| 1 | Headscratchers for ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. Spoilers abound. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[AC:[[{{Headscratchers/BuffyTheVampireSlayer}} Click here]] to return to the main Headscratchers page.]] |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | [[folder: Willow's acceptance at every college ever]] |
| 8 | * Willow should never have been able to get into top universities like Yale, Harvard, and Oxford. Competitive candidates for those schools need more than just good grades and high SAT scores, but Willow spends her free time fighting evil, not building her resume. What could she even write a convincing admissions essay about, when all of her main accomplishments are secret? |
| 9 | ** The school did trust her to teach unsupervised. That probably translates to a freakin' awesome letter of recommendation. |
| 10 | ** Two things. First we don't know how much time she does or doesn't spend building her resume and more to the point they used those colleges because everybody recognizes them. Cornell might be an outstanding school but the number of people (especially the target teen audience) who've even heard of Cornell is rather low. |
| 11 | ** Wasn't there an episode in Season 2 where Microsoft tried to recruit Willow right out of high school after seeing her aptitude test results? That might turn a few college recruiters' heads. |
| 12 | ** Also, we don't know much about her parents. There's two kinds of people that get in: those with overly great applications, and those with connections. Hell, there's been controversy lately because it's been discovered that kids are automatically passing classes because it's felt like they've paid for it, so they deserve to pass. Basically, corruption could have gotten her in, via her parents. |
| 13 | *** Doesn't seem likely. There's never any suggestion that her parents are especially wealthy or influential. If they were, Cordelia probably would have tried to recruit Willow for her GirlPosse instead of constantly insulting her. I suspect it was mostly just the writers' way of saying "Willow is super freakin' smart!" |
| 14 | ** Willow might also be the type who's naturally gifted at writing essays and reports, and so can type up a really good essay in a short space of time. She might have a good memory and be able to pass tests and exams with minimal studying because she already remembers the facts. As mentioned above, she was nearly recruited by Microsoft the previous year and had a lengthy time where she was teaching a computer class at school. There's also her being assigned as Percy's tutor, which might also look good on her resume. And a slightly sadder possibility - maybe she was already testing the limits of her magic by senior year and that helped her standing? |
| 15 | *** Considering how insanely competitive some of these schools are, 1600 SATs, tutoring one guy and even briefly teaching a class probably wouldn't cut it. She does have some impressive extracurriculars, but "I'm an apprentice witch and I help my best friend slay vampires" doesn't really look good on an application letter. |
| 16 | [[/folder]] |
| 17 | |
| 18 | [[folder: Season Finale Death Count/ Role Call]] |
| 19 | * In Harmony's first appearance in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E3TheHarshLightOfDay The Harsh Light of Day]]", and "[[Recap/AngelS02E17Disharmony Disharmony]]", nobody knows she is a vampire. When the graduating year organised to take down the Mayor and his minions in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E22GraduationDayPart2 Graduation Day Part 2]]", why did no one organise a post-battle roll call to see who was alive, who was dead (they should have decapitated the bodies just to be sure), and who was missing (presumably a vampire)? They just all get on with their lives, preparing for college, moving to California... Since they are not surprised to see her, it can be assumed she did not have a funeral. Was she just left dead outside the school or taken away by a vampire? |
| 20 | ** She was probably either taken away by a vampire or buried under the rubble when the school exploded. After the explosion, emergency services arrived. Who, exactly, would be able to take a roll call of survivors in the middle of the subsequent police investigation? |
| 21 | ** Or maybe there was a role call and Harmony ''was'' found dead, but none of our MainCharacters cared enough about Harmony to notice and/or remember. |
| 22 | ** Since she was turned instead of being killed outright, that means that a vamp had to have taken her away and fed her it's blood after the battle. We see her getting bit when the students fall back, but that's the last we see. The question is how a vamp carrying a to-go meal would have gotten past all of people armed with stakes, axes, and flame throwers. You'd think it would have just ditched her as dead weight. |
| 23 | [[/folder]] |
| 24 | |
| 25 | [[folder:Does the Wishverse still exist in the present as of Doppelgangland]] |
| 26 | * It was eliminated when Cordelia's wish was undone, right? It seems like it was pointless to send Vampire Willow home, given that the Wishverse was only going to last a few more minutes past her arrival. Otherwise, if an AlternateTimeline was permanently created, Giles must have felt pretty silly standing there after smashing the amulet at the end of 'The Wish' seeing as, from his point of view, it apparently didn't do anything. Either way, it JBM. |
| 27 | ** I think it's probably there. It's just "Crappy-no-Slayer-verse". You know, like the one with no shrimp or the one of all shrimp. |
