History WMG / BuffyTheVampireSlayer

* Faith's still alive. One of Xander's best friends is a Slayer who as far as we know never heard about the incident, and was vengeful enough to try and go through her ex in a bid to get at Faith. His other best friend is a vengeful witch who by the time the incident happened had it in for Faith. And Angel wanted to try and get Faith to reform. He wouldn't want her death getting in the way were Buffy or Willow to find out, and Xander kept quiet about it out of shame.

*** In the same episode ("Family") Spike said that he does not care what happens to Tara. However he has an apparent change of heart and hits her to find out she is human - thereby helping her. Why should Spike help Tara? Consider this: Spike *faked* the pain. He knew that Tara was an evil thing, not a human being, but when his chip did not fire, he decided to trick the Scoobies. He probably also knew that Tara was going after Willow and decided to take a step back and watch what happens, just for the lulz. Sure, Spike has been changing a lot through the seasons and eventually he really falls in love with Buffy. But does Spike like Willow? I don't think so. Does he like it when Willow suffers? Quite possibly so. Does he see Willow as an obstacle between himself and Buffy? Likely. Don't forget that Spike tried to kill Willow (4th season) only to find out they put the chip in his head. Helping Tara to maintain her disguise was the natural thing to do if you wanted to harm Willow. With Spike hitting Tara and apparently proving that she was not a demon, the Scoobies thought it futile to test Tara's "demonishness" more thoroughly. Big mistake.

She seems to have a strange connection to Buffy -- firstly, in S4 she is the only one to realize that something is wrong with Buffy when Faith has taken over her body. Secondly -- and perhaps more tellingly -- Tara is the one in the dreams from the S4 finale to prophesy Dawn's existence. The prophetic dreams that Slayers have connect them to the rest of the Slayer line and Buffy barely knows Tara at this point. Why else would Tara be in her dream, predicting the future no less, if Tara isn't part of the Slayer line?

* Walk Through the Fire: Like it or not, Joss is decaring that he's here. He'll walk through the fire (the fire can be both writer's block and disassociation) and let it burn. "I touch the fire and it freezes me/I look into it and it's black/Why can't I feel/My skin should crack and peel/I want the fire back." These lines from Buffy about how she feels nothing sonce coming back clearly echo Joss' feelings since the show came back. After going through the horrible pain of killing his creation at the end of season 5, anything else he does with Buffy feels hollow. "Now through the smoke/She calls to me/To make my way across the flame/To save the day/Or maybe melt away/ I guess it's all the same." The "she" is not just Glory, but the show. It's calling Joss like the Siren's song. His show has been uncancelled, and he can either "save the day" (i.e. continue making groundbreaking television) or "fade away" (let the quality slip and have the show end as a joke). Joss seems to agree with Neil Young, that it's better to burn out than fade away. The finale of season five was burning out, and now he feels he's doomed to let the show fade away. And with his indifference, he feels it's all the same. Spike's lines, "I hope she fries/I'm free if that bitch dies/I'd better help her out" continue the theme of wanting the show gone, but still doing everything he can to keep it going.

* If only this was cannon (it would be awesome but will never happen). BTW I agree 100%.

* Walk Through the Fire: Like it or not, Joss is decaring that he's here. He'll walk through the fire (the fire can be both writer's block and disassociation) and let it burn. "I touch the fire and it freezes me/I look into it and it's black/Why can't I feel/My skin should crack and peel/I walk a fire path." These lines from Buffy about how she feels nothing sonce coming back clearly echo Joss' feelings since the show came back. After going through the horrible pain of killing his creation at the end of season 5, anything else he does with Buffy feels hollow. "Now through the smoke/She calls to me/To make my way across the flame/To save the day/Or maybe melt away/ I guess it's all the same." The "she" is not just Glory, but the show. It's calling Joss like the Siren's song. His show has been uncancelled, and he can either "save the day" (i.e. continue making groundbreaking television) or "fade away" (let the quality slip and have the show end as a joke). Joss seems to agree with Neil Young, that it's better to burn out than fade away. The finale of season five was burning out, and now he feels he's doomed to let the show fade away. And with his indifference, he feels it's all the same. Spike's lines, "I hope she fries/I'm free if that bitch dies/I'd better help her out" continue the theme of wanting the show gone, but still doing everything he can to keep it going.

