Questions about Season Eight.
angearia asked me to compose my questions about Season Eight (Issues #1-30 and the Willow one-shot) since I haven't exactly enjoyed it. Some of these questions might be answered later in other issues; some are probably a bit silly and nit-picky; some have already been pointed out by Scott Allie as irrelevant, but these are questions I had none-the-less. I'm not really looking for arguments about S8's merit or not-merit nor am I really looking for answers anyone since I'm not going to be reading S8 anymore. These are just my questions. Needless to say there are SPOILERS for the whole of S8 thus far including regarding Twilight's identity. Thanks! :D
1. Why did Buffy decide that she and the other Slayers are a military-esque group? Why is she a target? Yes, we all know that Twilight and his acolytes are after her, but she didn’t know that when the comics first started out. All we are told about what the other squads are doing is fighting vampire nests; nothing sounds out-of-the-ordinary for a Slayer. Something had to prompt her to throw away her morals and rob a Swiss bank so that she could buy a castle, helicopters, a satellite, high-tech radar, a large military-style airplane, a chalet, and another castle-esque plot of land. Were there other major attacks on her personally? Did the Wicca-Slayers and psychics have information that they divined? How much do they know and for how long to warrant these extreme measures? If there were attacks, was Twilight behind them or was it just demons getting antsy that there were so many Slayers? Giles says that a war is coming, but we’ve heard that before. When Underground!Buffy is fighting Yamahn, he says nothing of Twilight; he just wants to be able to go above ground without fear of the Slayer. It sounds more run-of-the-mill. So, again, why was Buffy any more of a target than she had been previously?
2. To add to the above, why are there two Faux!Buffys? We are not told what prompted the need for two extra Buffys to act as decoys. When Unground!Buffy has to go fight Yamahn, what was the purpose of that? They sent a relatively green Slayer to battle a very powerful demon and his demon hordes alone, but then other Slayers are sent in at the end. Why not send the Slayers in WITH Underground!Buffy? If it’s so important to protect actual Buffy, why couldn’t it just look like Buffy was leading a group of Slayers underground? It seems rather senseless to lose a promising young fighter for no reason.
Along those same lines, why does their need to be a more “public” Buffy in Italy? Why is okay for one Slayer to be living the party lifestyle with her Immortal boyfriend in Italy doing nothing but being out in the open, while another young woman loses her life fighting along after getting felt up by slime creatures? Also, if Buffy is such a target that she warrants decoys, why would Giles/Andrew/whoever deliberately put Italy!Buffy in arguably more danger by instructing her to be as noticeable as possible. What good does any of that do? You lose promising potential back-up when the audience is not given a good reason for it.
It’s also a big, glaring retcon. Buffy says that Andrew hooked up the fake!Buffy in Italy with the Immortal because it would be “hilarious.” Buffy doesn’t understand this, and neither do I. Why is it so funny? Because the Immortal used to do fairly annoying things to Angel and Spike? I find it hard to believe that the Immortal, who obviously thinks of Spike and Angel as passing irritations only when they cross into what he views as his territory, would allow these incidents, which seem barely more than hateful pranks, to be chronicled in his book. Also, Spike has a super-sniffer that rivals Scooby Doo’s on the trail of a Scooby Snack. He can track Buffy’s scent from miles away yet he can’t realize that she’s never been in the apartment where they find Andrew let alone when he’s less than fifty feet from her in a club? Also, Andrew has a lot of distain for Angel, but he loves/crushes on/hero-worships Spike. Maybe Andrew’s sort of nervousness in The Girl in Question is because he knows he’s lying. After all, he’s walking around in his PJ’s with Biore strips on his nose, Dawn’s no where to be seen (though he stutteringly claims that she’s in “Italian school”), and he’s sprawled out on the couch like he owns the place.
