Notes on Buffy 3.03: Faith, Hope and Trick
Standard disclaimer: I'll often speak of foreshadowing, but that doesn't mean I'm at all committing to the idea that there was some fixed design from the word go -- it's a short hand for talking about the resonances that end up in the text as it unspools.
Standard spoiler warning: The notes are written for folks who have seen all of BtVS and AtS. ( Read more... )
Standard spoiler warning: The notes are written for folks who have seen all of BtVS and AtS. ( Read more... )
I also think this scene is interesting from Buffy's perspective--she sees Faith as eating her fries, dominating the conversation with her mother, etc. She's so consumed with fear that Faith wants to take away her identity--her calling, friends and family--that she's blind to Faith's obvious needs.
I wonder how we would fold in the information from Conversations with Dead People that Scott, post-breakup, went around spreading rumours that Buffy was gay. Probably it’s just a joke. But it does hurt the presentation in retrospect of Scott as unwilling to lie or play games. Probably, it was just a joke and we should continue to read Scott’s openness as generally the real deal.
This is perhaps even more interesting when you consider Homecoming--that Scott, after asking Buffy to homecoming, just up and ditches her the week before the dance. His openness is not a cure-all. It comes with its own brand of pain. And frankly--maybe I shouldn't bring this up until Homecoming--Scott's method of pursuing Buffy fairly openly and persistently only to attain her and then get her to agree to go to the dance with him--then dump her immediately after she gives that consent, is in some small way reminiscent of Angel's pursuit/attainment/humiliation of Buffy.
Buffy: I don't think I'm ready; Willow: What's stopping you? Audience: duh!)
This is interesting because I was just discussing Willow's relationship with Kennedy and how she perhaps moved on to it before she was ready. I have to wonder if this isn't a little bit of the control freak in Willow coming out. As we see in the "Will be done" spell of season 4. She doesn't have the patience to work through grief. She just wants it over.
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I think this is in some ways exactly what it is--but I also think Giles is unsure that his paternal feelings toward Buffy are appropriate (and we'll find out why in Helpless, I guess). He's struggling with these 2 opposing pulls--to be a father to Buffy and to be a member of the Council.
That Giles and Faith have the tiniest bit of UST might be why Giles doesn’t take much of a paternal role with her. She seems more grown up, so he doesn’t recognize Faith’s emotional needs as clearly as he recognizes Buffy’s.
This may be true, but I also think that his paternal role with Buffy evolved naturally. They started with a working relationship, and over the course of time, seeing the trauma Buffy experienced and experiencing trauma along with her, they bonded--and his role as watcher and age and knowledge, etc all naturally lent itself to becoming a father figure. Faith and Giles haven't been through anything together. Faith came to him already traumatized and in need of a readymade father figure--but that's not the type of guy Giles is. He's not volunteering at Big Brother Big Sisters. He grows into loving and guiding someone. His relationship with Faith just hadn't had time to establish itself yet.
I think the reason is that the rules Willow breaks all the time are either not clearly written (i.e. rules about magic), or can be rationalized away, either as not applying to her (i.e. “accidentally” decrypting codes from the city mainframe) or as being for good (i.e. helping to steal rocket launchers).
Perhaps. Actually, I think this might be how Willow would rationalize the schism in her rule breaking. But really, what I see is the challenge of it. She wants to see what she CAN do. She wants to see if she can put Angel's soul back. She wants to see if she can get through the mayor's firewall. She wants to see if she can repair the Buffybot and bring Buffy back from the dead and on and on. She KNOWS she can step off campus. There's no challenge in it. And obeying those small rules allows her enough of her self-concept as a rule follower who is very seldom naughty that she doesn't have to think too much about the rules she does break. If she broke the small rules as well, she'd have to consider herself a rule breaker and then think about the implications of that. But since she's a rule follower, she doesn't have to think about it. She can break the rules that allow her to prove that she can do anything she wants.
I think Joyce somewhat misses how important slaying is to Buffy’s identity, and maybe objectifies Faith a little bit in hoping that the unpleasant and dangerous aspects of Buffy can be siphoned off onto her. But it’s sort of understandable: Faith really, really seems to like slaying, and Buffy hasn’t shown much to Joyce of the side of her that enjoys slaying.
I think this interaction is really important to look at from Buffy's perspective. Because it's Joyce pushing Buffy out of slaying and Giles eventually agreeing that Buffy should go away to college and leave the slaying to Faith that forces Buffy to recognize for herself that she WANTS to be the slayer. That slaying is part of who she is, and she likes contributing in that particular way. It's not everything that she is--and she still struggles with it. But, it stops being something that she fights against when she recognizes that it's who she wants to be.
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Ohhhhhh yes. So much good girl/bad girl stuff here.
