you are all enablers who enable my terrible habits. NEVER, EVER STOP.
I think my Chosen thoughts are too sappy to be unlocked but ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE.
I love Chosen. I think it is the perfect end to the series. I cry my eyes out every time, you guys.
I know there’s a significant faction of fandom that thinks BtVS should have ended at The Gift, but I couldn’t disagree more. To begin with, the ultimate downer tone of that last shot could not possibly be more out of joint with the optimism of the main character or the series’ tone. Buffy’s wonderful smile at the edge of the Hellmouth makes all her struggles over the last seven years worthwhile.
Chosen bookends WttH as well, in a way The Gift did not. WttH tells us within the very beginning what a Slayer is and why we should care about Slayers at all. But it’s not until Chosen that we learn why this Slayer is the one we should care about. Spike’s actually quite wrong that Buffy is unique as a Slayer with family and friends and reasons to live. It’s a thing he wants to believe, as do the Watchers we’ve met, but all Slayers have complex inner lives. Faith is sensual and brittle and strong; Nikki Wood loved her son and her Watcher; Xin Rong’s last thought is of her mother; Kendra takes fierce and hard-earned pride in her calling. The Gift, as far as Slayers are concerned, seems to end with yet another girl being torn from her family and friends to a short life of suffering and fear. Buffy is the Slayer who changes that - she’s the only woman in all the world who remembers what it was like to be the One Girl.
The Gift is sad enough for Buffy and for the presumptive next Slayer. But when it’s contextualized into the larger metaphor of Slayerness as female empowerment, it’s shockingly upsetting. Buffy goes out the same way every other Slayer does - bravely and in the line of duty, but self-sacrificing nonetheless. She dies on her own terms, and has had a few years longer than most other Slayers - but that doesn’t question any power or change any system. It’s kind of like saying it’s great that we have made such advances for women this century, they all have dishwashers now and being a domestic caretaker is slightly less miserably exhausting than once it was. The Gift as an ending would suggest that slightly improved circumstances for one member of a group is the most we should ever fight for. Chosen challenges the idea of women’s work as painful and lonely and more dangerous than it needs to be.
I quite like the Guardians as well. While there may not have been explicit clues about their identity, the theme of the seemingly absent but ultimately deeply loving mother figure is one that’s revisited throughout the series, but especially in the last season. Ghost!Joyce, who couldn’t get her message to Dawn. Nikki Wood, who couldn’t stay alive for her son. Spike’s mother, who couldn’t stay undead for hers. They’ve done their jobs as mothers, watched and protected while they could, but never quite make it to the end - so when the Guardians pass the Scythe to Buffy just to be slaughtered by Caleb, they’re these characters writ large.
The Guardians’ appearance is actually essential to the final story, which is about Buffy (known, after all, to the Mighty Forces as “daughter of Sineya, first of the Ones”) becoming a mother to other Slayers all over the world, and the first mother to the next Slayer who’s alive to raise her daughters. (They really shouldn’t have been shown as white women, if they existed before the Shadow Men who lived before people spread out from east Africa; this is one of the show’s more egregious race!fails.)
Women’s history is forgotten. It’s buried. And its brutally attacked by patriarchal religions. Caleb’s murder of the Last Surprise is the witch-burnings of the Middle Ages. It’s St. Patrick chasing the snakes (Pagans) from Ireland. It’s Spanish missionaries and American colonialists trampling the earth (Gaia) based religions and often gender-egalitarian societies from the New World. It’s the Vatican attacking women priests instead of rapists. It’s the deliberate destruction of power and knowledge for everyone in service of the dominance of the hateful and few. But neither murder most foul nor suppression most ancient and brutal can take away the power of the Slayer.
I actually think the show is fairly careful to show Willow’s empowerment spell as distinct from the Shadow Men’s creation of the Slayer. Aside from the visual - Willow above ground, surrounded by light; the Shadow Men in a cave releasing a stifling essence - there’s an element of choice emphasized in Buffy’s speech. “Every girl who can stand up, will stand up….are you ready to be strong?” It’s also why we got The Killer In Me, seeing a spell that takes shape based on the soul of the target. It’s as much about the killer in Kennedy as the one in Willow. The Shadow Men’s spell didn’t have as much to do with will or ability as where a girl was needed at a given moment in time. They chained her to the earth. Get It Done happens deliberately so we can contrast the two spells. Willow’s spell is seen over and over going directly to girls at a moment where they are directly seizing power over their lives. Stepping up to the plate. Fighting back against an abuser.
