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Post by stargazer1682 on Apr 24, 2020 4:22:43 GMT
I couldn't resist the parallel subject themes. In this instance I'm questioning whether Willow was right in her justification to bring Buffy back?
Back on the old IMDB board, some variation of this topic got a fair amount of tread over the years, but I think it's still worth exploring.
The general train of thought is that, in spite of whatever reason Willow gave for wanting to bring Willow back, a large factor was invariably because she wanted to see if she could do it. And I don't necessarily disagree with that, but I don't think she was being entirely disingenuous with the others or that her reason was wrong.
Given what was going on around them when Buffy died, with literally all hell breaking loose on Earth and nary heaven in sight, would it have been all that unreasonable to fear her soul being trapped on the wrong side of the dimensional barriers when they went back up? Angel got sucked into hell to close his breach; which admittedly pulled in his body too, but it still sets a precedent that closing the gates of hell sends you to hell.
Should they have maybe checked somehow? Maybe. Who knows if or how that could be done, but it would probably be worth exhausting that option before going to the trouble of raising the dead. Mind you, Angel kind of did that himself when he tried to find Cordelia in early season 4 of AtS and completely misinterpreted what he saw; and she was allegedly on a higher plane, desperate to return home.
But then there's a practical reality they don't really consider until they come face to face with the inherent reason they needed the Slayer back - Buffy-bot breaks down, the demons get wind and descend on Sunnydale; and if they hadn't brought Buffy back when they did, they all be dead. End of story.
Maybe they could refocused their energies on coming up with a more sustainable, long term defensive strategy against the demons, rather than figuring out how to bring back the dead, but there's clearly no substitute for the real Buffy. So even if they knew she was in heaven, the cruelty of pulling her out kind of has to be weighed against the safety of a lot of innocent lives. And seeing as how she had a sense that her friends were safe and protected when they clearly weren't..... 🤷♂️
I still say they should have jumped ahead a few years, like six years or something, before the characters decided they need to have Buffy come back. They could explored all the ways the characters had changed; they'd be closer in age to their actors. It would have made it easier, given the network split, for the Buffy and Angel to ignore each other in real time. Giles' departure would feel a little more organic if it turned out he had hung on staying in Sunnydale for a little while, before going back to England, where'd have been living for a couple of years; maybe even started a family in that time. Dawn would be in college. Xander and Anya would be married. Willow would probably be the new mayor. All of this would have compounded Buffy's depression, as she not only struggles with coming back to life, but feels left behind.
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Post by dazz on Apr 25, 2020 14:31:12 GMT
I don't think the Angel thing when he went to hell should factor in, as it's 2 different instances, Angel's soul wasn't sent to a Hell dimension he was, the hell dimension he was trying to open, with Buffy all the dimensions were bleeding into each other and Buffy closed them but she didn't get sent to one, she just died, possibly not even from closing the gates tbh, I mean she did fall off of the tower, the fall alone would of killed her I think, so Willows assumption of Buffy could be anywhere was very flawed, they should have checked that stuff out first, now whether they misunderstand what they were told, that would have been some justification and would have added to the Willow/Giles argument later, as Giles could have rightly seen how what they were told didn't mean what they thought it meant.
But I think also the focus on bringing Buffy back could have taken away from them trying to best prepare themselves for the future, we saw how deadly Willow can be when she is focused, if she focused on buffing up instead of getting Buffy back who knows the biker gang could have been toast, similarly if they had actually tried moving on with their lives and a world without Buffy maybe they could have been better prepared all around, like recruit people to be a part of the fight, who knows if they had reached out maybe the likes of Warren and Jonathan would have joined the good guys, Warren could have built an army of protectors, none would be as powerful as a Slayer but in numbers they would have had an advantage, plus side maybe then those guys don't go full on darkside.