3. Did Buffy even think about her actions when she robbed that Swiss bank? When Willow questions her, she says that everything was insured, but there are more consequences than that. Okay, so the money and jewels they stole were insured, but what about people who have now lost jewelry pieces that had sentimental value or were family heirlooms, that money cannot replace? Did she make sure that every single person with money or property in the bank was paid up on their policies? If the insurance companies have to pay out massive amount of settlements, then the prices of the premiums will go up, and some people may not be able to continue to insure their property. Some insurance companies may go bankrupt from such an event, costing people their jobs. The people who lost their possessions may sue the bank, and the bank might in turn sue their security company. Either way, people might lose their jobs. Hell, the way that the footage of the robbery was erased and how easily the Slayers got away, the police might think it was an inside job. What if someone from the bank or from the security company who worked for the bank went to jail because of Buffy’s actions? Does she know the result of what she did? Does she care?
4. If Andrew blundered so badly by taking in poorly skilled girls into a mission because they were cutely dressed in Orvieto and possibly leading to the deaths of some of them, then why the hell is he allowed to run a squad at all? That’s not a tactical mistake; that’s just fucking stupid. Also, he doesn’t train them, and he has no problem with them playing strip-poker right in front of him. It doesn’t matter if he’s comic relief, he’s done a piss-poor job. The Radna spider demons, anyone? He may not be a bad guy, and he may be trying the best way he knows how, but he at least needs someone working with him to lead the squad.
6. We learned that there are 1,800 Slayers total, with 500 working for Buffy. That leaves 1,300 Slayers out there in the world. Was any effort made to educate them to their powers or to offer them advice even if they didn’t want to join the ranks? In one issue, we learned that infomercials were run on television and pamplets were sent out, inviting new Slayers to join support groups. However, was this kind of support still offered if a woman decided she didn’t want to fight? The place Underground!Buffy went to seemed to only have Slayers who were training. We see Giles and Faith attempt to find the so-called Slayer Sanctuary. Giles immediately wants to try and re-recruit them, but Faith wants to leave them alone because they should have the right to choose. Of course, the town took advantage of the non-fighting Slayers. Did anyone on Buffy’s side think that if perhaps they had offered the non-fighting Slayers a place to stay, then they wouldn’t have been taken advantage of? Instead of stealing money for certain supplies, maybe the non-fighting Slayers could have been offered positions where they sought out philanthropy or even could have farmed, like a Slayer commune.
8. How is a Thricewise so easily recognizable? He looked like a normal guy, so how were people able to tell by looking at him or hearing him speak? The joke of everyone knowing he was a Thricewise got old very quick when no one explained how.
9. Why is Dawn so chummy with Willow again anyway? I thought she was close to Tara the most. Maybe she’s hoping that being with Willow will be the same? When did Willow become “like a mom” to Dawn?
10. How could the First take Warren’s form if he never really died? Warren seemingly has memories of telling Andrew to kill Jonathan, but Amy says that wasn’t him.
12. How much of a Slayer is human? Obviously there’s enough human to fool a military-issue chip, but how much is still the demon essence the Shadow Men put into the Primitive Slayer?
14. This first few issues have stressed an important lesson for the new Slayers- fighting together means literally working together not just fighting side-by-side. From Giles talking to the green demon fellow to Faux!Buffy working with the slime creatures and fairies, could the key to Buffy solving everything that’s coming be to band together with the harmless and/or good demons, fighting together against a common enemy?
“Vampires gain strength from each other. Slayers, ultimately, don’t.”
Vampires are used to being in familial groups; they nest, and they bond as we’ve seen with the Fanged Four and other groups of vampires on the show. Slayers have never had to do that. They could maybe learn a thing or two from how demon clans interact and survive. There has been many, many Slayers through the centuries but the demons keep coming, because the demons can procreate (sometimes procreating through vampiric ways not necessarily sexually). It’s as Spike pointed out in Season Five; there’s only one Slayer and thousands of demons. However, we’ve seen that not all demons are evil; would it not benefit Buffy, now that there are so many Slayers, to formally recruit those demons into her ranks? Underground!Buffy tried to get the different species of demons to work together, but a combined demon/Slayer force would be worth a shot. There have to be demons out there like Lorne, Spike, and Clem who don’t exactly welcome the end of days or being sucked into hell. Even if they weren’t exactly “good” demons, some would probably join because they wouldn’t want to be killed.