Buffy was Chosen. The Potentials have Chosen. It’s pretty radical. I think it’s bloody brilliant.
That couldn’t be more different than the rape metaphor of the First Slayer. The Shadow Men knew they were killing her - were chaining her to the earth - and consigning her to the outskirts of society. Willow’s spell allows for community, for connectivity (Willow: I can feel them all), for the possibility of both self-sufficiency and collective action.
That’s the crux of it. I do think that all the Potentials had a choice on some level, and I think that every single one of them took Buffy up on her offer. Even Dana, who’s dangerous, is lucid on one point - that she’s not weak anymore. Because with all those dangers out there after you, you would never choose to be weak. Season 7 sets this up nicely, showing us clips of Potentials all over the world chased down by Bringers. They try to fight back, and they simply can’t. Most of them are like pre-series Buffy, and don’t even know the dangers the world around them poses. Who is she to deny them their birthright, the very chance to survive?
And mere knowledge would not have protected them. Throughout the series, we only see the innocent victims Buffy is around to protect (or not), but the world is bigger than Sunnydale, and there’s only one Slayer. There is a desperate need for equality on every level; for the tools and knowledge to fight one’s own fight. With or without the power offered by Willow/feminism, the danger posed by the pervasive First Evil/misogyny is coming after them right this moment in the form of Bringers/physical, sexual, social, psychological, and economic violence. Given a real, free choice, no one chooses not to be able to fight back.
And really, didn’t every Slayer have a choice? Couldn’t she have run from her Watcher and gone underground? For all its power at the upper echelons (like Giles’ work visa), Faith doesn’t have much trouble getting away from the Council, when she leaves Boston or when she escapes Sunnydale for LA. And maybe Spike is right on some level - every Slayer does eventually give in to death - but she only does so after choosing against it many, many times, sometimes every night for years no matter how desperate her straits. Chosen honors not only those who it Calls, but also those who have fallen before.
This, in a show that has gone to some intensely dark places, is a powerfully positive statement on the good in people. Every girl who could stand up, has stood up. They deserve to stand together.
That’s not the same as The Shadow Men chaining down the First Slayer and forcing the essence of a demon into her so she will have to take on everyone’s danger from the Otherworldly threat. They gave safety to everyone else and exile to her. Buffy gives community and some greater degree of safety to her Slayers. To me, that’s the real beauty of Buffy’s speech. Your strength is good for you, and you deserve to protect yourself. United we stand; divided we fall.
Are you ready to be strong?
And you guys, the Slayers have two mommies. Willow does the spell, and Kennedy sits to midwife her though it. I know I’ve said this elsewhere, but Kennedy is pretty much the only slightly butch lesbian I can think of on a mainstream television show - the fact that she’s shown fighting fiercely but is ultimately not killed off during her enthusiastic jump into the Hellmouth is an exceptional aversion of Kill Your Gays, because Kennedy lives though others die. Their relationship, quick as it’s been, is shown as an actual meaningful connection between them;t shockingly normal relationship in the midst of chaos. While the fact that it’s a same-sex relationship isn’t treated as a particular danger or peculiarity, the fact that it’s a lesbian relationship matters. It matters that at least some of the Slayers aren’t going to be dependent on men for anything - not male protection, not on the Watcher’s Council, and not romantically - and that these women, too, will answer the call.
I absolutely love the fight in the Hellmouth. I don’t care about the handwave - on a story level, I assume that the First wasn’t done powering all of the ubervamps up and that Willow’s spell somehow powered up the Good Side. On a meta level, it’s a really wonderful metaphor for collective action, and the visual of the Slayers passing along their Scythe (and it is theirs - Faith: I feel like it’s mine.) to save each others’ lives is, to me, breathtaking and beautiful.