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Perhaps. Actually, I think this might be how Willow would rationalize the schism in her rule breaking.
Yeah, I specifically was talking about how she rationalized it.
. But really, what I see is the challenge of it. She wants to see what she CAN do. She wants to see if she can put Angel's soul back. She wants to see if she can get through the mayor's firewall. She wants to see if she can repair the Buffybot and bring Buffy back from the dead and on and on. She KNOWS she can step off campus. There's no challenge in it.
Definitely she loves the challenge. And definitely she rigs the game to an extent so that the things she's allowed to do are the things she wants to do. Corollary to that is that she is really proud of her unblemished record, so it's in a sense a challenge to keep her record unblemished, rather than to blemish it. But I think it's wrong to say that she wouldn't have any reason to leave campus if it weren't for the challenge. I mean, having a boy in her room without getting caught would be a challenge, but she seems like she's about to die when Angel comes there in Lie to Me. Same with nailing crosses to her bedroom door. And I don't think she's lying when she says in this episode that she's worried she might get caught. Definitely there's an intellectual challenge in many of the things she does, but I think there would be challenges in breaking a lot of the more mundane rules as well that she doesn't indulge in.
And obeying those small rules allows her enough of her self-concept as a rule follower who is very seldom naughty that she doesn't have to think too much about the rules she does break. If she broke the small rules as well, she'd have to consider herself a rule breaker and then think about the implications of that. But since she's a rule follower, she doesn't have to think about it. She can break the rules that allow her to prove that she can do anything she wants.
Yes. She's very seldom naughty.
I think this interaction is really important to look at from Buffy's perspective. Because it's Joyce pushing Buffy out of slaying and Giles eventually agreeing that Buffy should go away to college and leave the slaying to Faith that forces Buffy to recognize for herself that she WANTS to be the slayer. That slaying is part of who she is, and she likes contributing in that particular way. It's not everything that she is--and she still struggles with it. But, it stops being something that she fights against when she recognizes that it's who she wants to be.
Yeah, definitely it helps Buffy see her calling in a new light. Part of what's going on too is that Joyce and Giles are reflecting back what Buffy has told them (Joyce in particular) about what her calling is--which is something she'd love to be rid of--and now that she sees it reflected back to her, she sees that it isn't the whole truth.
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And vice versa. The tragedy of the two slayers is that they could have been good friends or at least good comrades in arms. But they never see where the other is coming from, which is the product of an odd combination of being too overly identified and from two entirely different backgrounds.
I see Scott as dumping Buffy because he catches the vibe of her having checked out on him after Angel's return. See the cafeteria scene in Beauty and the Beasts. He's just bailing before he gets dumped, and I don't blame him for that.
Word on Willow's anxiousness to control/deny pain.
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This is perhaps even more interesting when you consider Homecoming--that Scott, after asking Buffy to homecoming, just up and ditches her the week before the dance. His openness is not a cure-all. It comes with its own brand of pain. And frankly--maybe I shouldn't bring this up until Homecoming--Scott's method of pursuing Buffy fairly openly and persistently only to attain her and then get her to agree to go to the dance with him--then dump her immediately after she gives that consent, is in some small way reminiscent of Angel's pursuit/attainment/humiliation of Buffy.
Or, Scott just sort of reluctantly goes along with the request to homecoming because he is afraid to say no. It's Oz who actually makes it official as mediator between the two. Don't get me wrong, I think Scott screws up there, but I think he stops pursuing her persistently after she consistently knocks him down in Beauty and the Beasts. Plus, his (apparently) two best friends have just died, so I'm inclined to cut him slack. I can see the rejection reflecting Angel's from Buffy's perspective, though, which is interesting.
This is interesting because I was just discussing Willow's relationship with Kennedy and how she perhaps moved on to it before she was ready. I have to wonder if this isn't a little bit of the control freak in Willow coming out. As we see in the "Will be done" spell of season 4. She doesn't have the patience to work through grief. She just wants it over.
Yes and no. I think she could have used time to get to know herself as a single person. And I think she wasn't ready for a serious relationship. But I remain unconvinced that's what Willow/Kennedy was exactly. It's not a relationship that's punctuated by I Love Yous or the sense that the world will end if the other is lost. The one thing that's most impressive about W/K is that Willow tirelessly works to remind Kennedy of her [Willow's] dark side, and is willing to let the relationship end if that's a dealbreaker (see Get it Done, for example). Kennedy, for her part, starts the relationship without expectation of it being serious, either; it's mostly just flirting. In season eight it becomes a problem because the asymmetry in Kennedy's and Willow's feelings becomes a real issue, and also Willow treats her badly, but I won't get into it too much for now....
Agree on the will-be-done, inability to deal with grief thing connection to this episode and to Buffy's resurrection and, and....
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