15. Has Giles learned nothing from working with Buffy all these years? Why would he not inform Buffy of his plans with Faith? Also, why, after ending on such a bad note, would Buffy hug him and cry over his return?
16. Roden tried to “train a Slayer to end all Slayers.” Does the Slayer line continue after this generation has perished? According to the Fray mythology, there had been no Slayers for two centuries before Fray and Harth were born, but is that true? Could it be that there were some Slayers, after Buffy, who remained in hiding, going unnoticed like the Guardians? Does the Slayer line end with Fray or will it pass on after her death? Also, if there are no Slayers for two centuries due to the massive Slayer-power-hoodoo-spell in Chosen, would Twilight’s actions of cutting a huge swath through their numbers change that fact? Would a new generation begin sooner than Fray being called?
17. Why was building up a whole scenario to take out Giles and Faith such a good tactical movement? It seems like wasted time and energy on Twilight’s part to bring in Lady Genevieve and Roden since he detests both magical-users and the new Slayers.
18. If Twilight wants to end magic and magically-imbued persons (Slayers and, by that logic, all demons), how is he able to fly and pick up church steeples? Angel certainly can’t do that, so it must be mojo or a super-drug. Either way, it makes him a bit of a hypocrite. Then again, he is the villain of the piece, so he can be a hypocrite if he wants, I suppose.
19. Have Buffy, Willow, and Xander abused their power by forming romantic attachments to their subordinates? A commanding officer should be able to be objective and not form favourites amongst their troops. It affects their ability to lead. Kennedy may have been pushy and over eighteen years old on BtVS, but Willow was a superior officer, so to speak, and should have ignored her advances until an appropriate time. Once she and Willow were together, Kennedy became even more combative, almost refusing to follow orders, wanting Willow to usurp Buffy. Buffy, as well, took advantage of Satsu’s feelings. She knew Satsu was a lesbian, knew she herself was not, yet still carried on a one-night-stand when she knew that the younger Slayer’s feelings would be hurt. It compromises Buffy’s ability to make decisions, and it makes Satsu not follow commands.
20. What has happened to Buffy? She is extremely harsh with Dawn. Why not tell Dawn about her first time, like a sister and not like a Slayer? Why not relate the story of how Parker made Buffy a cliché her Freshman year in college too? Buffy’s too busy having pity-parties to do that. Buffy blames Dawn for what’s happened to her, all the while lamenting about how she’s been through just as bad. When your boyfriend gives you the equivalent of a demonic STD, there’s nothing to apologize for (cheating, on the other hand, is the time to say you’re sorry). Every time Buffy begins to admit that she hasn’t been the best big sister or starts to admit wrong-doing in some way, someone else stops her and tells her it’s not her fault. It’s no wonder she has a problem with taking responsibility.
Xander tries to say that they are filled with confidence, but what confidence? Buffy’s got none. She did the whole spell and thought she’d feel connected to the new Slayers, but she feels nothing. She has no attachment, which adds to her jealousy issues.
Also, why is Buffy crying all the time? It’s not that Buffy can’t feel emotions, but in thirty issues of comics she has cried more times than the entire run of the show combined. After she spent Season Seven complaining that Spike couldn’t be a good fighter because he was too emotional, she’s making a fine spectacle of herself.
Why would Buffy make such a disgusting comment about Cordy’s death? Yes, Scott Allie gave us an answer, but it didn’t sound anything like something Buffy would say. Cordelia was mean in high school, but you would think that Buffy, who has suffered many losses, would not make light of a former friend’s death. Speaking of losses, was being back in the Sunnydale flashback really so great for Buffy? Or did it drag her down deeper, reminding her of what she’s lost?
