Comments | gabrielleabelle: Episode Poll: 4.16 Who Are You?

gabrielleabelle

Episode Poll: 4.16 Who Are You?

Oct 18, 2011 05:30

Hey, guys! We're gonna do that episode poll thing! For Who Are You? this time around!

Still no picture. My comp's all fixed, but I haven't gotten Photoshop set up yet. Alas.

( It's a good old-fashioned body swap! )

episode poll, faith, my happy season is s4, poll, btvs

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beer_good_foamy October 18 2011, 11:36:44 UTC

1. I can't really blame Riley. They've been dating for, what, a month? He has no clue about what's going on ("Who's Faith?"), he's already seen Buffy act by-his-standards weird more than once (here's a question - did Buffy ever tell him that her engagement to Spike in "Something Blue" was a spell?)... As reasonable conclusions go, at this point, "Woah! Kinky Buffy" is really a lot closer than "Woah! Magical mystery bodyswap!" Whether he should have asked her if she's on something is another matter, but...

4. Good question. I'm going to point to "Carpe Noctem" and say that the magical powers of both Slayers and vampires live in their body, not in their mind/soul/etc.

3. I buy it. Faith's turnaround doesn't exactly come out of the blue; even when she's at her most "evil" in s3, it always seems like she's hesitant to close the door completely - killing the spider behind Wesley, flinching at the idea of killing Willow, being genuinely hurt when Willow tells her it's too late to seek redemption, tipping Buffy off (albeit in a dream) on how to kill the Mayor, etc. From Faith's POV, she decides to be bad not because she doesn't want to be good, but because the good guys won't have her (but they'll have Buffy, so if she can be her...) In Buffyverse terms, Faith definitely has a soul; she just works very hard at keeping it bound and gagged.

mikeda October 18 2011, 11:52:34 UTC

can't really blame Riley

Especially since Willow, Xander, Giles, and Joyce also didn't notice that anything was wrong.

beer_good_foamy October 18 2011, 14:58:06 UTC

On the other hand, Faith didn't demand spankings and public sex from them, so they had a little less reason to suspect that something was wrong... Personally I think that if there's any point where Riley should have twigged that something's wrong, it's when Faith asks him if she's been a bad girl and if he wants to hurt her. That's a "hang on, are you OK?" moment, whether you suspect a bodyswap or not.

And on that subject, I have to say that I really like the "She's not your friend - literally" moment from Tara. Nice little subversion of a classic melodramatic trope.

mikeda October 20 2011, 11:50:19 UTC

It is interesting that the only person to realize on her own that "Buffy" isn't Buffy is one who had never met the real Buffy...

red_satin_doll September 20 2012, 23:36:13 UTC

WORD to this. I find that one of the most fascinating things about the episode - that Buffy's friends, family and boyfriend literally can't "see" her. (That scene where Buffy in Faith says to Giles "Can't you be all intuitive or something?" is wonderful. "You're checking for Buffy, not a concussion." One of the best lines in the Buffyverse?") There's something about that that I think emphasizes, in a literal sense, the isolation and disconnect Buffy will experience more and more in the next three seasons.

I think it sort of foreshadows the connection Buffy and Tara will have through the next two seasons - Tara appearing in Buffy's dream as a guide, Tara telling Buffy about her own mother's death, Buffy standing up for Tara in Family, Buffy turning to Tara as a confidant in DT. I've read a lot of comments (in other places on the 'net, not LJ) that Buffy and Tara didn't "have" a relationship or friendship. I would have liked to have seen them interact more often, but there was a bond there that didn't exist between, say, Buffy and Anya, and was definitely independent of Willow.

gabrielleabelle October 18 2011, 14:55:59 UTC

1. Hey, I brought up the Something Blue spell, too! :)

4. Quite true.

angearia October 19 2011, 01:25:30 UTC

4. Good question. I'm going to point to "Carpe Noctem" and say that the magical powers of both Slayers and vampires live in their body, not in their mind/soul/etc.

But Angel's soul is detachable from his demon, where as Buffy's soul seems more in tune with her Slayer spirit somehow (when all that gets stripped away, what's left? "Me."). I dunno, plus all this talk about "inherent ability" in Season 7. I think Slayers are different -- more jointly one, where as Angel is all WAAHHHH MY SOUL IS SLIPPERY.

Even if it's not the soul, we could go Dollhouse with it and say that Angel and Marcus (is that his name?) just swapped consciousnesses. So Angel went into a human body with a human soul animating it spiritually, while Marcus' consciousness went into a vampire body with a demon animating it spiritually.

beer_good_foamy October 19 2011, 06:18:04 UTC

where as Buffy's soul seems more in tune with her Slayer spirit somehow (when all that gets stripped away, what's left? "Me.")

Ah, but she has that in "Helpless" too, doesn't she? And to some extent in "Normal Again", and... well, my point is, that's Buffy Summers. It may not have anything to do with her being The Slayer (though obviously it helps).

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