiritual reality at stake.
My issues with Buffyverse metaphysics, let me show you them.
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Date: 2010-01-23 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 05:17 pm (UTC)And then on top of that, she's kind of embarrassed about misreading the situation - Xander basically used her, playing on her ignorance to get her to kill Angel, when actually Angel was a good guy. And when she storms in there, she thinks she needs to save Gwendolyn Post, when really it was Angel she should've been helping. She knows she should be apologizing to Buffy and Angel for jumping to conclusions, but I don't think Faith's the type who easily admits when she's wrong.
Then, on top of that, she thought she'd found an authority figure who understood her - Post made her feel good about her crappy motel room, actually took an interest in her - but then she turns out to be evil, falling into the pattern of every other authority figure who's abandoned her or let her down. Makes it harder for her to trust anyone.
It's not a clean break or anything - once time passes and Buffy's forgotten that Faith's first instinct was to kill Angel, they're friendly again. But I think this whole episode is a lesson for Faith that she (a) doesn't really belong in the Scooby group and (b) can't trust anyone but herself.
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Date: 2010-01-23 11:51 pm (UTC)And then on top of that, she's kind of embarrassed about misreading the situation
It also feels to me that she's not just acting on Slayer-kill-vampire instinct - I think she's still trying to claw her way back from the terror she felt against Kakistos, and taking it out on any vamp in the vicinity.
Makes it harder for her to trust anyone.
Yes. How sad - though understandable - that she turned that epiphany back on the Scoobies, whom I think she could have trusted if she'd been willing. Or Buffy, at least.
As I write this, I'm suddenly overcome with wanting to see an AU where, however she feels about the other Scoobies, she does trust Buffy on something big, and they make it through together without losing Faith to the dark side. I think I just really like the sisterly potential - in some ways they understand each other way better than anyone else could ever understand them. I wish canon had explored that positive aspect more - later in the series, maybe. There's that last-minute bonding at the end of S7, but it's not enough for me, darn it.
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Date: 2010-01-24 01:00 am (UTC)But once she finds out he's actually alive, she snaps into uber slay-mode, like you said, even more determined than the usual Slayer instinct. So, apparently, hypothetical vampire-boinking is hot, but physically present vampires are threatening?
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Date: 2010-01-24 03:42 am (UTC)Mebbe? I'm really not sure. It occurs to me that if I felt like slashifying the argument, I'd say Faith found Angel threatening on a whole different level. I suppose you could maybe still make it, from a gen POV: Faith's found a maybe-friend, someone with whom she can commiserate about things like the evils of men, and then suddenly that friendship is threatened by the Return of the Ex. It sort of makes sense, but I'm not sure it makes sense for Faith, specifically, and anyway I don't think that's what the writers intended.
I'm not sure. I can't decide whether the writers were already being brilliantly subtle with Faith's characterization, or whether they just hadn't quite felt her out yet. I'm leaning towards the latter, though.
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Date: 2010-01-26 02:02 am (UTC)Yeah. That's pretty much my feeling, too. I think Faith's early characterization falls into the "throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks" thing that Joss does so much.
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Date: 2010-01-23 07:40 pm (UTC)I've always assumed that Faith is jealous of Buffy having everything she (Faith) doesn't. Gwendolyn Post was just one more betrayal. But so much love for the Mayor & Faith...
Yeah, Angel is borderline annoying for a lot of season 3. That's when I started watching, and I was really kind of surprised to find I liked the character when he was spun off onto his own show.
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Date: 2010-01-23 11:39 pm (UTC)But that's just it - she gives it to Cordelia and Giles takes it from Cordelia's corpse, but then when he summons Anyanka, she's wearing it again. When he smashes it, he rips it off her neck first.
But so much love for the Mayor & Faith...
Yes - it's a truly fascinating arc. I can't wait to get to that part!
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Date: 2010-01-23 07:59 pm (UTC)OMG! OMG! Let me rant with you!
in the Buffyverse, 'evil' doesn't mean anything in particular, other than a collection of actions that most humans (not even sentient beings, just humans) find unpleasant and distasteful
The "good guys" had such a narrow definition of "evil" that I eventually became disillusioned with the protagonists on both BtVS and AtS. It's a very smug sort of morality, and reveals the characters to be a rather privileged bunch despite their purported underdog status.
Angel lost my sympathy when he tried to kill Wesley after the latter's botched attempt to keep Connor safe. It's hypocritical of Angel to pursue his own redemption (after over a century of slaughter) when he is unwilling to forgive a friend.
