Website update:
Jun. 3rd, 2003 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyWednesday, June 3rd, 2003: Added Buffy's speech in Chosen to Buffy the Motivational Speaker. Added The Guardian: Essence of the Slayer to the Buffy section. Added The Meaning of Death to the Misc. Essays section. Added Shimmer to the Sunday100 drabble page.
On the death essay, I added Ted, Angel, Faith, Ben, Katrina, and Warren to what I posted earlier on lj.
Ted:
Ted was a robot, yeah. But Buffy didn't know that. She thought that she'd killed a person. Her reaction to Ted foreshadows her reaction to killing Angel. Right down to the overalls. And her reaction shows us what kind of person Buffy is: a good one.
Angel:
Though not a 'real' death, it was and ever will be one to Buffy. She still says that she killed Angel to this day. This is the beginning of the closed off Buffy that we got to know so very well. This is when things, as she puts it in The Gift, start to get stripped away.
Faith:
Unsuccessful only because of Faith's own actions, this does count as a blot against Buffy. Buffy goes out to kill someone. Deliberately. Knowing that it's wrong and deciding that she has no other choice. If killing Angel was the end of her romantic innocence, then trying to kill Faith was a symbol of her loss of hope and faith.
Ben:
The first time that we see one of Our Heroes kill in cold blood. In a way, killing Ben was the beginning of the change in Giles. It separated him from the rest of the group. And it made him colder, though I doubt that he'd think of it as stemming from that. It made the audience realize that Giles can do things that Buffy and Xander both dismissed as something that we aren't allowed to do. "We could kill a... regular guy." Xander realizes what he said. "God." And he knows that that can't be an option. For Giles, it is.
Katrina:
Twice, Buffy thought that she killed someone. In both cases, her reaction was immediate and admirable. Yes, you can argue that she was giving up by going to the police, but just because it would also help her escape her life doesn't mean that it would be the wrong thing to do (which is also how I feel about the jump in The Gift). Also, if she hadn't she never would have learned the truth. This is a turning around point for Buffy. Katrina's death led to finding out about Warren, to everything that that brought. And Katrina's death itself was our introduction to Warren's way of killing: accidental. He accidentally killed Katrina and accidentally killed Tara. He failed to kill one person that he was trying to kill: Buffy. Katrina's death led to the darkening of the Troika: it's what changed them from comic book villians to real villians.
Warren:
This is when we see the same kind of turn-around with Willow that we did with Giles after Ben. She loses her center and her certainty that she's One of the Good Guys after she kills. And again, she might not say that killing Warren is her blackest deed, but cold-blooded murder is a turning point. A place where Willow lost all claims to moral superiority. Xander's the only Scooby who hasn't intentionally killed/tried to kill a human, which is probably what allows him to be a moral center for the show.
On the death essay, I added Ted, Angel, Faith, Ben, Katrina, and Warren to what I posted earlier on lj.
Ted:
Ted was a robot, yeah. But Buffy didn't know that. She thought that she'd killed a person. Her reaction to Ted foreshadows her reaction to killing Angel. Right down to the overalls. And her reaction shows us what kind of person Buffy is: a good one.
Angel:
Though not a 'real' death, it was and ever will be one to Buffy. She still says that she killed Angel to this day. This is the beginning of the closed off Buffy that we got to know so very well. This is when things, as she puts it in The Gift, start to get stripped away.
Faith:
Unsuccessful only because of Faith's own actions, this does count as a blot against Buffy. Buffy goes out to kill someone. Deliberately. Knowing that it's wrong and deciding that she has no other choice. If killing Angel was the end of her romantic innocence, then trying to kill Faith was a symbol of her loss of hope and faith.
Ben:
The first time that we see one of Our Heroes kill in cold blood. In a way, killing Ben was the beginning of the change in Giles. It separated him from the rest of the group. And it made him colder, though I doubt that he'd think of it as stemming from that. It made the audience realize that Giles can do things that Buffy and Xander both dismissed as something that we aren't allowed to do. "We could kill a... regular guy." Xander realizes what he said. "God." And he knows that that can't be an option. For Giles, it is.
Katrina:
Twice, Buffy thought that she killed someone. In both cases, her reaction was immediate and admirable. Yes, you can argue that she was giving up by going to the police, but just because it would also help her escape her life doesn't mean that it would be the wrong thing to do (which is also how I feel about the jump in The Gift). Also, if she hadn't she never would have learned the truth. This is a turning around point for Buffy. Katrina's death led to finding out about Warren, to everything that that brought. And Katrina's death itself was our introduction to Warren's way of killing: accidental. He accidentally killed Katrina and accidentally killed Tara. He failed to kill one person that he was trying to kill: Buffy. Katrina's death led to the darkening of the Troika: it's what changed them from comic book villians to real villians.
Warren:
This is when we see the same kind of turn-around with Willow that we did with Giles after Ben. She loses her center and her certainty that she's One of the Good Guys after she kills. And again, she might not say that killing Warren is her blackest deed, but cold-blooded murder is a turning point. A place where Willow lost all claims to moral superiority. Xander's the only Scooby who hasn't intentionally killed/tried to kill a human, which is probably what allows him to be a moral center for the show.
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Xander objection
Date: 2003-06-04 05:39 am (UTC)My case, your honour? "Entropy". Xander sees Spike with Anya, gets axe (not a stake), tries to slay Spike with same. Now Spike isn't a human being, but Xander isn't trying to kill a monster here, either, he's trying to kill the man who has just had sex with the woman Xander still loves. If Spike HAD been human, would Xander had done something different? In any case, had Anya and Buffy not stopped him, he would have killed Spike in circumstances which would have allowed us to call it manslaughter at the least.
(It just occurs to me that there's a parallel case: Buffy and the last of the vamp whores in "Into the Wood". Arguably the only time Buffy does not slay but murder a vampire, and she knows it.)
Word on all the other examples.
Re: Xander objection
Date: 2003-06-04 06:55 am (UTC)Heh. Not that I'd entirely mind, but.
Yeah, the attempting to stake Spike was not of the best. But a large part of his anger/pain seemed to do with the fact that, well, Anya slept with what he considered a soulless creature. I doubt he would have gone after a non-vamp/demon like that. Which is not to say it's of the good, but that it's not quite the same. And part of my feelings almost certainly have to do with how I feel about Spike.