Overall it seems more selfish a choice on Willows part, some of it is understandable but others not so much, like I get she wanted her bestie back, selfish but understandable, but then theres the she did it to show she could which is not a valid reason, there's also the clear part where she did it so Buffy could take back her duties as Slayer, which is very selfish because as we saw after Buffy was back Willow didn't really do anything to help out Buffy in her situation, so the idea Willow brought Buffy back in some part just so Buffy could shoulder the weight of the world again so Willow wouldn't need to seems plausible and very unfair imo.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Apr 25, 2020 17:02:36 GMT
I don't think the Angel thing when he went to hell should factor in, as it's 2 different instances, Angel's soul wasn't sent to a Hell dimension he was, the hell dimension he was trying to open, with Buffy all the dimensions were bleeding into each other and Buffy closed them but she didn't get sent to one, she just died, possibly not even from closing the gates tbh, I mean she did fall off of the tower, the fall alone would of killed her I think, so Willows assumption of Buffy could be anywhere was very flawed, they should have checked that stuff out first, now whether they misunderstand what they were told, that would have been some justification and would have added to the Willow/Giles argument later, as Giles could have rightly seen how what they were told didn't mean what they thought it meant. But I think also the focus on bringing Buffy back could have taken away from them trying to best prepare themselves for the future, we saw how deadly Willow can be when she is focused, if she focused on buffing up instead of getting Buffy back who knows the biker gang could have been toast, similarly if they had actually tried moving on with their lives and a world without Buffy maybe they could have been better prepared all around, like recruit people to be a part of the fight, who knows if they had reached out maybe the likes of Warren and Jonathan would have joined the good guys, Warren could have built an army of protectors, none would be as powerful as a Slayer but in numbers they would have had an advantage, plus side maybe then those guys don't go full on darkside. Overall it seems more selfish a choice on Willows part, some of it is understandable but others not so much, like I get she wanted her bestie back, selfish but understandable, but then theres the she did it to show she could which is not a valid reason, there's also the clear part where she did it so Buffy could take back her duties as Slayer, which is very selfish because as we saw after Buffy was back Willow didn't really do anything to help out Buffy in her situation, so the idea Willow brought Buffy back in some part just so Buffy could shoulder the weight of the world again so Willow wouldn't need to seems plausible and very unfair imo. You make a good point about the status quo in terms of patrolling and such pretty much returning to what it was; meaning that, not even necessarily just Willow, but everybody essentially brought Buffy back so they didn't have to put up as much of a fight. That's definitely one of the advantages AtS has, I think; because while Angel is the focus of AI, the rest of the team keep fighting the good fight even when he's on his walkabout after Buffy died, or sunk at the bottom of the ocean. Gunn was doing it even before he met Angel. Wesley kept doing it even after he fell out with the group and lost his way a bit. And admittedly the Scoobies were trying, but they never quite measured up; they always seemed to struggle just taking on vampires, they never had a strategy. It's like when the Council came in season 5 and one of the Watchers ask what Xander brought the team and Buffy responds that he's clocked "field time"; as if that's on par with the level of power Tar and Willow wielded or Buffy's Slayer abilities. It was really the writers saying, "we haven't bothered making Xander any more competent when fighting monsters since season 1, but we need Buffy to be able to justify him being part of her team and sticking it to the pompous Council." They were stuck on this idea of Xander needing to be the everyman schlub and purportedly told Nicky Brendon not work out so much, so that Xander wouldn't be so fit. As with Giles' departure, I think they could have worked the story better to try and justify bringing Buffy back. At one point I thought it might have been interesting if they had played off the joining spell from Season 4 and have it that they had some sort of connection with Buffy as a result; which prompted them bringing her back because of flashes of their connection with her, giving them the false impression that she needed to be rescued. This is where I also think that a more significant time jump than the conventional length of the summer hiatus could have made the decision to bring her back more plausible; and explain some of the things, like Giles' leaving. Giving it only a couple of months doesn't seem like much of an effort to acclimate to this new life without Buffy, let alone find everything needed, including a rare ancient urn, to perform the spell. Plus jumping ahead would have only made Buffy settling back into her life that much harder, since her friends' lives had moved on without her, even Dawn is now suddenly roughly the same age as her; and the only person who hasn't changed, much, is Spike (and maybe that wouldn't even be the case if he'd been mourning her for five or six years). Plus there's a lot less worry about lining things up with Angel over on another network. I