21. Why would Buffy think that sharing unwanted power is good? She never wanted it, didn’t choose it, and has spent seven seasons telling us all about it. Buffy believes that giving the Potentials their full Slayer powers gives them “purpose” and “meaning,” so does that mean she believes that their normal lives before were meaningless? These new Slayers might have had careers, might have had education plans, might have had families, or might have wanted families. So does Buffy believe that only Slayers make a difference? That being a politician, a doctor, a cop, a lawyer, a social worker, a philanthropist, an artist, a teacher, a homemaker, a soldier, a writer, an activist, or any other myriad of ways that women choose to lead their lives is meaningless? These are women who might have accomplished something other than dying a hideously bloody death for a cause they may not fully understand? It doesn’t matter if this is a power that they were born with, the Potentials deserved to have a choice in using it.
Being a Slayer gives you the life expectancy of a carnival-won goldfish. Slayer powers were forced a young woman by men who were too weak to fight the demon hordes themselves and too cowardly to take the demon essence within on their own. It gave her power by taking away the power that should have come from within herself. The Watchers have subjugated women by isolating them from their families, indoctrinating them to their mode of thinking, and societal expectations of a woman’s role in certain parts of the world made it easy for them to do so in many instances. Buffy made her Slayer power her own, stood up against a tyrannical situation to take care of herself. However, she never stopped wishing for a normal life, even after she was able to experience the loss of her powers and regaining them. If she had given all the Potentials a choice in unlocking their Slayer power which was unnaturally given through an act of metaphorical rape, then that would have been a liberating experience. Those that would have rejected their Slayer abilities would not be weak, but taking charge of their own destiny. They needed to have a choice, and they didn’t have one. Buffy becomes just as bad in her decision as the Shadow Men.
In Harmonic Divergence, Andrew says of vampires, “They take advantage of the weak. People without protectors, people who turn toward power because they have none, and then they find themselves victimized by it.” Sounds like the Slayers at the moment. The mentally damaged, the slightly unhinged, prone-to-violence, the physically abused, the unnoticed, the ones from broken homes, and the ones who feel physically weak and have low self-esteem- the ones who feel either powerless in the world or feel victimized by it we’ve been shown have become Slayers, to be victimized yet again by something they had no control over. Underground!Buffy went on the mission to fight Yamahn because she thought it meant something because, I believe, she was scared of being turned away from a place she felt like she belonged in if she didn’t do it. Maybe it’s the Slayers who tried to find peace at the Slayer Sanctuary who were really the strong ones. If Giles’s reaction to Slayers not wanting to fight is any indication, it must have been hard for some of those women to leave their squads, to probably face down peer pressure, to be told that they were throwing away their “birthright.” Perhaps, the Slayers would have been better off if they added actually counseling to their training.
Is Dawn so wrong in Retreat about the human side of Slayers being the rejected, weaker part? Whether Buffy wants to admit it or not, she’s treated it like it is.
22. Does Twilight mean that he will make the new Slayers suffer or that Buffy’s decision has ruined their lives?
23. How are the Tokyo vampires able to come into the Slayer Compound when even Dracula had to be invited into Buffy’s house by Joyce in Season Five?
24. Why would Xander go stay with Dracula? He’s a soulless vampire who nearly killed Buffy and turned him into a bug-eater. Yes, Dracula’s crush on Xander is cute, but really? This just makes Xander seem extremely stupid.
25. Dracula makes a statement about risking his soul for his magic, so did he get his powers before or after death? He seems to think that demons have spirit/souls. Does the scythe, like Dracula’s sword and the Slayers themselves, have demon essence within it?
26. Why do the scrolls in a temple have “Godzilla” on them? That’s just made of pure fail.
27. Wouldn’t having tanks or something be better and more practical for the Tokyo vampires instead of Mecha Dawn? Why did it have a tail?
28. Is Anderson Cooper really so far off when he interviews Harmony? Harmony obviously can live off animal blood and freely-given human blood without a soul or a chip. What’s to stop government sanctions from regulating its vampire citizens? They can come “out of the closet” like they did on True Blood.
