31 Days of Female Characters: Women Who Got Screwed Over By Canon

[sunclouds33]

I thought I’d make the next five female character into a theme and talk about the women screwed by canon- even if I’m not doing the thematic 30 Days of Awesome Ladies that I’ve seen circulating. Mind you, these are women who were screwed by canon but who I still adore despite their late addition warts. Also, while I may have issues with the futures

Comments

[staringiscaring]

I agree with Willow in many ways especially since the writers had her messing with Tara's memories and killing Warren in season six and then completely blotches her redemption arc by neglect. Willow does have a dark streak in her but I'm not sure that she has the kind of dark streak that would have her messing with Tara's memories. I can buy resurrection and murder however.

Also, I was irritated by how they completely changed the rules of magic in the verse in season six without explanation.

[sunclouds33]

Yes to clarify, I can see Willow doing some of the stuff of the UPN years. I firmly believe that she would resurrect Buffy but if the writing was at all sympathetic to Willow, she could defend herself by saying that Scoobies often mess with the rules of magic, people constantly go on suicide missions to protect Buffy and if they, in fact, pulled Buffy out of a hell dimension, they wouldn't be having this conversation about whether the resurrection was right

[staringiscaring]

Yeah, I also didn't like how even though in the convos that the scoobs had in the premiere of season six that implicated that Willow, Tara, Anya, and Xander had been plotting the resurrection together, later in the season everyone acts like Willow did it herself. I can believe that Xander was probably confused or mislead but I find it hard to believe that a 1,000 year old ex-demon (who cast spells when she was human) and a hereditary witch were unaware of the ramifications of such a spell.

Very true. The addiction thing was hamfisted. Yeah, it had been used to get people high (ie Ripper) but it came out of nowhere.

It's that the writers gave her a bunch of scenes of brutality with next to no scenes to intellectually push her in the direction or argue her case.Exactly

[violaswamp]

Hmm, interesting. I agree that Abbey got screwed over by canon, but I actually think it started during Sorkin's reign. In Dead Irish Writers, she's basically told by Donna to get over herself because she dares to be angry at paying a higher price for her husband's lies than he does. And then CJ and Amy (of all people!) tell her that she shouldn't fuss about her own piddly medical license, because she's still a wife and mother and can do cool things because of her husband's job. In post-Sorkin years, it wasn't that they made her less sympathetic (she basically jump-starts Jed after the shutdown and makes him bring back Josh), so much as that they made her less political

[sunclouds33]

Thanks for the comment on all three entries! I see your point about Dead Irish Writers. I read Dead Irish Writers, perhaps in an idiosyncratic way. Jed and by extension Leo and CJ were working on keeping the Bartlet family friend on the panel to protect Abbey's license and Abbey's contention that she would have only gotten a letter of concern for her crimes if this wasn't political is never contested. This leads me to believe that Sorkin wants us to think that while Abbey was wrong, her being stripped of a license is unjust

[violaswamp]

"Bully" is not the best word, no. My point was I can easily believe the progression from "Something Blue" to mindwiping Tara.

But now that you mention it, I do agree the acts of brutality at the very end of S6 don't make much sense. You're right that they didn't lay the groundwork for Willow trying to kill Buffy and Dawn and destroy the whole world, even if you start from mid-S6. And she was definitely given a terrible redemption arc. I think I saw these problems as the result of an overly benevolent (to the point of being patronizing) attitude to Willow rather than lack of sympathy for her character. I always got the impression that the writers were a bit too in love with Alyson Hannigan and Willow's character suffered for it, though I'm not sure where I got it from.

[quinby]

... I should do this about Petra Arkanian from the Enderverse. And possibly Valentine. Hmmmm

[sunclouds33]

LOL I don't know who those characters are but I'm all for this community being alive with the sounds of meta! Thanks for commenting.