would argue that the situation in season 2 with Angel is comparable; because it wasn't just his body that got sucked into hell, his soul went with it, the two were still bonded and it was still with him when he returned. And in that instance, a portal was open with Angel's blood and essentially had to be closed with his blood - although they were kind of ambiguous, since they kept talking about needing to "kill" Angel to close the portal, which she really didn't, him being dead and run through with a metal sword and not a wooden stake. But then somehow Dawn's blood can start the portal, but Buffy's can close it, even though the qualities of Dawn's blood that are what is needed to open the portal shouldn't be in Buffy. I also don't think the fall killed her; we saw her buffeted around by the portal and she didn't seem to be physically injured by the impact. Whenever I watch that scene it always seems kind of baffling that it looks like she just laid down on the rubble. I maybe expect way more "splat" than would probably actually occur from a person falling from a great height like that, but it always just seems more tidy than it should be, even if she was already dead when she hit the ground. Then again, when she comes back, she goes back up to the top of the tower and more of less jumps when it begins to collapse, carrying Dawn along with her; and manages to reach the ground without serious injury. But in that instance I think she was finding ways of trying to slow her descent; I don't know how much it would help though. I don't know, considering the lives the people have lived for years by that point, and the literal hell on earth they watched unleashed when Buffy died, the idea that her soul ended up in hell should not be by any means a stretch of the imagination. And arguably the only reason that didn't end up her fate was because Joss is an evil bastard who realized an even worst fate is if she were in heaven and got pulled out by her friends.
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Post by Feologild Oakes on Apr 25, 2020 17:09:31 GMT
No she was not
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Post by dazz on Apr 25, 2020 17:37:27 GMT
I don't think the Angel thing when he went to hell should factor in, as it's 2 different instances, Angel's soul wasn't sent to a Hell dimension he was, the hell dimension he was trying to open, with Buffy all the dimensions were bleeding into each other and Buffy closed them but she didn't get sent to one, she just died, possibly not even from closing the gates tbh, I mean she did fall off of the tower, the fall alone would of killed her I think, so Willows assumption of Buffy could be anywhere was very flawed, they should have checked that stuff out first, now whether they misunderstand what they were told, that would have been some justification and would have added to the Willow/Giles argument later, as Giles could have rightly seen how what they were told didn't mean what they thought it meant. But I think also the focus on bringing Buffy back could have taken away from them trying to best prepare themselves for the future, we saw how deadly Willow can be when she is focused, if she focused on buffing up instead of getting Buffy back who knows the biker gang could have been toast, similarly if they had actually tried moving on with their lives and a world without Buffy maybe they could have been better prepared all around, like recruit people to be a part of the fight, who knows if they had reached out maybe the likes of Warren and Jonathan would have joined the good guys, Warren could have built an army of protectors, none would be as powerful as a Slayer but in numbers they would have had an advantage, plus side maybe then those guys don't go full on darkside. Overall it seems more selfish a choice on Willows part, some of it is understandable but others not so much, like I get she wanted her bestie back, selfish but understandable, but then theres the she did it to show she could which is not a valid reason, there's also the clear part where she did it so Buffy could take back her duties as Slayer, which is very selfish because as we saw after Buffy was back Willow didn't really do anything to help out Buffy in her situation, so the idea Willow brought Buffy back in some part just so Buffy could shoulder the weight of the world again so Willow wouldn't need to seems plausible and very unfair imo. You make a good point about the status quo in terms of patrolling and such pretty much returning to what it was; meaning that, not even necessarily just Willow, but everybody essentially brought Buffy back so they didn't have to put up as much of a fight. That's definitely one of the advantages AtS has, I think; because while Angel is the focus of AI, the rest of the team keep fighting the good fight even when he's on his walkabout after Buffy died, or sunk at the bottom of the ocean. Gunn was doing it even before he met Angel. Wesley kept doing it even after he fell out with the group and lost his way a bit. And admittedly the Scoobies were trying, but they never quite measured up; they always seemed to struggle just taking on vampires, they never had a strategy. It's like when the Council came in season 5 and one of the Watchers ask what Xander brought the team and Buffy responds that he's clocked "field time"; as if that's on par with the level of power Tar and Willow wielded or Buffy's Slayer abilities. It was really the writers saying, "we haven't bothered making Xander any more competent when fighting monsters since season 1, but we need Buffy to be able to justify him being part of her team and sticking it to the pompous Council." They