29. Would Angel really use Vampy Cats? Has he lost his over-gelled mind?
30. When did Buffy learn to shoot? While she wasn’t learning how to drive?
31. Why one big spell to magic the submarine to Tibet? If magic is how they are being tracked, why not just stay on the sub, get to a coast, and then travel on foot or something?
1. Why did Buffy decide that she and the other Slayers are a military-esque group? Why is she a target? Yes, we all know that Twilight and his acolytes are after her, but she didn’t know that when the comics first started out. All we are told about what the other squads are doing is fighting vampire nests; nothing sounds out-of-the-ordinary for a Slayer. Something had to prompt her to throw away her morals and rob a Swiss bank so that she could buy a castle, helicopters, a satellite, high-tech radar, a large military-style airplane, a chalet, and another castle-esque plot of land. Were there other major attacks on her personally? Did the Wicca-Slayers and psychics have information that they divined? How much do they know and for how long to warrant these extreme measures? If there were attacks, was Twilight behind them or was it just demons getting antsy that there were so many Slayers? Giles says that a war is coming, but we’ve heard that before. When Underground!Buffy is fighting Yamahn, he says nothing of Twilight; he just wants to be able to go above ground without fear of the Slayer. It sounds more run-of-the-mill. So, again, why was Buffy any more of a target than she had been previously?
2. To add to the above, why are there two Faux!Buffys? We are not told what prompted the need for two extra Buffys to act as decoys. When Unground!Buffy has to go fight Yamahn, what was the purpose of that? They sent a relatively green Slayer to battle a very powerful demon and his demon hordes alone, but then other Slayers are sent in at the end. Why not send the Slayers in WITH Underground!Buffy? If it’s so important to protect actual Buffy, why couldn’t it just look like Buffy was leading a group of Slayers underground? It seems rather senseless to lose a promising young fighter for no reason.
Along those same lines, why does their need to be a more “public” Buffy in Italy? Why is okay for one Slayer to be living the party lifestyle with her Immortal boyfriend in Italy doing nothing but being out in the open, while another young woman loses her life fighting along after getting felt up by slime creatures? Also, if Buffy is such a target that she warrants decoys, why would Giles/Andrew/whoever deliberately put Italy!Buffy in arguably more danger by instructing her to be as noticeable as possible. What good does any of that do? You lose promising potential back-up when the audience is not given a good reason for it.
It’s also a big, glaring retcon. Buffy says that Andrew hooked up the fake!Buffy in Italy with the Immortal because it would be “hilarious.” Buffy doesn’t understand this, and neither do I. Why is it so funny? Because the Immortal used to do fairly annoying things to Angel and Spike? I find it hard to believe that the Immortal, who obviously thinks of Spike and Angel as passing irritations only when they cross into what he views as his territory, would allow these incidents, which seem barely more than hateful pranks, to be chronicled in his book. Also, Spike has a super-sniffer that rivals Scooby Doo’s on the trail of a Scooby Snack. He can track Buffy’s scent from miles away yet he can’t realize that she’s never been in the apartment where they find Andrew let alone when he’s less than fifty feet from her in a club? Also, Andrew has a lot of distain for Angel, but he loves/crushes on/hero-worships Spike. Maybe Andrew’s sort of nervousness in The Girl in Question is because he knows he’s lying. After all, he’s walking around in his PJ’s with Biore strips on his nose, Dawn’s no where to be seen (though he stutteringly claims that she’s in “Italian school”), and he’s sprawled out on the couch like he owns the place.
3. Did Buffy even think about her actions when she robbed that Swiss bank? When Willow questions her, she says that everything was insured, but there are more consequences than that. Okay, so the money and jewels they stole were insured, but what about people who have now lost jewelry pieces that had sentimental value or were family heirlooms, that money cannot replace? Did she make sure that every single person with money or property in the bank was paid up on their policies? If the insurance companies have to pay out massive amount of settlements, then the prices of the premiums will go up, and some people may not be able to continue to insure their property. Some insurance companies may go bankrupt from such an event, costing people their jobs. The people who lost their possessions may sue the bank, and the bank might in turn sue their security company. Either way, people might lose their jobs. Hell, the way that the footage of the robbery was erased and how easily the Slayers got away, the police might think it was an inside job. What if someone from the bank or from the security company who worked for the bank went to jail because of Buffy’s actions? Does she know the result of what she did? Does she care?
