Meta on Season Six

[gillo]

I've been thinking. Never a good sign, you might say. This is the outcome of my thinkingness

Comments

[gatty]

Hi! Sorry to crash your post on an unrelated matter, but did you get my email about shadya + rita's thing tomorrow, about possibly getting a lift? I know I'm being cheeky, but don't ask don't get and all that.

[gillo]

I did and can be there. Watch your email. I'm going to be on campus most of the morning, so it might be later.

[velvetwhip]

As I'm sure you well know, I'm someone who actively avoids meta, but I read this and found it to be some of the most balanced and thoughtful meta I've yet read. Do I agree with it in its entirety? No. But I respect your views completely as they are all articulately expressed and well-reasoned. Thanks for making meta smart and interesting again.

Gabrielle

[gillo]

Thank you all the more for taking the trouble to read this. I was merely toying with a few ideas and trying to make sense of them.

[rahirah]

Hmm, I disagree that Dark Willow hadn't been foreshadowed - I can point to stuff as early as S2 that was all foreshadowy as heck. My only complaint with her going dark is that I think her arc was leading up to a purely hubris-related fall, not the clumsy magic=drugs thing. Power, knowledge and control are Willow's drugs; magic is merely a means to that end.

P.S. Mind if this is linked at metanewsfandom?

[lynnenne]

Power, knowledge and control are Willow's drugs; magic is merely a means to that end.

I agree with this. I think the intent of the magic=drugs storyline was to show a parallel between the coping mechanisms used by Willow (self-destructive magic) and Buffy (self-destructive relationship). Both were forms of self-medication, like depressed individuals who self-medicate with alcohol or illegal drugs. But Willow was never shown as being clinically depressed, the way Buffy was, so the self-medication parallel doesn't really fit with her character development.

I do like the rest of this meta, though. I loved S6, especially the way it dealt with depression issues. I had never seen that story told on TV before, and it was such a relief to watch a TV character going through all the same pains I did.

[rahirah]

IIRC there was scuttlebutt going around Back When that Alyson Hannigan was worried about Willow's image if she went really bad, and Joss was fond enough of the character to soften her arc from Power-Mad Willow to Pitiful Addict Willow. Which, if so, I think was a huge mistake, but we'll never know for sure.

I don't love S6, but it was definitely ambitious and tackled themes you don't often see in genre shows.

[gillo]

I do love S6, and not just for the abundance of Nekkid!Spike. It's dark, and I'm not at all sure the actors fully grasped what was going on - AH and SMG both signed on to be chirpy teenagers, after all. I'm not sure I've ever seen some of the themes handled here in any other so-called entertainment drama.

[beer_good_foamy]

Great post. Short version - I agree with you, disagree with Bart. I really like your thoughts on the similarities between Willow's and Buffy's arc. Like rahirah said, DarkWillow is foreshadowed as far back as "I, Robot... You Jane" and is, the clumsiness of the magic=drugs arc* notwithstanding, one of the most consistent characterisations on the show. And it fits quite nicely with the Trio too; like Willow, they're people who have spent their lives feeling disenfranchised ("I'm not your sidekick!") and feel that the world owes them.

* I do rather like stormwreath's fanwank that the point of the addiction arc isn't that magic is a drug, but that the scoobies simply assume it works kind of like the drug addiction they've been taught about in after-school specials... and so they completely mishandle it and it blows up in their faces.Not to mention that I never did and never will understand the argument that magic was a metaphor for sex in s4 and therefore it can Never Ever be a metaphor for Anything Else Ever In The World Ever, or that villains can't be

[local_max]

While I didn't like the magic=drugs stuff until I encountered stormwreath's and similar interpretations/fanwanks, it wasn't until I got into fandom that I found out that people thought that the Dark Willow material at the end of the season wasn't sufficiently about power and hubris to make clear that her arc was back on track, or that it was commonly felt that the magic=drugs stuff ruined the whole Dark Willow arc rather than just muddling it for a few midseason eps. Even the drug references in those episodes seemed so clearly not-the-point that I could slip past it easily (e.g. "and now, Willow's a junkie" is more about Willow's recognition that she's still a failure, ethically and in personality, even powerful, and that's the important point). Nowadays I understand why people do think they aren't sufficient corrective or make things worse, though I sometimes wish I didn't -- a lot of my time in fandom feels like it's been spent mostly getting back to the state I was in before I found out everyone hating it, but able to articulate

[yvonnet]

You lost me at the Jane Eyre reference! How do you mean? x

[gillo]

Jane Eyre is all about a girl who is a loser, an outsider, finding her way to adulthood by realising all the thirteen-year-old's fantasies - she gets her man after he is humbled and depends on her, after she has rejected the Greek god who wants to marry her. It's all about a journey from helplessness to power, which is what the Trio want and Willow achieves.

I find I have no Bronte icon - have my preferred Jane instead.