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Date: 2010-01-24 12:18 am (UTC)The "good guys" had such a narrow definition of "evil" that I eventually became disillusioned with the protagonists on both BtVS and AtS.
Generally, I'm pretty on-board with their application of the term. Human sacrifice? Evil. Human trafficking for use as labor in an alternate dimension? Evil. Chaos for fun? Evil. Murder of humans? Evil when the being in question is capable of moral choices. (Which of course brings up the question of whether vampires are capable of moral choices - in Spike's case, at least, the answer would seem to be yes - and if so, why do they almost to a vamp choose evil?) The one big exception to my agreement would be, of course, how they treat Spike, but in most cases (Xander, Buffy) I can see personal reasons for that that are perfectly understandable, if not justifiable.
For me, the problem occurs in situations such as with the First, where I'm supposed to be disturbed by Evil as an abstract concept. I really can't see a way around defining Evil using some sort of spiritual or philosophical basis, and the Buffyverse offers me neither. Hence, all I get is a hallucinatory sort of haunting spirit thing that talks really big (and also has an army of
orcsuber-vamps, for no reason I can see).no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 02:02 am (UTC)You're right that the First Evil was presented in a weak manner. I guess I was more intrigued by the potential in the idea than its execution on the show.
'Evil' in my book is the tendency of sentient beings to injure others for selfish reasons. The First Evil, then, would be a personification of this quality. Either it came into being on its own and then provoked beings into doing evil acts, or evil acts committed by the first sentient beings coalesced into an entity. The Buffyverse provides little evidence for any of this, but I figured the FE was trying to manifest itself on this plane so it could promote evil behavior more readily and then gorge itself on the resulting grief and ill-will.
And thinking about it now makes me realize how little that's supported by canon and how much I pulled out of my ass :P
My disappointment with the characters is for related reasons. I agree that murder and exploitation is evil, because it takes advantage of others' welfare for selfish gain. But the Scoobies in particular insist that demon==evil because demons have no soul and soul==good. This is contradicted by the existence of both souled humans who commit harmful/selfish acts and demons who do not.
(And whatever the writers say, eating kittens is no more evil than eating veal. To claim otherwise is pretty ethnocentric (which, in my admittedly bizarre world-view, is a moral failing).)
Sorry for rambling on about this. I hope I didn't cause any offence :)
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Date: 2010-01-24 03:37 am (UTC)Okay, every step of this FE discussion has me thinking back on C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, which I'm rereading, but this bit in particular makes me wonder if you've read it, too: then gorge itself on the resulting grief and ill-will.
In Screwtape, the carrot (as opposed to the stick) motivation for all the tempters and devils is to devour human souls or, lacking those, each other. One of my problems with the FE is that it doesn't seem to have any motivation other than destruction and misery, but the 'gorging' idea would furnish one nicely.
But the Scoobies in particular insist that demon==evil because demons have no soul and soul==good.
A couple of thoughts. First, I think that this attitude began as a generalization of what they saw with vampires in general and Angel/Angelus in particular (whew, what a lot of damage he did to all of them!), and then became entrenched as the show went on. It took the Scoobies years to run into a demon that they didn't need to fight to protect humanity from - Clem is the one that comes to mind, although maybe there was one or two earlier? So, a potentially false generalization, but an understandable one.
(I find it interesting how Ats got over this by the time they introduced Lorne in S2. I really do feel that the metaphysical foundations of Ats are pretty distinct from those in BtVS, even though they're supposedly in the same universe. Like, the PTB were never mentioned on Buffy, were they? Not even by Whistler. Or am I misremembering?)
Second, I can't remember the Scoobies in general discussing whether demons had souls. Or whether Anya had a soul while she was human, or Dawn. In fact, I don't remember souls as such coming up hardly at all except in connection with vampires.
Third, you're right that the existence of human evil is entirely ignored in the worldview, even though it's clearly demonstrated by characters in the series. Willow is exhibit A, although of there's also Maggie Walsh and Amy's mother (and maybe Amy herself?) and Ethan Rayne and so on. But humans are definitely privileged on the show.
OTOH, I'm extremely hesitant to label the Scoobs as species-ist and the demon races as the downtrodden minority, if for no other reason than because that would completely undermine the entire theme and spirit of the show, and since it's a show I like and (generally) respect, I'd rather not dismiss it that way.
