BtVS S8.38 "Last Gleaming" Part 3
There’s a James Tiptee story (there’s always a James Tiptree story) called The Man Who Walked Home. It starts in a post-apocalyptic world with a preternaturally barren crater and slowly, as centuries pass and a new civilisation grows up around it, the mystery of the annual disturbances at its centre becomes clearer. Added together like the pages of one of those flicker books the annual happenings reveal the image of a man stumbling and grasping for something. This man was the first and last chrononaut who, sent too far forward, somehow, impossibly found a way back and in doing so triggered the explosion that ended his world. The strength of the story lies in Tiptree’s evocation of the time traveller’s thoughts in his final fatal moments. Exiled beyond reason, consumed by longing for the home he had lost, reaching for it with every cell of his failing body.
The first arc of S8 was called The Long Way Home, the last had the working title of Sunnydale. Buffy had a dream homecoming issue halfway through the run but now it’s the real thing except that it’s not the real thing or place or person that’s the point but the memory of it. Not the city of dead girlfriends and mother’s graves but the where of who these people used to be or, even more pertinent, who they wished to be. That’s the temptation Willow and Xander encounter in this issue. Angel did it in flashback in part one of Last Gleaming and Buffy (possibly) in the Twilight arc but it's her book and her final temptation may yet be to come. As for Tiptree’s chrononaut, nostalgia becomes a living thing (like vengeance) only when everything seems about to be lost - long live the Queen and all that.
In her one-shot Willow called Tara “her journey completed.” She didn’t quite say "home" but there’s a sense of it, particularly given that she chooses a guide who will run her round in circles. Tara is her home, her who she wants to be with and her who she wants to be. I think Willow has always seen her magic as a way to heal things (although the usual fandom term is the mechanical “fix.”) She heals herself and the soldiers in The Long Way Home, she restores Angel as her very first spell casting. She also brings Buffy back from the dead and heals Tara’s mind of hurts that Tara would rather hold on to. There’s some call back to the re-ensoulment spell when her guide (the most literally serpentine but either the most subtle or the most benign of all those whispering in our heroes’ ears) warns her that breaking the seed will leave the world missing something it doesn’t know it needs (it needs the seed, the seed is a soul, what rhymes with soul). Willow, however, goes beyond the philosophical point and translates it into a plan for (ominously secretive) action. Not to restore the soul (at this point not yet lost) but to use it to power a world’s remaking. Even more ominously, to remake it better.
Xander never wanted to restore Angel. His solution would have been to destroy him soul, seed and all. His scene with Dawn in last month’s issue was sweet but his plan to make a somewhere for them (a somewhere free of magic) was not so different from Angel’s to take Buffy away from it all. With more consent though and less mysticism, more Springsteen than Emerson, Lake and Palmer is the home Xander longs for. Where Willow has a hot snakey demon lady guide Xander’s voice of temptation is hairier (on the outside). The General is pro-human he crushes sentient bugs like flies, flinches at the mere thought of magical contamination but approves of Dawn’s non-slayerness. What he offers sounds superficially attractive. I don’t trust him but Xander quite reasonably might.
The temptation of Angel began in an earlier everyone (in Los Angeles) dies scenario. Away from the ruins he’s offered the chance to go back to the Angel he thought he used to be. He was the dark knight who sacrificed himself to save the girl (but never asked her if she wanted to be saved). The offer came courtesy of the future Miss Kitty Universe, quite gorgeous in her native form. I want to throw her some live mice to play mighty hunter with (and purr delightedly while ripping them apart) but really I love her for being such a daddy’s girl. Including during her gestation because universes are like seahorses and this is my feminist revenge for every demon pregnancy storyline on AtS. Darla’s and Fred’s and most especially Cordelia’s. Twice.