* Nah, gotta say he's going to bring back Tara somehow. Joss will want to use something that makes Conversations With Dead People look about as bad as Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered, especially since AmberBenson just knew he was going to do something horrible and declined returning.

And make all of the girls lesbians.

[[spoiler: ** Called it. The last Buffy hadn't been released yet but the last Angel & Faith reveals chatting up a new girl was exactly what she was doing, she offered Faith a job training Deepscan, her slayer bodyguards.]]

Buffy working for her was the focal point mid way through the series then that story was dropped, and she flew Buffy, Willow and Xander out to fight Simone. [[spoiler: Now Buffy is defeated and pretty much everyone else is tied up.]] The last issue suggests Buffy will win the day with a little help from her friends. While Kennedy might not exactly be a friend what's she doing while all this is going on? Looking for a new girlfriend? Maybe she is, but she's about the only one left to do something, and it it would be a ChekhovsGun.

And she expressed the Slayer line's subconscious knowledge of what a Slayer is by creating a part-human, part-demon being to kill demons.

** I've long held the belief that Tara's death was a sort of balance required by the resurrection spell. Gain a life, lose a life. The rain example used above was the result of Dracula though, not Willow's use of magic.

*** Then things get interesting. There's a dream sequence where Faith is civil with Buffy, hinting at how to defeat the Mayor. This, coupled with her saving Buffy from an earlier assassination attempt, hints that she doesn't hate Buffy as such, but hates the way she is treated, and is also pretty jealous. Anyway, Faith wakes up from her coma, haunted by visions of Buffy coming after her and the Mayor, who had become a father figure. She confronts her, they fight, then Faith learns of the Mayor's parting gift for her, a device that swaps her body with Buffy's. She uses it then proceeds to basically be a {{Jerkass}} as Buffy, before feeling the calling of being a Slayer, once when she is genuinely affected at a girl's gratitude after saving her from a vampire, then when she hears about vampires holding a church full of people hostage. She goes to save the day, confronts Buffy, then when their bodies are switched back runs off. When she is wailing on and abusing Buffy in Faith's body she is actually doing this to herself, filled with a great deal of self hatred.

The Cheese Man is a benevolent demon or spirit. He made a space for the cheese, opening a pathway through Willow (during the head/heart/spirit/hands spell, which called upon the Slayer demon) so the dream could enter the four of them and help protect them from [[spoiler: the First]]. He tells Xander that “[the cheese] will not protect you” because even in dreams, even dreams from the Cheese Man, there are things in the Buffyverse that can harm you (such as the First). He tells Giles that he wears the cheese, the cheese does not wear him either because Giles must be the important one to survive the dream; If he lets the dream be the important one... well,, [[InSovietRussiaTropeMocksYou in possessed body, dream wears you]]), or because the cheese man is the one who brought the dream, he is not merely a part of it. The Cheese Man’s appearance in Buffy’s dream is him reminding her, “Hello, ‘’cheese’’”, and from then on she is more strongly, lucidly in control.

A big deal is made about the fact that magic is a balancing act (make fire to light the bbq, it causes rain as a result). Willow was getting deep into powerful magic, and was constantly using it for her own personal pleasure. Thus, [[spoiler:Tara getting shot was an act to balance out the scales and restore equilibrium to nature, as Tara's death would undo all of the pleasure/comfort/convenience Willow had given herself by misusing the magic. Making it a "natural" death was just an additional slap in the face to Willow, since it made it impossible to restore Tara to life.]]

Vengeance Demons have the ability to become whoever they need to be in order to get close to their marks. In Anya's case, it was a girl who was a senior in high school. Anya no longer needed to to be a girl in high school since she graduated with the rest of the Scoobies, leaving her personality a blank slate save for [[HumansAreBastards what she remembered about humans]] from her line of work.

Even if the authorities did a traditional coverup, he could easily be thrown in jail for spiking his drinks with mind-altering drugs. Drugging people to the point where they think they're a caveman and their lives were seriously endangered (they couldn't identify a car and one had a car crash into him), especially when their only major crime was being pompous, is the kind of thing that gets you thrown in jail for a long, long time.