Dawn Metaphorical Love Child Part 2= "This Year's Girl"
Open scene with Buffy and Faith making a bed together. Call me old-fashioned, but this is not a scenario you find yourself in with just anyone. It's beautiful, mundane, and something usually done in intimate company; fully clothed or not. I'll start right with the cliche' first: What do you do after you make a bed? You lay in it whether or not that's figurative or otherwise. They're immersed in a situation together and on the more vulgar side of things, which I see far beyond, sexual conotation can be identified depending on viewer's imagination. More metaphorically to be dreaming of making a bed,specifically with fresh linen, is a way of our mind expressing the need to come at ideas that matter to us from a fresh angle.
Buffy: They smell good don't they?
Faith: What?
Buffy: Clean Sheets, like Summer.
These clean white sheets denote wisdom, innocence, and purity that reflect Faith's ideal version of herself, by extension, their relationship. Summer is a season where everything has blossomed at it's peak and everything feels right in the world. Summer and "Summer's" is also a little on the nose, sorta speak. Buffy is pure, clean. I'm sure she even smells amazing. Faith covets these things for herself, simulataneously wanting her and wanting to BE her.
Faith: I wouldn't know.
Buffy: Right I forgot.
Faith: I noticed.
Faith, even when the audience is led to believe is inside some fantasy where they're getting along (which is a misnomer that will be explained in part 3 of this essay refering to "Restless") is haunted by the reality of her abaondonment and dread of Buffy's complete indifference.
Buffy: I wish I can stay but--
Faith: You have to go.
Buffy: It's just with....
Faith: Little sis coming I know. So much to do before she gets here.
Just like in the first dream where the cat has multiple layers, I give you the bed. The bed first seen as a romantic image trnsitions into a paternal one under the guise they were making it for Dawn. Yes metaphorical sex makes babies, as mystical as they maybe.
Buffy: Now I really have to....
Faith: So go, don't let me keep....
If there is any defining segment that sells this theory and can dutifully call other parentage into question it's here. After they finish making the bed, as they walk closer, the camera pans down to reveal drops of blood from Faith tarnishing the immaculate sheets.
Faith: Damn, just when we made it so nice. Are you ever going to take this thing out?
Faith is allowed to finish the question before the camera finally pans down to the knife, snug tightly in the confines of her abdoman. Camera switches back to Buffy's face vacant of previous sympathies and maliciously cold; she twists it. This is Faith's blood being pooled into Dawn, those innocent sheets. There is no linear construct for when they harvested Buffy's blood. Whether or not they used Buffy as an initial template there is still a manner of "rules" in which to create a human being and this is two strands of DNA. The monks took blood from "The Slayer" and Buffy is one of two and not even the current seated, the line itself is in Faith ergo taken from the both of them.
Through-out any mythology, any culture blood is synonymous with a life's spirit. I give you one of my favorite quotes from "Jurrassic Park", Dr. Ian Malcom In Italics:
John the kind of control you're attempting is simply no possible. If there is one thing that the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through new barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously
Henry Wu: You're implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will...breed?
No. I'm simply saying that life, uh.....finds a way.
Blood is sacred when it's spilled and reconnects to the metaphor that the dreamer themselves feels a sacrifice is being made. It's essential to life and seen outside the body taps into our deepest fears, presenting the need for us to come to terms with them. More-over anything having to do with the stomach focuses on repressed feelings and reveals emotions. The most obvious metaphor for blood concerning a woman is also tied to the mentral cycle.
Like it or lump it the fact is that the knife is phallic, penetrating, what literally happened last year in "Graduation Day" doesn't make it any less of a dream symbol, especially with everything else that's happened in this sequence. It also highlights the non-binary aspects of Buffy/Faith's overall relationship. At first blush Faith is seen easily as Buffy's "Yang" the masculine energy between the two of them, in contrast she's on the receiving end of the weapon which demonstrates both duality and equality. For something that was once only existed as being capable of being one, their power, is now emphatically two simply by her existance. And, unlike Kendra or any other slayer later, the symbolic nature of surrender/sacrifice taking place first in the subcobscious mind is the perfect metaphor for a non platonic relationship, Combating with this, again, the duality. Faith over-coming the start of these nightmares and reaffirming personal dominance later in the last dream sequence battling in an open grave with Buffy, off-camera sticking the knife back into Buffy and awaking from her coma. When I watch a canon antagonistic relationship like Buffy and Spike it's nothing I haven't seen done better, more poetically, by Faith.
Buffy: You remember this? I took it from Faith. Stuck it in her gut....just slid in her like she was butter....you want to get it back from me....DICK?!?