For the same reason, I have problems with people who write Spike as misunderstood character that nobody wuvs, because even though the show clearly doesn't know what it means that he has no soul and is yet capable of love, he just as clearly isn't fully human, either mentally or (what passes in the Buffyverse as) spiritually. It's not clear what he lacks, but he clearly lacks something, and I feel that casting him as the misunderstood woobie is a basic misinterpretation of his character, not to mention that it strips away a lot of the complexity that I find so fascinating about him.
Er. That may have been a tangent...
And whatever the writers say, eating kittens is no more evil than eating veal.
Well, yes. I guess I'm of two minds about the kitten-eating thing - on the one hand, the point was clearly to shock Western sensibilities; OTOH, the audience was primarily Western, so that makes sense. (I confess, until your link it hadn't occurred to me that it was ethnocentric, although I can certainly see the argument.) I can't remember, was eating kittens explicitly described as evil on the show? Because as you say, that's clearly just silly.
I think if anything, I placed more emphasis on demons using kittens for poker chips, which would fall in the category of "One more weird thing demons do." Because really, how practical would they be? Wouldn't you need an awful lot of kittens to bet a complete hand of seven-card stud?
This was a very long, rather fuzzy comment that doesn't feel as though it actually addresses your most interesting points. Argh. Also, it feels rather "Rrr rrr!", which very much isn't directed at you - sorry about that!
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Date: 2010-01-24 05:34 am (UTC)I have not read the Screwtape Letters, though it sounds like it'd be right up my alley. My idea of the FE "gorging" itself comes from the line "From beneath you it devours". Again, a very intriguing line that was never properly followed up on the show but my brain fanwanked it in.
You're right, the Angel/Angelus problem really cemented the Scoobies' belief in the necessity of the soul. I don't remember if demon-souls were ever discussed on the show; I may have picked up the idea from fanon.
I get the impression that Clem was introduced into their circle by Spike, and so the Scoobs mentally filed him as "acquaintance" rather than "evil demon". But throughout this time Buffy was slaying demons as well as vampires in her patrols. If Buffy wasn't familiar with Clem, would she have staked him in the course of her duties?
This comes back to one of my primary discomforts with the job description of the Vampire Slayer. She exists to protect humanity from vampires and other monsters that will harm them, but her task is to act as an executioner in the absence of a judge. She cannot be expected to determine whether a given demon is benign or dangerous; she has to make split-second life-or-death decisions and any hesitation can cost her her life. But between the extremes of slaying everything and nothing, she has to make distinctions of some sort. And the crude categorization of human and demon is the most efficient one she has. Efficient, but not just.
I would have loved it if the show had followed up on this, but I understand that they had other ideas they wanted to explore. I was actually okay with the idea that all demons were slay-worthy (whatever their soul status).
Then came Angel the show. From Doyle onwards, non-humans were shown across the spectrum from heroic to villainous to victimized. Like you said, a very different metaphysics from Buffy even though the characters lived a 3 hour drive from each other. But I could still accept it as part of a different show.
And yet, again, there's dear lovable Clem. Definitely part of the Buffy story, clearly a demon, but non-stakey for reasons unexplained beyond "We know him, he's cool". It's likely there are a handful of other demons who don't do evil and make their friends happy. But if they're in the wrong place at the wrong time, they can easily get staked. Maybe the vast majority of demons are evil, but even one benign demon staked is enough to make me uncomfortable.
I'm being very obvious about my position on the death penalty, aren't I? :)
Anyhoo, I shouldn't blame Buffy and Co. for doing what they needed to survive and protect. But I hope there's someone at the Watchers' Headquarters who annoys everyone by raising the issue every so often :)
I'm in total agreement on the impracticality of using kittens as poker chips. Someone could make good money running a clearinghouse where kittens could be housed until someone was ready to collect.
Lastly, could you comment a bit more about how Spike "...just as clearly isn't fully human"? I would think he's a lot like a human with major social adjustment problems and desperate need of therapy. I'm curious to see where our opinions diverge :)
I'm SRSLY enjoying this conversation!
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Date: 2010-01-24 01:30 pm (UTC)*smacks forehead* Well, of course. Makes sense to me. (I'm actually basing my discussion of the FE on "Amends" and what I dimly remember of it in my one watch of S7, which is my least favorite season. So it's not as informed an argument as one might wish.)
If Buffy wasn't familiar with Clem, would she have staked him in the course of her duties?