| 28 | ** I'd imagine there's only one active timeline at a time, and the rest are just possible, alternate histories. The wishverse is still out there, but it's like a movie that's been paused or stopped right at the point where Giles broke the amulet. You can pull things in and out of it with magic, but it's not moving forward anymore: that timeline ends with the smashing of the amulet. So in a sense, it was totally pointless to send Vamp Willow back (doubly so since she got staked before the amulet broke anyway), but the Scoobies couldn't really bring themselves to stake her, and they couldn't let her run loose in the real world. It was just a way of getting rid of her without killing her themselves. |
| 29 | ** I'd argue that it WAS pointless sending Vamp!Willow back, but also that the Scoobies didn't really know that. As far as they know, it's just an alternate dimension. |
| 30 | ** I’m under the impression that the Wishverse is a pocket dimension, that means it only has a very limited existence in the entire universe, it’s not like Pygea or the Achatla’s hellworld. |
| 31 | *** To understand how the Wishverse works with regards to "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E16Doppelgangland Doppelgangland]]", you have to think about Anya's spell: a Temporal Fold. To access the Wishverse again, Anya has to be able to reach back through time to the point where she lost the power centre. The Wishverse still exists as undoing the wish doesn't rewind time, it just makes the effects of the wish reverse and everything go back to how it should be. The Wishverse directly replaced the 'Normal' universe for the episode as it was a play-out of the events that would have happened had Buffy not made it to Sunnydale, but in terms of the timeline, it still happened. |
| 32 | [[/folder]] |
| 33 | |
| 34 | [[folder:Burying Demons]] |
| 35 | * Why did Buffy want to bury the demon at the beginning of "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E9TheWish The Wish]]"? It doesn't really make sense that she would deliberately ''go out of her way'' to maintain TheMasquerade. |
| 36 | ** It looked like it was in the middle of a family picnic spot. Leaving a dead demon stuffed in a back alley is one thing; leaving it where a bunch of little kiddies are going to stumble over it, poke it with sticks, and catch any weird demonic diseases its rotting corpse contains is quite another. |
| 37 | ** Why wouldn't Buffy want to maintain the Masquerade? She spends most of Season 2 doing just that and keeping her identity very secret. |
| 38 | [[/folder]] |
| 39 | |
| 40 | [[folder:Ripper's Age]] |
| 41 | * Okay, "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E6BandCandy Band Candy]]"...adults regress to age 16 on eating magic chocolate. Granted. So why does Giles become Ripper? He didn't become Ripper until he went off the rails as an undergraduate - given that he was take up to Oxford in the <quick calculation> Sixties (or earlier, depending how old he was meant to be) he would have needed to be a fairly well adjusted and studious public schoolboy. |
| 42 | ** RuleOfFunny aside... this can be fanwanked as Giles simply being smart enough to go to university early. Or adults regress to "late teens" rather than 16. But yeah, the magic chocolate seemed to operate fairly arbitrarily. |
| 43 | ** They didn't become carbon copies of their teenage selves (they retained all their memories of being adults, at any rate), the candy just stripped away their maturity. Giles minus maturity equals Ripper. |
| 44 | *** Pretty much. If Giles ever got turned the result would probably not be him ending up like Dalton in S3, but something that would make Angelus look like Mother Theresa. |
| 45 | ** Sixties 'or earlier'? Giles seems to be in his mid-forties at the start of the series (the same as the actor Anthony Head), so was most likely at university in the late 1960s or early 1970s... |
| 46 | ** Giles says that his "Ripper" phase was when he was 21, when he dropped out of Oxford. He also states in the same episode that he hasn't seen Ethan and the others for over "twenty years". This implies he is about 45 at the time, and would have been at school in the late 60s and at university in the early 70s. About the question, it seems like the candy simply makes you immature rather than a teenager, as not all teenagers are the yobbish morons the adults become on the candy. |
| 47 | * As mentioned above, the characters retained all of their memories from being adults. So even if Giles was at teenage level maturity, he was teenage level maturity Giles with the memory of having been Ripper at some point in his life. Of course, he would have thought this was cooler than being a librarian and used this to hit on Joyce. So the events of "Band Candy" still make sense even with him having been Ripper in his twenties. |
| 48 | [[/folder]] |
| 49 | |
| 50 | [[folder: Any Soul-Stealer, As Long As It's This One]] |
| 51 | * In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E17Enemies Enemies]]", how did [[spoiler:Giles get the Mayor to call on a soul-stealing demon sorceror that owed him a favor, or contact the exact demon that the Mayor had called upon]]? The former would have been a huge GambitRoulette with some seemingly unaccessible knowledge, the second would be a huge coincidence with some seemingly unaccesssible knowledge. |
| 52 | ** Unless he just turned up one day in the Mayor's office and said "I heard you had a problem..." |
| 53 | ** Here's how he could do it without it being a GambitRoulette: [[spoiler:Giles being the smart guy that he is, he has a lot of connections that just seem to keep popping up that are well outside of what the Watcher's Council apparently has access to. He probably starting keeping his ear to the ground for anything the Mayor might be planning regarding Angel after Angel came back, since he knows when Angel is Angelus that's really bad news for everyone. As soon as he heard the Mayor was looking to flip Angel or something similar he called in the favor of the soul-stealer to offer its services to the Mayor.]] Which also makes the whole episode one of Giles' [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Crowning Moments of Awesome]]. |
| 54 | ** The Mayor says something about how it was hard to summon the demon, which means he contacted it first. |