It's important to note when Faith does come out from a coma and walks out of the hospital Buffy's voice is overlayed in the background talking to Riley saying, "You know I never stopped thinking about you" The camera remains on Faith that whole time and doesn't pan directly back to the conversation at hand til a beat later when Riley responds.....this is not by accident. For whatever it's worth we've seen and will continue to see later in "Restless", if only for a moment, Buffy continues to think about Faith whether it's conscious or not even if we get a deeper glimpse from Faith's perspective.
Buffy: They smell good don't they?
Faith: What?
Buffy: Clean Sheets, like Summer.
These clean white sheets denote wisdom, innocence, and purity that reflect Faith's ideal version of herself, by extension, their relationship. Summer is a season where everything has blossomed at it's peak and everything feels right in the world. Summer and "Summer's" is also a little on the nose, sorta speak. Buffy is pure, clean. I'm sure she even smells amazing. Faith covets these things for herself, simulataneously wanting her and wanting to BE her.
Faith: I wouldn't know.
Buffy: Right I forgot.
Faith: I noticed.
Faith, even when the audience is led to believe is inside some fantasy where they're getting along (which is a misnomer that will be explained in part 3 of this essay refering to "Restless") is haunted by the reality of her abaondonment and dread of Buffy's complete indifference.
Buffy: I wish I can stay but--
Faith: You have to go.
Buffy: It's just with....
Faith: Little sis coming I know. So much to do before she gets here.
Just like in the first dream where the cat has multiple layers, I give you the bed. The bed first seen as a romantic image trnsitions into a paternal one under the guise they were making it for Dawn. Yes metaphorical sex makes babies, as mystical as they maybe.
Buffy: Now I really have to....
Faith: So go, don't let me keep....
If there is any defining segment that sells this theory and can dutifully call other parentage into question it's here. After they finish making the bed, as they walk closer, the camera pans down to reveal drops of blood from Faith tarnishing the immaculate sheets.
Faith: Damn, just when we made it so nice. Are you ever going to take this thing out?
Faith is allowed to finish the question before the camera finally pans down to the knife, snug tightly in the confines of her abdoman. Camera switches back to Buffy's face vacant of previous sympathies and maliciously cold; she twists it. This is Faith's blood being pooled into Dawn, those innocent sheets. There is no linear construct for when they harvested Buffy's blood. Whether or not they used Buffy as an initial template there is still a manner of "rules" in which to create a human being and this is two strands of DNA. The monks took blood from "The Slayer" and Buffy is one of two and not even the current seated, the line itself is in Faith ergo taken from the both of them.
Through-out any mythology, any culture blood is synonymous with a life's spirit. I give you one of my favorite quotes from "Jurrassic Park", Dr. Ian Malcom In Italics:
John the kind of control you're attempting is simply no possible. If there is one thing that the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through new barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously
Henry Wu: You're implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will...breed?
No. I'm simply saying that life, uh.....finds a way.
Blood is sacred when it's spilled and reconnects to the metaphor that the dreamer themselves feels a sacrifice is being made. It's essential to life and seen outside the body taps into our deepest fears, presenting the need for us to come to terms with them. More-over anything having to do with the stomach focuses on repressed feelings and reveals emotions. The most obvious metaphor for blood concerning a woman is also tied to the mentral cycle.
Like it or lump it the fact is that the knife is phallic, penetrating, what literally happened last year in "Graduation Day" doesn't make it any less of a dream symbol, especially with everything else that's happened in this sequence. It also highlights the non-binary aspects of Buffy/Faith's overall relationship. At first blush Faith is seen easily as Buffy's "Yang" the masculine energy between the two of them, in contrast she's on the receiving end of the weapon which demonstrates both duality and equality. For something that was once only existed as being capable of being one, their power, is now emphatically two simply by her existance. And, unlike Kendra or any other slayer later, the symbolic nature of surrender/sacrifice taking place first in the subcobscious mind is the perfect metaphor for a non platonic relationship, Combating with this, again, the duality. Faith over-coming the start of these nightmares and reaffirming personal dominance later in the last dream sequence battling in an open grave with Buffy, off-camera sticking the knife back into Buffy and awaking from her coma. When I watch a canon antagonistic relationship like Buffy and Spike it's nothing I haven't seen done better, more poetically, by Faith.
Buffy: You remember this? I took it from Faith. Stuck it in her gut....just slid in her like she was butter....you want to get it back from me....DICK?!?
It's important to note when Faith does come out from a coma and walks out of the hospital Buffy's voice is overlayed in the background talking to Riley saying, "You know I never stopped thinking about you" The camera remains on Faith that whole time and doesn't pan directly back to the conversation at hand til a beat later when Riley responds.....this is not by accident. For whatever it's worth we've seen and will continue to see later in "Restless", if only for a moment, Buffy continues to think about Faith whether it's conscious or not even if we get a deeper glimpse from Faith's perspective.