were stuck on this idea of Xander needing to be the everyman schlub and purportedly told Nicky Brendon not work out so much, so that Xander wouldn't be so fit. As with Giles' departure, I think they could have worked the story better to try and justify bringing Buffy back. At one point I thought it might have been interesting if they had played off the joining spell from Season 4 and have it that they had some sort of connection with Buffy as a result; which prompted them bringing her back because of flashes of their connection with her, giving them the false impression that she needed to be rescued. This is where I also think that a more significant time jump than the conventional length of the summer hiatus could have made the decision to bring her back more plausible; and explain some of the things, like Giles' leaving. Giving it only a couple of months doesn't seem like much of an effort to acclimate to this new life without Buffy, let alone find everything needed, including a rare ancient urn, to perform the spell. Plus jumping ahead would have only made Buffy settling back into her life that much harder, since her friends' lives had moved on without her, even Dawn is now suddenly roughly the same age as her; and the only person who hasn't changed, much, is Spike (and maybe that wouldn't even be the case if he'd been mourning her for five or six years). Plus there's a lot less worry about lining things up with Angel over on another network. I would argue that the situation in season 2 with Angel is comparable; because it wasn't just his body that got sucked into hell, his soul went with it, the two were still bonded and it was still with him when he returned. And in that instance, a portal was open with Angel's blood and essentially had to be closed with his blood - although they were kind of ambiguous, since they kept talking about needing to "kill" Angel to close the portal, which she really didn't, him being dead and run through with a metal sword and not a wooden stake. But then somehow Dawn's blood can start the portal, but Buffy's can close it, even though the qualities of Dawn's blood that are what is needed to open the portal shouldn't be in Buffy. I also don't think the fall killed her; we saw her buffeted around by the portal and she didn't seem to be physically injured by the impact. Whenever I watch that scene it always seems kind of baffling that it looks like she just laid down on the rubble. I maybe expect way more "splat" than would probably actually occur from a person falling from a great height like that, but it always just seems more tidy than it should be, even if she was already dead when she hit the ground. Then again, when she comes back, she goes back up to the top of the tower and more of less jumps when it begins to collapse, carrying Dawn along with her; and manages to reach the ground without serious injury. But in that instance I think she was finding ways of trying to slow her descent; I don't know how much it would help though. I don't know, considering the lives the people have lived for years by that point, and the literal hell on earth they watched unleashed when Buffy died, the idea that her soul ended up in hell should not be by any means a stretch of the imagination. And arguably the only reason that didn't end up her fate was because Joss is an evil bastard who realized an even worst fate is if she were in heaven and got pulled out by her friends. The thing with Angel is his soul went with his body because he was re-ensouled, if Angeleus had gone into the portal I doubt Angel's soul would have gone to that dimension also, plus that's the difference Buffy's soul went to "heaven", Angel went to a hell dimension, he didn't go to hell, which is also the funny thing because Earth is in a hell dimension technically, so it's like ok hell dimension or not whats the diff?
Also is "heaven" a real thing really in the show? If so why don't Spike & Angel recall heaven or hell when they are given their souls back, as normal vampires they didn't have that, so their souls should have passed on right? why can they not recall heaven or hell but Buffy can? kind of an odd thing imo.
I think Buffy jumping off when she came back, I guess is the excuse that she prepped for it, instead of going splat, you know she absorbed the impact as one does when jumping normally except she has Slayer power so she can survive it, where as going splat, that's you know no absorbing going on, she's cracking her melon and her ribs/back full force and causing potential massive internal injuries, or the portal killed her, I dunno just saying the splat could have been what killed her, so Willow probably should have actually done research that we could see, which would have shown that Willow was worried for Buffy's soul and not her own crap.
The Xander thing always bugged me, I get he's not the fighter or as powerful as Willow or Buffy, but they could have given him a skill, the everyman schlub thing worked, but it also should have had some benefits, you know Xander is the guy that looks at a situation from a normal perspective, Willow looks at it magically, Buffy physically, Giles methodically, Xander should have had moments of insight others overlooked, plus give him something, the military stuff was cool until they introduced Riley and had to nerf that to make him look better, but still transfer that over a little maybe like he's a great shot with a crossbow or a normal bow if need be so whilst he's passable in H2H he makes up for it by being their version of a sniper, which he is better at than Riley due to him actually using a crossbow for years and Riley using more conventional weapons.
