BtVS S8.38 "Last Gleaming" Part 3

[aycheb]

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

Comments

[norwie2010]

Beautifully worded, as always. I am really looking forward to read Your thoughts once this is over (soon - TM).

[aycheb]

Thank you!

[angearia]

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. Both during and after gestation because universes are like sea horses and this is my feminist revenge for every demon pregnancy storyline on AtS. Darla’s and Fred’s and most especially Cordelia’s. Twice.

Ha! Okay, yeah, I like this. She really was born from Daddy (like Athena from Zeus) as she whispered to him and he brought her into being by welcoming her into his body.

[aycheb]

Yes, mythology meets biology, two of my favourite things.

[2maggie2]

Fantastic! I still think you oversell Angel's appeal to Buffy as being his weakness, but it's not obviously wrong, and you write it up beautifully. Love the sea horse thing!

[angearia]

Angel is her kryptonite but it's his weakness not his dark broody handsomeness that’s her real undoing.

Yeah, I don't quite see it that way, either. I'd be interested to hear more on this from Aycheb, though.

[aycheb]

I’m overselling but I seem to be the only vendor and am nothing if not counter-suggestible. That aside I do think responding to his weakness is the dominant component of her complex of feelings for Angel and has been pretty much since he came back in S3.

To break it down (what does she see in him) I think it started with lust at first sight. Angel for good or for ill is quite simply her type. Her physical attraction to him has remained a constant, in Surprise she was practically spraying the room with her anticipation of consumation and she still dreams him as all handsomy in After These Messages. He’ll always raise an involuntary smile from her for that alone but it doesn’t last

[stormwreath]

I think Willow has always seen her magic as a way to heal things (although the usual fandom term is the mechanical “fix.”)

Speaking as one of the people who uses the word 'fix' - I do think it better fits Willow's mindset in the early seasons. Healing is an organic and holistic process; that's more a Tara sort of thing. Willow is a computer programmer; if things go wrong, it's because someone made a mistake and there's a glitch in the code; if she can find it and fix it, she can make things better. After Season 6, I think she gets a lot more respect for magic and nature and doesn't see them as a simple mechanistic process any longer. Choosing the Trickster as her spirit guide symbolises her new awareness (and self-knowledge, too).

[aycheb]

I don't disagree :-) I was simplifying to make a slightly dodgy point but twisting the logic for the rhetoric it did make me think that there's an interesting disconnect between what Willow thinks she does and how she actually does it. She 's like someone who's really good at X but wants to be good at Y. When I was a kid I thought I was good at music because I learnt to read and write it quicker than anyone else in the class and it took a long while to realise that that didn't have anything to do with being musical. Willow was a genius computer hacker but she chose magic even though it's all stinky unpredictable herbs and vague incantations. I think even before she knew Tara, Willow wanted to be like her all earthy and intuitive. The thing is she's so good at being analytical and hard logicy that she can actually fake it pretty well, she can fool herself but she's still really just doing science with her magicks.

[nmcil12]

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

[aycheb]

Thank you! I've never read Paradise Lost,I wish I had. It's one of those texts you think you know through osmosis but that's no substitute.