4. If Andrew blundered so badly by taking in poorly skilled girls into a mission because they were cutely dressed in Orvieto and possibly leading to the deaths of some of them, then why the hell is he allowed to run a squad at all? That’s not a tactical mistake; that’s just fucking stupid. Also, he doesn’t train them, and he has no problem with them playing strip-poker right in front of him. It doesn’t matter if he’s comic relief, he’s done a piss-poor job. The Radna spider demons, anyone? He may not be a bad guy, and he may be trying the best way he knows how, but he at least needs someone working with him to lead the squad.
6. We learned that there are 1,800 Slayers total, with 500 working for Buffy. That leaves 1,300 Slayers out there in the world. Was any effort made to educate them to their powers or to offer them advice even if they didn’t want to join the ranks? In one issue, we learned that infomercials were run on television and pamplets were sent out, inviting new Slayers to join support groups. However, was this kind of support still offered if a woman decided she didn’t want to fight? The place Underground!Buffy went to seemed to only have Slayers who were training. We see Giles and Faith attempt to find the so-called Slayer Sanctuary. Giles immediately wants to try and re-recruit them, but Faith wants to leave them alone because they should have the right to choose. Of course, the town took advantage of the non-fighting Slayers. Did anyone on Buffy’s side think that if perhaps they had offered the non-fighting Slayers a place to stay, then they wouldn’t have been taken advantage of? Instead of stealing money for certain supplies, maybe the non-fighting Slayers could have been offered positions where they sought out philanthropy or even could have farmed, like a Slayer commune.
8. How is a Thricewise so easily recognizable? He looked like a normal guy, so how were people able to tell by looking at him or hearing him speak? The joke of everyone knowing he was a Thricewise got old very quick when no one explained how.
9. Why is Dawn so chummy with Willow again anyway? I thought she was close to Tara the most. Maybe she’s hoping that being with Willow will be the same? When did Willow become “like a mom” to Dawn?
10. How could the First take Warren’s form if he never really died? Warren seemingly has memories of telling Andrew to kill Jonathan, but Amy says that wasn’t him.
12. How much of a Slayer is human? Obviously there’s enough human to fool a military-issue chip, but how much is still the demon essence the Shadow Men put into the Primitive Slayer?
14. This first few issues have stressed an important lesson for the new Slayers- fighting together means literally working together not just fighting side-by-side. From Giles talking to the green demon fellow to Faux!Buffy working with the slime creatures and fairies, could the key to Buffy solving everything that’s coming be to band together with the harmless and/or good demons, fighting together against a common enemy?
“Vampires gain strength from each other. Slayers, ultimately, don’t.”
Vampires are used to being in familial groups; they nest, and they bond as we’ve seen with the Fanged Four and other groups of vampires on the show. Slayers have never had to do that. They could maybe learn a thing or two from how demon clans interact and survive. There has been many, many Slayers through the centuries but the demons keep coming, because the demons can procreate (sometimes procreating through vampiric ways not necessarily sexually). It’s as Spike pointed out in Season Five; there’s only one Slayer and thousands of demons. However, we’ve seen that not all demons are evil; would it not benefit Buffy, now that there are so many Slayers, to formally recruit those demons into her ranks? Underground!Buffy tried to get the different species of demons to work together, but a combined demon/Slayer force would be worth a shot. There have to be demons out there like Lorne, Spike, and Clem who don’t exactly welcome the end of days or being sucked into hell. Even if they weren’t exactly “good” demons, some would probably join because they wouldn’t want to be killed.
