favorite warrior woman
I feel kind of guilty not putting Buffy in this spot, because, she’s Buffy! But we kind of had Buffy day a while back, and anyway, I don’t quite think of Buffy as a warrior woman, though technically she is. She’s a superhero, and her story is about what it means to be a girl-hero. Faith’s story is about what it means to become a warrior woman, and so I kind of think she fits better here. I have a lot of thoughts on Faith in the Wessay, because she and Wes are so important to each other, but I also like Faith on her own, and in particular her journey to understand herself and her place as a warrior.
This ended up having a lot more Catholicism talk than I expected at first, fair warning in case that’s not your cup of tea.
As much as I loved Kendra, she had to go when she did; Faith had to show up at the same time. Season 3 is all about the rules. There are different rules for warriors, usually; mundane society does accept this, as the laws of war are decidedly not any domestic criminal code. Kendra’s role was to show the non-necessity of rules in the old world - you’re Chosen, you do your job, you die. It’s not a question of being an automaton, as we learn with Kendra’s wonderful personality and sense of humor through those few episodes, but that she’s been shaped deliberately for this purpose, and is as much an ornate weapon as Dru in her own way. Faith was out in the world with the rest of us, with some independence, but also traumatic experiences which made her suspicious of and hostile toward the world she’s called to protect. Faith needs to find a center of her own before she can integrate into the world in a safe, positive way, but there’s nothing and no one able to make her do that except herself, however much she very much does want someone else to take that responsibility away from her, as we see with the Gwendolyn Post debacle.
She knows there’s something intrinsic to being a warrior, but I’m not sure Faith understands the idea of lateral relationships or identities. There’s a vertical pecking order, and that’s it. Whatever happened to Faith back in Boston - and it’s fairly obvious that it was pretty terrible - made her into a ferocious climber on that ladder. As long as they know who’s on top. Faith is much more aware of a similar superiority/inferiority complex much earlier on to the one Buffy talks about in CWDP. We are better! though she clearly doesn’t believe that; quite the opposite, in fact. But Buffy, who was a princess before she was chosen as the one girl in all the world, hasn’t really experienced the inferiority end of it in the way Faith has. She’s afraid of it, yes; she hasn’t been there. She has no idea what it’s like on the other side. Faith desperately wants controls, external or internal, because she knows what it’s like when there aren’t any.
Faith’s story doesn’t just depend on Buffy in the sense of the passing the Calling. No other Slayer has ever been able to test the rules, not really; if you’re the only one in all the world, you have to fight out of self-interest if nothing else, because you’re just as dead as anybody if the Mayor ascends. Faith is an exploration of what happens when suddenly, there’s all that power and it doesn’t actually have to be concentrated on this one goal. Clearly, the world above can’t be relied on to handle Faith; it can neither contain her when she intends to act badly nor be fair to her when her well-intentioned acts have unintentional terrible consequences.
Faith’s existence makes the whole system more dependent on the Council, not less, because suddenly the major incentive for this girl with all the power in the world is just…gone. But the Council is wildly unequipped to handle the situation, because they’re as used to the warrior imperative for the Slayer as anyone else is. Kendra toed the line so unquestioningly because she was indoctrinated well before the two-Slayer anomaly presented itself as a possibility. Faith, though, doesn’t seem to have been found long before she was called, if at all, so there’s always been someone else who could do it if need be. And while that certainly doesn’t help Faith’s conviction that she’s unnecessary, it also allowed her to take chances and step outside the role of warrior woman. This leads to her journey into darkness, but it also makes her movement into the light a true, and beautiful, choice.
What do you believe in your heart now?
Faith straddles the line between BtVS, of the unwavering secular humanism, and AtS, with its resurrections and miracle births and Judas Iscariots. Which she can do, because Faith is the prodigal daughter of Holy Mother Church. Her place in the world is at bottom a supernatural one that she can’t quite understand - one of the Mysteries - but she’s in the body of the faithful, not a priest or a saint.
When she shows up, she has no rules, no structure, no identity - no faith, if you will. (She’s already the Slayer - already baptized - but it’s about coming to terms with and accepting that identity, not converting.) Of course Faith is from freaking Boston. She uses almost the language of Reconciliation at the end of Sanctuary (I mean, Sanctuary), I’d like to make a confession. Her relationship with Angel and eventual resolution with Wes aren’t about empowerment, they’re about bless me, Father, for I have sinned. She’s there before she joins the Mayor, even before the accidental killing in the alley, she’s always afraid she’s dirty. In my thoughts, and in my deeds. Even her fear that she isn’t the fighter Buffy is becomes another black mark on her. In what I have done, and what I have failed to do.