Buffy’s home was where she missed her mom and churros and sex so two out of three ain’t bad. Everyone including Miss Kitty seems to believe Angel is her home and her Twilight but I don’t think it’s as simple as her wanting to be Bella Swann. Bella would have happily stayed in a sex Eden made for two. Buffy couldn’t leave soon enough. Angel is her kryptonite but it's his weakness not his dark broody handsomeness that’s her real undoing. He told her he was terrified she would leave and she stayed. He came with her and she believed he was saved, she gave him that chance to atone and when he came back hoped for one moment he was no longer beneath himself. Her eyes shine but her mouth is quizzical and then Twilight lets loose with its mommy issues.
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The first arc of S8 was called The Long Way Home, the last had the working title of Sunnydale. Buffy had a dream homecoming issue halfway through the run but now it’s the real thing except that it’s not the real thing or place or person that’s the point but the memory of it. Not the city of dead girlfriends and mother’s graves but the where of who these people used to be or, even more pertinent, who they wished to be. That’s the temptation Willow and Xander encounter in this issue. Angel did it in flashback in part one of Last Gleaming and Buffy (possibly) in the Twilight arc but it's her book and her final temptation may yet be to come. As for Tiptree’s chrononaut, nostalgia becomes a living thing (like vengeance) only when everything seems about to be lost - long live the Queen and all that.
In her one-shot Willow called Tara “her journey completed.” She didn’t quite say "home" but there’s a sense of it, particularly given that she chooses a guide who will run her round in circles. Tara is her home, her who she wants to be with and her who she wants to be. I think Willow has always seen her magic as a way to heal things (although the usual fandom term is the mechanical “fix.”) She heals herself and the soldiers in The Long Way Home, she restores Angel as her very first spell casting. She also brings Buffy back from the dead and heals Tara’s mind of hurts that Tara would rather hold on to. There’s some call back to the re-ensoulment spell when her guide (the most literally serpentine but either the most subtle or the most benign of all those whispering in our heroes’ ears) warns her that breaking the seed will leave the world missing something it doesn’t know it needs (it needs the seed, the seed is a soul, what rhymes with soul). Willow, however, goes beyond the philosophical point and translates it into a plan for (ominously secretive) action. Not to restore the soul (at this point not yet lost) but to use it to power a world’s remaking. Even more ominously, to remake it better.
Xander never wanted to restore Angel. His solution would have been to destroy him soul, seed and all. His scene with Dawn in last month’s issue was sweet but his plan to make a somewhere for them (a somewhere free of magic) was not so different from Angel’s to take Buffy away from it all. With more consent though and less mysticism, more Springsteen than Emerson, Lake and Palmer is the home Xander longs for. Where Willow has a hot snakey demon lady guide Xander’s voice of temptation is hairier (on the outside). The General is pro-human he crushes sentient bugs like flies, flinches at the mere thought of magical contamination but approves of Dawn’s non-slayerness. What he offers sounds superficially attractive. I don’t trust him but Xander quite reasonably might.
The temptation of Angel began in an earlier everyone (in Los Angeles) dies scenario. Away from the ruins he’s offered the chance to go back to the Angel he thought he used to be. He was the dark knight who sacrificed himself to save the girl (but never asked her if she wanted to be saved). The offer came courtesy of the future Miss Kitty Universe, quite gorgeous in her native form. I want to throw her some live mice to play mighty hunter with (and purr delightedly while ripping them apart) but really I love her for being such a daddy’s girl. Including during her gestation because universes are like seahorses and this is my feminist revenge for every demon pregnancy storyline on AtS. Darla’s and Fred’s and most especially Cordelia’s. Twice.
Buffy’s home was where she missed her mom and churros and sex so two out of three ain’t bad. Everyone including Miss Kitty seems to believe Angel is her home and her Twilight but I don’t think it’s as simple as her wanting to be Bella Swann. Bella would have happily stayed in a sex Eden made for two. Buffy couldn’t leave soon enough. Angel is her kryptonite but it's his weakness not his dark broody handsomeness that’s her real undoing. He told her he was terrified she would leave and she stayed. He came with her and she believed he was saved, she gave him that chance to atone and when he came back hoped for one moment he was no longer beneath himself. Her eyes shine but her mouth is quizzical and then Twilight lets loose with its mommy issues.
http://hazelk.dreamwidth.org/112005.html |
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