15. Has Giles learned nothing from working with Buffy all these years? Why would he not inform Buffy of his plans with Faith? Also, why, after ending on such a bad note, would Buffy hug him and cry over his return?
16. Roden tried to “train a Slayer to end all Slayers.” Does the Slayer line continue after this generation has perished? According to the Fray mythology, there had been no Slayers for two centuries before Fray and Harth were born, but is that true? Could it be that there were some Slayers, after Buffy, who remained in hiding, going unnoticed like the Guardians? Does the Slayer line end with Fray or will it pass on after her death? Also, if there are no Slayers for two centuries due to the massive Slayer-power-hoodoo-spell in Chosen, would Twilight’s actions of cutting a huge swath through their numbers change that fact? Would a new generation begin sooner than Fray being called?
17. Why was building up a whole scenario to take out Giles and Faith such a good tactical movement? It seems like wasted time and energy on Twilight’s part to bring in Lady Genevieve and Roden since he detests both magical-users and the new Slayers.
18. If Twilight wants to end magic and magically-imbued persons (Slayers and, by that logic, all demons), how is he able to fly and pick up church steeples? Angel certainly can’t do that, so it must be mojo or a super-drug. Either way, it makes him a bit of a hypocrite. Then again, he is the villain of the piece, so he can be a hypocrite if he wants, I suppose.
19. Have Buffy, Willow, and Xander abused their power by forming romantic attachments to their subordinates? A commanding officer should be able to be objective and not form favourites amongst their troops. It affects their ability to lead. Kennedy may have been pushy and over eighteen years old on BtVS, but Willow was a superior officer, so to speak, and should have ignored her advances until an appropriate time. Once she and Willow were together, Kennedy became even more combative, almost refusing to follow orders, wanting Willow to usurp Buffy. Buffy, as well, took advantage of Satsu’s feelings. She knew Satsu was a lesbian, knew she herself was not, yet still carried on a one-night-stand when she knew that the younger Slayer’s feelings would be hurt. It compromises Buffy’s ability to make decisions, and it makes Satsu not follow commands.
20. What has happened to Buffy? She is extremely harsh with Dawn. Why not tell Dawn about her first time, like a sister and not like a Slayer? Why not relate the story of how Parker made Buffy a cliché her Freshman year in college too? Buffy’s too busy having pity-parties to do that. Buffy blames Dawn for what’s happened to her, all the while lamenting about how she’s been through just as bad. When your boyfriend gives you the equivalent of a demonic STD, there’s nothing to apologize for (cheating, on the other hand, is the time to say you’re sorry). Every time Buffy begins to admit that she hasn’t been the best big sister or starts to admit wrong-doing in some way, someone else stops her and tells her it’s not her fault. It’s no wonder she has a problem with taking responsibility.
Xander tries to say that they are filled with confidence, but what confidence? Buffy’s got none. She did the whole spell and thought she’d feel connected to the new Slayers, but she feels nothing. She has no attachment, which adds to her jealousy issues.
Also, why is Buffy crying all the time? It’s not that Buffy can’t feel emotions, but in thirty issues of comics she has cried more times than the entire run of the show combined. After she spent Season Seven complaining that Spike couldn’t be a good fighter because he was too emotional, she’s making a fine spectacle of herself.
Why would Buffy make such a disgusting comment about Cordy’s death? Yes, Scott Allie gave us an answer, but it didn’t sound anything like something Buffy would say. Cordelia was mean in high school, but you would think that Buffy, who has suffered many losses, would not make light of a former friend’s death. Speaking of losses, was being back in the Sunnydale flashback really so great for Buffy? Or did it drag her down deeper, reminding her of what she’s lost?