It is a very explicit fear that she is intrinsically dirty, which existed before anything she ever did wrong. Faith understands original sin. And we do see good Father Liam swoop on in to exploit that. Angel: A professional couldn’t have helped me. It stopped when I got my soul back. My human heart….You and me, Faith, we’re a lot alike. Or, if you’d prefer the Cliff’s notes: you belong in the dark. With me. I know I’m not the Angel person. But seeing that particular vulnerability exploited so ruthlessly does stand my hair on end (and set off more than a couple of alarm bells), particularly given that it’s Angel specifically. I very much doubt the mirroring with Dru is intentional, but still: I want to be good. I want to be pure. So does Faith, even if she can’t put it in so many words. He uses the accident in the intervention with Faith in exactly the same way as he used the visions against Dru in the confessional, speaking with the authority of the priest.
But that poor girl eats it up and thinks that’s what she deserves, which isn’t all that uncommon, no matter how sad and destructive it is. That same sense of dirtiness, of experiencing oneself as a contaminant, oozes off Wesley - it’s why they clash when they meet from behind their respective facades, and a huge part of why they work so beautifully together once they’ve had to face themselves. I know the real you, oh, dear lord, of course he does. (I swear I could write about the weather and turn it into a Faith/Wes thing.) (And not just if it’s hot out. WHAT UP.)
Those scenes in the prison with Faith are beautifully (possibly deliberately) bookended as a confession. We’re not in an open visitation room either time, but in the phone booths that can’t help but look like confessionals. She bares her soul to Angel, and they repeat shared mantras to each other; when we come back to her, Wesley picks up right where they left off, giving her something she can do. (Rather than truthfully saying he’s an old friend, Wesley tells the guards he’s her lawyer, a similarly privileged relationship.) And that’s the moment where Faith realizes she can become whole. Step away from the glass.
She does her penance, and goes forth to sin no more. Faith’s return to Sunnydale, in Dirty Girls, is the world turned upside-down, because Faith isn’t dirty anymore. Are you the bad slayer now? Am I the good slayer now? It’s why she’s not as freaked - or, IIRC, physically injured - by Caleb as most of them. She’s dealt with him already.
Who are you?
Faith’s story isn’t over until Chosen, until whatever it is that’s supposed to pass from slayer to slayer splinters out of her and into the other girls. (If Willow can feel them all, how must Faith react to the empowerment?) But her central identity conflict is over in Salvage, which is fitting - she needs to accept herself as a Slayer before she can pass the scythe. Wesley introduces her to a room full of people, most of whom she has no history with (well, to her knowledge, Cordelia is of course Jasmine, so she’s really in a roomful of strangers), who know what she’s done but have no preconceptions about who she is. It’s Faith’s first real chance to start over.
This is Faith, the Vampire Slayer.
They don’t make a big deal about it - because that’s one of the rules between general and warrior - but it’s no less a tense moment, where Wesley’s love for the dramatic is exactly occasion-appropriate enough to be called flair. Until this moment, Faith hasn’t had the confidence to claim her place as anything, really. She had the whole world in which to be the Slayer on her own, but she went to Sunnydale to find Buffy. She does her penance through the mundane justice system. She can’t quite believe she is the Slayer on her own steam (neither has any other Slayer before her, though the ones that come after will be something different entirely). But Wes, as will always be his job, breaks the spell.
Back when we met Kendra, her self-labeling as Kendra, the Vampire Slayer who needs no last name, is meant to throw into critically highlight the traditional subsuming of the girl into the Slayer. But when we met Faith, she didn’t get any kind of last name or title at all. Just this one ephemeral word, Faith; faith, something she doesn’t have, particularly not in herself. Faith is nothing in her own mind. This is what happens to the Slayer, chained to the earth and removed from the world, when she steps outside of (or can’t step into) the warrior identity. For Faith to be able to see herself in that same way is not effacement of self, but realization of self. She’s Faith. The Vampire Slayer.
(Checking my f-list, I completely feel like that time I wore the same dress to junior prom as my ex-best-friend. Seriously, these things happen to me. BUT LOOK, DOUBLE THE FAITH. IT’S EVERYONE’S LUCKY DAY.)