I'm pretty sure this isn't universal, but generally when we see a demon onscreen, either it's aggresssive and attacks first, or it's doing something otherwise evil that Must Be Stopped. There are probably pre-Clem exceptions, but I can't think of them.
It occurs to me that not only Clem but also the loan shark and even the kitten poker first appear in S6, which is all about muddying the waters and showing our heroes' clay feet. Maybe introducing negligibly evil demons was part of that effort to make things more ambiguous. The same season that gives us human evil gives us demon non-evil. Mebbe?
It's clear, though, that Buffy doesn't slay everything she sees, always: when she goes to Willie's she doesn't clean house; she just talks to Willie.
You're right, it'd've been lovely if the show had addressed this, or even just acknowledged that it was a question. But like you say, it might have too clearly undermined the assumptions of the Slayer's job description, and I don't think that was a direction they were willing to go.
But I hope there's someone at the Watchers' Headquarters who annoys everyone by raising the issue every so often :)
Now, there's a fic waiting to happen. *g*
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Date: 2010-01-24 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 01:32 pm (UTC)Lastly, could you comment a bit more about how Spike "...just as clearly isn't fully human"? I would think he's a lot like a human with major social adjustment problems and desperate need of therapy.
Okay. Hmm. I think this comes back to my default method of interpreting canon, which is that I want to at least try to reconcile what it shows with what it says. And it says clearly over and over again that a soul is necessary to being, erm, human-like, even though it doesn't seem to know how it's necessary. However you feel about the Angel/Angelus dichotomy, that soul makes a difference. Angel with is a tedious brooder, but Angel without is all caprice and bloodlust and sadism. It's an immediate and, minus the soul explanation, inexplicable change.
So, souls do something. And thus, because the show is so clear about this, I'm willing to accept the show's implication that Spike's soulessness is also the cause for a lot of his personality failings pre-soul. Joy in murdering people and lack of remorse for same are two, but there are also all the times when he just fails to see where the wrong is. When he's dithering on about Dru in "Lover's Walk," he seems to have no concept that bringing her "beautiful dresses with beautiful girls in them" or his story about the drunk on the bench, much less his "torture her 'til she loves me again" plan, might be repugnant to his audience. And then there are all his misteps in S5: the stalking, the panty-stealing, the confusion that Buffy isn't impressed with his failing to feed from disaster victims. I can see how one could argue most of those things as, like you say, major social adjustment problems, but I keep coming back around to the fact that souls make a difference in the Buffyverse.
Plus, although the writers really flubbed the post-soul follow-through, there are hints in S7 of how Spike is different. My favorite speech was in the middle somewhere about how he didn't understand until the soul that Buffy was using him to hate herself. That new understanding of self and others is one of the keys to soulledness, I think, even though some folks surely have it in fuller measure than others.
And, of course, there's the remorse and the apparently new-and-improved conscience. Soulled, Spike and Angel both care that all those people died.
There's one other reason why I prefer to think that Spike's soul made a difference to him. If I'm willing to accept him as having a broken, unusuable conscience, then I can accept his hundred twenty years of bloodshed. In some sense, he couldn't help it, or at least he had no internal moral reason to. I don't hold him responsible for those deaths the way I would a human, because per Buffyverse lore he seems to lack the moral equipment to have made any other choice. He's not human, he's Something Else: a special purely fictional category of his own.
(FWIW, a whole lot of how I think about Spike I've gotten from
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Date: 2010-01-24 10:29 pm (UTC)Good point. I think my feelings about Spike's nature in the presence/absence of the soul stems directly from the undefined nature of "soul" in the 'verse. I tried to comprehend the soul by comparing pre-soul Spike with humans in general, and felt that he falls within the range of human behavior. But what I should do is compare pre- and post-soul Spike. The latter is what Spike is fully capable of; the former is certainly lacking some critical pieces.
I forget where, but I recently read a theory that the soul acts as the super-ego. Without it, a vamp is driven by his id and ego. With it, a sense of circumspection kicks in. Whether s/he heeds the superego or "soul" depends on the vamp (or human) in question.
So Spike couldn't put himself in others' shoes until he got his soul. Angel, despite his soul, can be a total jerk. And humans remain capable of evil.
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Date: 2010-01-24 11:25 pm (UTC)Yep yep.
Was that soul = super-ego thing from
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Date: 2010-01-25 12:00 am (UTC)Thanks for this awesome juicy discussion. It's given me a better understanding of the characters and maybe some plot bunnies :)
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Date: 2010-01-25 12:02 am (UTC)