21. Why would Buffy think that sharing unwanted power is good? She never wanted it, didn’t choose it, and has spent seven seasons telling us all about it. Buffy believes that giving the Potentials their full Slayer powers gives them “purpose” and “meaning,” so does that mean she believes that their normal lives before were meaningless? These new Slayers might have had careers, might have had education plans, might have had families, or might have wanted families. So does Buffy believe that only Slayers make a difference? That being a politician, a doctor, a cop, a lawyer, a social worker, a philanthropist, an artist, a teacher, a homemaker, a soldier, a writer, an activist, or any other myriad of ways that women choose to lead their lives is meaningless? These are women who might have accomplished something other than dying a hideously bloody death for a cause they may not fully understand? It doesn’t matter if this is a power that they were born with, the Potentials deserved to have a choice in using it.
Being a Slayer gives you the life expectancy of a carnival-won goldfish. Slayer powers were forced a young woman by men who were too weak to fight the demon hordes themselves and too cowardly to take the demon essence within on their own. It gave her power by taking away the power that should have come from within herself. The Watchers have subjugated women by isolating them from their families, indoctrinating them to their mode of thinking, and societal expectations of a woman’s role in certain parts of the world made it easy for them to do so in many instances. Buffy made her Slayer power her own, stood up against a tyrannical situation to take care of herself. However, she never stopped wishing for a normal life, even after she was able to experience the loss of her powers and regaining them. If she had given all the Potentials a choice in unlocking their Slayer power which was unnaturally given through an act of metaphorical rape, then that would have been a liberating experience. Those that would have rejected their Slayer abilities would not be weak, but taking charge of their own destiny. They needed to have a choice, and they didn’t have one. Buffy becomes just as bad in her decision as the Shadow Men.
In Harmonic Divergence, Andrew says of vampires, “They take advantage of the weak. People without protectors, people who turn toward power because they have none, and then they find themselves victimized by it.” Sounds like the Slayers at the moment. The mentally damaged, the slightly unhinged, prone-to-violence, the physically abused, the unnoticed, the ones from broken homes, and the ones who feel physically weak and have low self-esteem- the ones who feel either powerless in the world or feel victimized by it we’ve been shown have become Slayers, to be victimized yet again by something they had no control over. Underground!Buffy went on the mission to fight Yamahn because she thought it meant something because, I believe, she was scared of being turned away from a place she felt like she belonged in if she didn’t do it. Maybe it’s the Slayers who tried to find peace at the Slayer Sanctuary who were really the strong ones. If Giles’s reaction to Slayers not wanting to fight is any indication, it must have been hard for some of those women to leave their squads, to probably face down peer pressure, to be told that they were throwing away their “birthright.” Perhaps, the Slayers would have been better off if they added actually counseling to their training.
Is Dawn so wrong in Retreat about the human side of Slayers being the rejected, weaker part? Whether Buffy wants to admit it or not, she’s treated it like it is.
22. Does Twilight mean that he will make the new Slayers suffer or that Buffy’s decision has ruined their lives?
23. How are the Tokyo vampires able to come into the Slayer Compound when even Dracula had to be invited into Buffy’s house by Joyce in Season Five?
24. Why would Xander go stay with Dracula? He’s a soulless vampire who nearly killed Buffy and turned him into a bug-eater. Yes, Dracula’s crush on Xander is cute, but really? This just makes Xander seem extremely stupid.
25. Dracula makes a statement about risking his soul for his magic, so did he get his powers before or after death? He seems to think that demons have spirit/souls. Does the scythe, like Dracula’s sword and the Slayers themselves, have demon essence within it?
26. Why do the scrolls in a temple have “Godzilla” on them? That’s just made of pure fail.
27. Wouldn’t having tanks or something be better and more practical for the Tokyo vampires instead of Mecha Dawn? Why did it have a tail?
28. Is Anderson Cooper really so far off when he interviews Harmony? Harmony obviously can live off animal blood and freely-given human blood without a soul or a chip. What’s to stop government sanctions from regulating its vampire citizens? They can come “out of the closet” like they did on True Blood.
29. Would Angel really use Vampy Cats? Has he lost his over-gelled mind?
30. When did Buffy learn to shoot? While she wasn’t learning how to drive?
31. Why one big spell to magic the submarine to Tibet? If magic is how they are being tracked, why not just stay on the sub, get to a coast, and then travel on foot or something?