I think the timejump thing would have worked also, and I thought also how about Willow having nightmares about Buffy in some kind of hell, then trying to find an answer if it's real or not, as for Buffy being able to close the portal, yeah that was a bit of a meh ok moment, like I get they made Dawn out of Buffy, but Dawn and Buffy are not the same, this is why Dawn doesn't have Slayer powers, what makes Buffy the Slayer isn't in Dawn, and what makes Dawn the Key isn't in Buffy, but I guess the idea is Dawn's blood had to open the portal but their blood is the same so Buffy's could close it, but then they didn't do that, they just had Buffy dive in, and I don't think she bled out so how did she close the portal? Because they didn't say her life was needed to close the portal, but her blood, so from the get go that didn't fit imo and I always kind of raised an eyebrow over that.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Apr 25, 2020 20:25:05 GMT
The thing with Angel is his soul went with his body because he was re-ensouled, if Angeleus had gone into the portal I doubt Angel's soul would have gone to that dimension also, plus that's the difference Buffy's soul went to "heaven", Angel went to a hell dimension, he didn't go to hell...
But that's arguably because his soul wouldn't have been connected to his body, had "Angelus" gone through before Willow could re-ensoul him. Say that somehow Angel, while in the hell dimension, had his soul removed; probably not through the conventional, moment of perfect happiness, but say it was removed some other way and Angelus found his way back to Earth; there's no reason the soul would go with him, but it's maybe ambiguous if it would go anywhere else or be trapped in the hell dimension. By that same token though, Buffy's body and her soul were separated, at the moment of her death; and arguably there was at least a moment between the cause and effect - between Buffy's death and the portal closing - where Buffy was dead (body and soul are separated)where all the various hell dimensions are still bleeding into Earth's dimension; then the walls go back - which side of the dimensional walls does Buffy's soul end up and could it have gotten stuck on the wrong side? Now, there might be an argument to be made that when the portal closes, everything goes back to the way it was; everything from hell(s) goes back to hell, everything on Earth stayed on Earth, but there's at least speculation that the dragon that appeared in the finale of Angel was the dragon that flew out while the portal was open. It also kind of seems inconsequential if there were no lasting repercussions of the portal being opened for even a little bit, if everything reverted to normal the moment it was closed. My response is sort multifaceted. First, I don't think Earth is actually meant to be a hell dimension in Buffy. Holland Manners tried to convince Angel of this, but Angel later acknowledges this and says, in essence, that he come to consider that idea full of shit and didn't actually believe it. At least within Buffy and the knowledge of the characters, I believe once the others knew Buffy was in heaven, there was a line about how they wondered which "heaven dimension" she was in. Joss and company kept it ambiguous, which is mostly fair, with so many different faith systems in the real world; combined with the fact that Joss himself is an avowed athiest, I think that's probably a happy medium. I have questioned the fact that Buffy felt her friends were safe and she wasn't needed anymore on Earth; when that clearly wasn't true. I've long thought it might be interesting if she found out she was in fact in hell, where she proved to be a pain in the ass for the demon powers that ruled it; and as she was about to be pulled out, aware of what was happening, some big bad she had pissed off decided to take their revenge and wipe her memory and make her think she was in heaven, so she'd feel betrayed by her friends for rescuing her. I think Earth is probably more a neutral dimension where good and evil exist on more or less balanced terms; and the struggle is to try and tip the scale in the favor of one side or another. I think this also tracks with the lore of ancient times and the "old ones," the first demons, and the overall idea that Earth was at one time a hell dimension, but something changed that drove the pure demons out; which ostensibly shifted that balance and made Earth what it is now. Then there's vampires and their souls. They describe the spell to re-ensoul Angel as pulling his soul from the "ether", which basically just.... everywhere and nowhere. I think it's reasonable that while a human-turned-vampire doesn't get their soul, nor does their soul move on to heaven; it's damned and doesn't get to go to heaven. That's arguably why even when Spike or Angel have their soul, holy objects like crosses or holy water still burn them. I've even thought it would be interesting if they found that, when a vampire gets staked, they aren't just gone, they're actually getting pulled to some other hell dimension that