Awkward metaphor aside, I am firmly in favor of the cookie dough speech. I utterly love the slap at dramatic convention that a “happy ending” requires a romantic partnership where the heroine pairs up with one of her formerly-abusive high school boyfriends. Buffy deserves some time to be with Buffy, and to not be The Vampire Slayer for a little while. It means a lot for her, as well as for them, that Angel and Spike are there to help her out with her mission, that something ties them to her (and each other) besides romance. And I know not everyone loves the kiss between Buffy and Angel that precipitates the speech, but I think it’s just right. She’s recognizing that their relationship was an important part of this journey, of her identity as both Buffy and the Slayer. She’s earned that right and then some. Buffy’s scenes in this episode are sweet snapshots of her life scattered throughout, and she deserves no less than to remember it all.
And for all its heavy lifting, Chosen has moments that are just delightful fun - the series stays itself to the very end. The campy, overblown, slapstick of S1 and early S2 that made me love the show is there - I love watching Buffy split Caleb in half. The adolescent ups-and-downs of the characters never disappear, as evidenced by Spike’s little crayon Angel punching bag hatespiration. NEVER CHANGE, BLONDIE-BEAR. The character moments are perfect - I love that Andrew thinks Anya is the perfect woman, and that Willow thinks the spell that changes everything forever is “nifty.” Love for Xander, who has learned to accept Buffy’s leadership; love for Dawn, who won’t be left out of the fight. And the deep friendship that’s endured is respected - I love the last moment in the hallway before the four Scoobies split up.
Those friendship moments there aren’t just perfect in terms of the show, though they are;. They’re integral to the metaphor, that just because Slayerness works one way, doesn’t mean that it’s the only way to fight the powers of evil. They’re going to need everyone. There’s more than one way to be empowered. This is a battle, not the war. There are other Hellmouths, there are other witches who deserve guidance, there are carpenters who don’t realize that their work is the only line of defense for humans asleep in their beds at night. They’re just getting started, but they’ve got a little more help now.
Because. Can stand up, will stand up.
The show has never changed from its basic mission statement of the girl in the alley who gets to survive, and Chosen is absolutely necessary to finish it out. Because that girl in the alley who always dies in the horror movies? The one you assume is powerless? You’re also afraid for her because you assume she’s alone.
She isn’t alone. And she’s ready to be strong.
I love Chosen. I think it is the perfect end to the series. I cry my eyes out every time, you guys.
I know there’s a significant faction of fandom that thinks BtVS should have ended at The Gift, but I couldn’t disagree more. To begin with, the ultimate downer tone of that last shot could not possibly be more out of joint with the optimism of the main character or the series’ tone. Buffy’s wonderful smile at the edge of the Hellmouth makes all her struggles over the last seven years worthwhile.
Chosen bookends WttH as well, in a way The Gift did not. WttH tells us within the very beginning what a Slayer is and why we should care about Slayers at all. But it’s not until Chosen that we learn why this Slayer is the one we should care about. Spike’s actually quite wrong that Buffy is unique as a Slayer with family and friends and reasons to live. It’s a thing he wants to believe, as do the Watchers we’ve met, but all Slayers have complex inner lives. Faith is sensual and brittle and strong; Nikki Wood loved her son and her Watcher; Xin Rong’s last thought is of her mother; Kendra takes fierce and hard-earned pride in her calling. The Gift, as far as Slayers are concerned, seems to end with yet another girl being torn from her family and friends to a short life of suffering and fear. Buffy is the Slayer who changes that - she’s the only woman in all the world who remembers what it was like to be the One Girl.
The Gift is sad enough for Buffy and for the presumptive next Slayer. But when it’s contextualized into the larger metaphor of Slayerness as female empowerment, it’s shockingly upsetting. Buffy goes out the same way every other Slayer does - bravely and in the line of duty, but self-sacrificing nonetheless. She dies on her own terms, and has had a few years longer than most other Slayers - but that doesn’t question any power or change any system. It’s kind of like saying it’s great that we have made such advances for women this century, they all have dishwashers now and being a domestic caretaker is slightly less miserably exhausting than once it was. The Gift as an ending would suggest that slightly improved circumstances for one member of a group is the most we should ever fight for. Chosen challenges the idea of women’s work as painful and lonely and more dangerous than it needs to be.
