More thoughts about "Anne": Buffy's depression arc (2/?)
Note to self: Try rewatch an episode before writing meta about it. Because I rewatched "Anne" this morning, and it's even better than I remembered. In fact, I can say that it and "Bargaining" are my favorite season openers (Note to everyone else: I cannot get the lj cut tag to work, in either rich text or html, even after much effort. So I
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I try to keep track of BtVS "therapy" fics, which run the gamut from ridiculous to sublime, since it's something that IRL would be a MUCH bigger part of the story.
I never really saw Spike's comforting of Buffy in "Touched" as evidence that women will ultimately betray one another, and a woman's most important connections are with men. Partly because it's her entire support network that rejects her in "Empty Places", including Giles and Xander, so I don't see women as being the sole betrayers. Since Buffy does immediately reconnect with her "girls" it doesn't seem like an idea that lasts, anyway. (Sidebar: Dawn's betrayal is the most shocking to me. I think it's the payoff for the "Buffy won't choose you" planted back in CWDP - it's Dawn that doesn't choose Buffy, which is probably what The First wanted all along.) Spike is important to Buffy certainly, but to me it reads more as "your lover/mate/romantic partner is your most important connection". This breaks down somewhat more obviously in "Grave", when it's Xander that saves Willow after the death of her lover almost destroys her.
I know people have trouble with the "violation of personal agency" in the "Chosen" spell, but I think that was very much an unintended consequence. In "Bring On the Night" Giles says:
Potential Slayers. Waiting for one to be called. There were many more like them, all over the world. Now there's only a handful - and they're all on their way to Sunnydale.
To me, this implies that the Scoobies' good faith assumption was that they had ALL the potentials on site, and that those WERE consulted and had given informed consent to the activation spell. They were wrong, of course...but isn't that the way of all good intentions?
I've wandered far from your main points about Buffy's depression, however. And they are good ones.
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Do you have any recs? I've come across two or three (and I'm not counting snowpuppies sublime "Fractured" which is AU from the start of S6/Bargaining - what if the spell had gone awry and Buffy really had come back wrong - REALLY wrong? Brilliant story.) beer_good_foamy wrote the first scenes of a script for an imagined new Buffy movie that takes Normal Again rather than the show's Sunnydale as it's setting. There are a handful more - really about 2-4 - that mostly take NA as their starting point (I'll have to search to come up with links), but I don't see it really dealt with a lot outside of that? But I guess a lot of the fanfiction I've ended up reading is really "Spuffy" and thus centered around that ship, whereas I really want to expand the horizons of my reading a bit.
I never really saw Spike's comforting of Buffy in "Touched" as evidence that women will ultimately betray one another, and a woman's most important connections are with men. Partly because it's her entire support network that rejects her in "Empty Places", including Giles and Xander,
That's a really good point, and I'm going to say I have to agree with you, but it didn't occur to me at the time. I still have a slight bit of ambivalence but on the whole I may need to rethink that point (as opposed to going off my initial feelings about it.)
Sidebar: Dawn's betrayal is the most shocking to me. I think it's the payoff for the "Buffy won't choose you" planted back in CWDP - it's Dawn that doesn't choose Buffy, which is probably what The First wanted all along.
There is something particularly shocking about that, given how fiercely protective the two of them are of each other (I get Dawn's complexes - she's been abandoned nearly as often as Buffy -their parents, Tara) but it still stings. (What else does Buffy have to do to prove her love for the girl?) I'm actually reminded of the episode "Him" (which I love - so funny) and how in a way it foreshadows EP but in reverse: thanks to the spell, Buffy undermines and betrays Dawn's (false) "love" for RJ, which again is shocking on some level, even while it's funny, because we know how much Buffy loves Dawn, and have seen what she would do to protect her, including give her own life. And if there's one person on the show whom I would NOT describe as "underhanded" it's Buffy. So that makes her betrayal startling rather than just a joke -because it's so much the opposite of who Buffy is. And EP reverses that, which may be a fanwank but "believe the tale and not the teller".
To me, this implies that the Scoobies' good faith assumption was that they had ALL the potentials on site, and that those WERE consulted and had given informed consent to the activation spell. They were wrong, of course...but isn't that the way of all good intentions?
I can completely accept that - I've had a convo with someone who said it made them uncomfortable because it put Buffy in the position of being a "rapist" (if we follow the analogy of the Shadowmen having a demon "rape" the first Slayer - which was a really poor idea on the part of the writers IMO on a number of levels, but oh well); and I didn't have a good argument for it at the time. Mind if I quote you on this? I don't expect to change minds because feelings run so strong in this regard, but I think you're the first person I've seen express it quite this way. (maybe gabrielleabelle.)
You've read Emmie's (angearia)'s AU version of S8, Thought You Should Know, I assume? I think it handles the unintended consequences MUCH better than *cough*the comics*cough*, which ends up simplifying it down to "Buffy bad!"
And no worries about wandering - I'm all for going down the bunny trails; they lead to interesting places!
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I think you're on to something with the underhandedness of Buffy in "Him". I've never been thrilled with that episode, though like all episodes it has some choice moments. I've put it down to not enjoying the humor of humiliation, but it could also be taht it is the least in character of all bespelled Buffy incarnations that she would undermine Dawn that way. Even under the BBB love spell, when she fights with Amy over Xander, it's a head-on confrontation.
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That really is an excellent point. There is also at the same time however a certain familiarity,in that beyond the deviousness, she behaves a bit like Buffybot (happy, flirty, mounting Spike) and even a little like S1 Buffy (without the sex.) It seems as though Buffy is only allowed to be "happy" (lighthearted, silly, etc) when she's bespelled.
Re: Buffy and RJ, I remember reading in college a study that female college teachers were MORE likely to be sexually harassed by male students than the other way around, and I wonder if this is true in high school as well (despite some high-profile cases in the media like Pamela Smart.) Which complicates the whole thing - Buffy as an adult is "the harasser" but RJ is responsible for the spell (Buffy has been roofied) and even though it's played for laughs, there's no question of RJ's culpability (and Buffy's lack of) in this - unlike the *cough*spacefrak*cough*.
The other women characters actually do act pretty much like themselves, actually. I'm not sure what to make of that. (On the other hand, the Willow/Anya scene KILLS me. "You'd kill for a chocolate bar!")
I haven't watched BBB except that one first time, and haven't had any desire to revisit it, but good call on Buffy in that one.
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