vampires originate from and are in their purest form (even more so than Pylea); that Vampires are demons that don't have full purchase on our dimension, which is why they don't reflect and staking them unachors them. And I've often thought the soul does to, which I realize contradicts my earlier premise, so may be it just stays in the ether, but I thought it would make a great twist if Buffy found out she was essentially sending all these souls to eternal torment in hell every time she killed a vampire. With their memories though, this goes a little further into the weeds of what the soul is on Buffy and the nature of vampires and their humanity etc. There's a lot of debate just over whether vampires are, like Giles claims in the first episode, just a demon with the memories of the human; versus a human mutated into a demon. I'm in the latter camp. If it walks, talks and thinks like Kevin, it's Kevin, even if Kevin now drinks blood and spontaneously combusts in sunlight. The way it's established, there's no distinction between identity of the human pre-sire and the vampire post-sire, beyond the addition of demonic traits. Spike considers the woman his mother he sired, not "Williams"; and consequently it was the song she played to him as a human child and the emotional impact it made on William the human that had the psychological effect on Spike for the First to manipulate. Harmony is Harmony whether a human or a vampire. Therefore there are no memories to be had from his soul. There's brief disorientation and confusion when the body and soul are reunited, but the identity never leaves the vampire body. And it would be unfair to the human/soul if that weren't the case, since the burden of guilt would be inflicted on the part of the being that wasn't that, isn't considered responsible for the actions of the demon. It's really more so Angel/Liam/Angelus who is different from this mold; and the further they get into it on AtS, the more they treat Angelus as a sort of split personality, which I think may actually be closer to the truth than they realize. I think it's plausible that Liam was acting out for want of his father's affections and feelings of being a failure, but on some level always expected that eventually everything would change and become a respectable citizen; and that he never really gave upon any of the ideals his father may have instilled in him. By becoming a vampire, it was a step too far that he could never take back, he could never gain his father's approval now (something Darla later observed herself); he was now something that he himself, on some level, would detest and I think that could have fractured his psyche. And so he actively took the most destructive path of behavior forward, antagonizing anyone who might actually be able to kill him - his entire village, the Master, Holtz - and between luck (or misfortune), his own cleverness and overpowering sense of self-preservation, he keeps surviving; so he has to keep upping the stakes, so to speak, until someone can finally get the better of him. It's funny, when you consider that Wesley became a better and more skilled fighter, in a fairly short amount of time, compared 7 seasons of Xander on Buffy. Cordelia too, for that matter.
So here's my personal fan theory on this. And what's more, despite the implications in Get it Done, the Slayer powers don't actually come from a demon. The demon might have been a part of the spell, like a sacrifice; it might have been complete bullshit the shadowmen told Slayers to keep them in line, the way Tara's family told all the women in their family that they were part demon. Maybe that's how the shadowmen created the first Slayer, but "The Guardians" who also made the scyth, perpetuated the power in some other, more sustainable way.
Either way, the truth about the nature of the Slayer powers is that it's the mystical energy drawn from the sun. The sun has immense power, that could sustain the Slayer line for as long as there's an Earth to defend. It won't diminish when there's suddenly two Slayers using at the same time, let alone thousands. It's a symbol of purity and good. Sunlight burns vampires. So what better way to fight vampires than with a girl infused with the power of the sun?
Then there's the Key, the big ball of living energy that can be used to open a breach between all dimensions. With this theory, the truth about the "Key" is that it wasn't just a big ball of licw energy, it was an infant sun.
So the "key energy" that resides in Dawn is a more concentrated form of the energy that gives Buffy her powers; which to begin with is why they sent the Key to her, it's kind of her birthright. There's a connection even before the Key was made human. Just being in proximity to Dawn would supercharge her own natural abilities. But just as importantly, by make a Slayer the keep of the Key, there's a built in fail safe; because rather than sacrifice the Key, the Slayer can sacrifice themselves and the sun-derives Slayer powers inside her will close the breach.
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