I quite like the Guardians as well. While there may not have been explicit clues about their identity, the theme of the seemingly absent but ultimately deeply loving mother figure is one that’s revisited throughout the series, but especially in the last season. Ghost!Joyce, who couldn’t get her message to Dawn. Nikki Wood, who couldn’t stay alive for her son. Spike’s mother, who couldn’t stay undead for hers. They’ve done their jobs as mothers, watched and protected while they could, but never quite make it to the end - so when the Guardians pass the Scythe to Buffy just to be slaughtered by Caleb, they’re these characters writ large.
The Guardians’ appearance is actually essential to the final story, which is about Buffy (known, after all, to the Mighty Forces as “daughter of Sineya, first of the Ones”) becoming a mother to other Slayers all over the world, and the first mother to the next Slayer who’s alive to raise her daughters. (They really shouldn’t have been shown as white women, if they existed before the Shadow Men who lived before people spread out from east Africa; this is one of the show’s more egregious race!fails.)
Women’s history is forgotten. It’s buried. And its brutally attacked by patriarchal religions. Caleb’s murder of the Last Surprise is the witch-burnings of the Middle Ages. It’s St. Patrick chasing the snakes (Pagans) from Ireland. It’s Spanish missionaries and American colonialists trampling the earth (Gaia) based religions and often gender-egalitarian societies from the New World. It’s the Vatican attacking women priests instead of rapists. It’s the deliberate destruction of power and knowledge for everyone in service of the dominance of the hateful and few. But neither murder most foul nor suppression most ancient and brutal can take away the power of the Slayer.
I actually think the show is fairly careful to show Willow’s empowerment spell as distinct from the Shadow Men’s creation of the Slayer. Aside from the visual - Willow above ground, surrounded by light; the Shadow Men in a cave releasing a stifling essence - there’s an element of choice emphasized in Buffy’s speech. “Every girl who can stand up, will stand up….are you ready to be strong?” It’s also why we got The Killer In Me, seeing a spell that takes shape based on the soul of the target. It’s as much about the killer in Kennedy as the one in Willow. The Shadow Men’s spell didn’t have as much to do with will or ability as where a girl was needed at a given moment in time. They chained her to the earth. Get It Done happens deliberately so we can contrast the two spells. Willow’s spell is seen over and over going directly to girls at a moment where they are directly seizing power over their lives. Stepping up to the plate. Fighting back against an abuser.
Buffy was Chosen. The Potentials have Chosen. It’s pretty radical. I think it’s bloody brilliant.
That couldn’t be more different than the rape metaphor of the First Slayer. The Shadow Men knew they were killing her - were chaining her to the earth - and consigning her to the outskirts of society. Willow’s spell allows for community, for connectivity (Willow: I can feel them all), for the possibility of both self-sufficiency and collective action.
That’s the crux of it. I do think that all the Potentials had a choice on some level, and I think that every single one of them took Buffy up on her offer. Even Dana, who’s dangerous, is lucid on one point - that she’s not weak anymore. Because with all those dangers out there after you, you would never choose to be weak. Season 7 sets this up nicely, showing us clips of Potentials all over the world chased down by Bringers. They try to fight back, and they simply can’t. Most of them are like pre-series Buffy, and don’t even know the dangers the world around them poses. Who is she to deny them their birthright, the very chance to survive?
And mere knowledge would not have protected them. Throughout the series, we only see the innocent victims Buffy is around to protect (or not), but the world is bigger than Sunnydale, and there’s only one Slayer. There is a desperate need for equality on every level; for the tools and knowledge to fight one’s own fight. With or without the power offered by Willow/feminism, the danger posed by the pervasive First Evil/misogyny is coming after them right this moment in the form of Bringers/physical, sexual, social, psychological, and economic violence. Given a real, free choice, no one chooses not to be able to fight back.
And really, didn’t every Slayer have a choice? Couldn’t she have run from her Watcher and gone underground? For all its power at the upper echelons (like Giles’ work visa), Faith doesn’t have much trouble getting away from the Council, when she leaves Boston or when she escapes Sunnydale for LA. And maybe Spike is right on some level - every Slayer does eventually give in to death - but she only does so after choosing against it many, many times, sometimes every night for years no matter how desperate her straits. Chosen honors not only those who it Calls, but also those who have fallen before.
This, in a show that has gone to some intensely dark places, is a powerfully positive statement on the good in people. Every girl who could stand up, has stood up. They deserve to stand together.
That’s not the same as The Shadow Men chaining down the First Slayer and forcing the essence of a demon into her so she will have to take on everyone’s danger from the Otherworldly threat. They gave safety to everyone else and exile to her. Buffy gives community and some greater degree of safety to her Slayers. To me, that’s the real beauty of Buffy’s speech. Your strength is good for you, and you deserve to protect yourself. United we stand; divided we fall.
Are you ready to be strong?
And you guys, the Slayers have two mommies. Willow does the spell, and Kennedy sits to midwife her though it. I know I’ve said this elsewhere, but Kennedy is pretty much the only slightly butch lesbian I can think of on a mainstream television show - the fact that she’s shown fighting fiercely but is ultimately not killed off during her enthusiastic jump into the Hellmouth is an exceptional aversion of Kill Your Gays, because Kennedy lives though others die. Their relationship, quick as it’s been, is shown as an actual meaningful connection between them;t shockingly normal relationship in the midst of chaos. While the fact that it’s a same-sex relationship isn’t treated as a particular danger or peculiarity, the fact that it’s a lesbian relationship matters. It matters that at least some of the Slayers aren’t going to be dependent on men for anything - not male protection, not on the Watcher’s Council, and not romantically - and that these women, too, will answer the call.
I absolutely love the fight in the Hellmouth. I don’t care about the handwave - on a story level, I assume that the First wasn’t done powering all of the ubervamps up and that Willow’s spell somehow powered up the Good Side. On a meta level, it’s a really wonderful metaphor for collective action, and the visual of the Slayers passing along their Scythe (and it is theirs - Faith: I feel like it’s mine.) to save each others’ lives is, to me, breathtaking and beautiful.
Awkward metaphor aside, I am firmly in favor of the cookie dough speech. I utterly love the slap at dramatic convention that a “happy ending” requires a romantic partnership where the heroine pairs up with one of her formerly-abusive high school boyfriends. Buffy deserves some time to be with Buffy, and to not be The Vampire Slayer for a little while. It means a lot for her, as well as for them, that Angel and Spike are there to help her out with her mission, that something ties them to her (and each other) besides romance. And I know not everyone loves the kiss between Buffy and Angel that precipitates the speech, but I think it’s just right. She’s recognizing that their relationship was an important part of this journey, of her identity as both Buffy and the Slayer. She’s earned that right and then some. Buffy’s scenes in this episode are sweet snapshots of her life scattered throughout, and she deserves no less than to remember it all.
And for all its heavy lifting, Chosen has moments that are just delightful fun - the series stays itself to the very end. The campy, overblown, slapstick of S1 and early S2 that made me love the show is there - I love watching Buffy split Caleb in half. The adolescent ups-and-downs of the characters never disappear, as evidenced by Spike’s little crayon Angel punching bag hatespiration. NEVER CHANGE, BLONDIE-BEAR. The character moments are perfect - I love that Andrew thinks Anya is the perfect woman, and that Willow thinks the spell that changes everything forever is “nifty.” Love for Xander, who has learned to accept Buffy’s leadership; love for Dawn, who won’t be left out of the fight. And the deep friendship that’s endured is respected - I love the last moment in the hallway before the four Scoobies split up.
Those friendship moments there aren’t just perfect in terms of the show, though they are;. They’re integral to the metaphor, that just because Slayerness works one way, doesn’t mean that it’s the only way to fight the powers of evil. They’re going to need everyone. There’s more than one way to be empowered. This is a battle, not the war. There are other Hellmouths, there are other witches who deserve guidance, there are carpenters who don’t realize that their work is the only line of defense for humans asleep in their beds at night. They’re just getting started, but they’ve got a little more help now.
Because. Can stand up, will stand up.
The show has never changed from its basic mission statement of the girl in the alley who gets to survive, and Chosen is absolutely necessary to finish it out. Because that girl in the alley who always dies in the horror movies? The one you assume is powerless? You’re also afraid for her because you assume she’s alone.
She isn’t alone. And she’s ready to be strong.