| 55 | *** Or that he received a communique to the effect that "there is a demon who can help you, all you have to do is summon it." |
| 56 | ** Who says that Giles must have arranged it so that the mayor would contact that particular demon? Here's a possible scenario: the Mayor contacts the demon about turning Angel evil. It's not a stretch to assume that the demon knew of Giles' connection to Angel through Buffy, since Buffy's relationships with both of them were not exactly secrets. As a result, turning Angel evil could well get Giles killed (like Ms. Calendar). Since the demon owes Giles, and presumably doesn't want him killed, he warns Giles about what the mayor is planning. Then they work out the plan to pretend to turn Angel evil. It's still sheer dumb luck that the mayor just happened to contact a demon who owed Giles a favor, but stranger things can happen on TV. |
| 57 | *** We really don't know what EXACTLY the demon intended to do. It possible that the number of demons able to steal souls from ensouled vampires against their will is extremely limited. Given both Spike and Angel's circumstances I'm willing to believe that there are hundreds maybe thousands of ensouled vampires. On a planet of 6 billion I can justify that ten thousand people never randomly bumped into each other. |
| 58 | *** Hell, it's not even that unlikely for it to be dumb luck. It just looks like dumb luck taken on its own, but as a part of the series, it's just statistics. Yes, it was very fortunate that one of Giles' contacts was the demon contracted to steal Angel's soul. But none of Giles' contacts found the Glove of Whomever or identified the fake Watcher before it was too late, none of them were involved with Ethan in any of his various plots, none of them were able to warn him about the gym coach's demon steroids, etc. etc. Giles is a man with a lot of friends in low places, especially considering his history as Ripper. In seven years of fighting on the Hellmouth, it just stands to reason that one of his contacts might strike gold every now and again. |
| 59 | ** Giles says to the demon shaman at the episode's end: 'thank you for coming to me'. Therefore, the Mayor sought the shaman out first, who then notified Giles at some point in the episode. |
| 60 | [[/folder]] |
| 61 | |
| 62 | [[folder:"Wish" Darla were There]] |
| 63 | * In "The Wish," where is Darla? She was one of The Master's biggest supporters in the regular continuity, and only left his side to travel the world with Angelus, who in this world was still ensouled. So where was she? It seems unlikely Angel killed here in this Buffy-less Sunnydale, as The Master probably escaped following a successful Harvest. So where'd she go? Wouldn't she be the one most likely to be attending The Master's weird "mass production blood machine thing's activation" party? |
| 64 | ** The entire premise of vampires ruling Sunnydale in "The Wish" doesn't hold under scrutiny, IMO. Why are people still living in Sunnydale? Why haven't they called the army or at least moved out? It makes no sense whatsoever. Also in "The Harvest", The Master's rising is supposed to end the world, In "Prophecy Girl" we see the demons coming out from the Hellmouth because he escaped with the clear implication of them being ready to be unleashed upon the world. In "The Wish" however The Master is content to rule over...The Bronze. Talk about DiminisingVillainThreat. Maybe Darla just found this behaviour too cowardly and boring and moved elsewhere. |
| 65 | ** That's a problem I've had with that episode too: how much more awesome would it have been to really follow up on the what-if premise from "Prophecy Girl", to have the Hellmouth open, demons wandering the Earth and the traumatized remains of human society clinging to a threadbare veneer of daylight normalcy (in other words, kinda like what we saw in Wishworld Sunnydale, except it's like that ''everywhere''). It's tempting to say that's outside the scope of a TV show, but Joss eventually did exactly that sort of story in ''{{Series/Dollhouse}}'', and it was incredible. But anyway, as for Darla, I'd guess that the White Hats fought and killed her in one of their early battles. The Master's disciple Luke is also missing: if Giles and the gang staked Luke and Darla early on, the Master might have captured and turned Xander and Willow into his new disciples as his way of evening the score. |
| 66 | *** Though now that I think about it, maybe there's a little bit of FridgeBrilliance in that first part. Cordelia wished that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, and Anya granted her wish. If the Master's ascension had caused any apocalyptic problems, though, the Watchers Council would have sent Buffy there in a hurry, and that would've gone against the wish. So maybe the wish not only {{Cosmic Retcon}}ed Buffy's original arrival in Sunnydale, it also retconned the Master's imprisonment and plans to make sure Buffy ''still'' didn't have any reason to show up even after his release. Still woulda loved to see a full-blown demon post-apocalypse, though... |
| 67 | *** Also, without Buffy, "Prophecy Girl" didn't happen. IIRC, the Harvest was just supposed to free the Master, using people's energy. When that failed, he had to get the energy somewhere else. According to the Prophecy and his own monologue to Buffy, drinking Buffy's blood (or just any Slayer's ?) is that exact boost of energy and it allows him to escape, all on his own, without vampirizing any additional energy. In the Wish universe, since the Harvest succeeded, he may not have gone after a Slayer just for a power-up. YMMV, but without that power boost, he may not have opened the Hellmouth for demons to escape... or he may not have had enough power to "reign" over more than Sunnydale. |
| 68 | ** As to where the army is: Sunnydale still has its Mayor, one assumes. Whatever pact he made to turn Sunnydale into a demon feeding ground is still in effect. |
| 69 | ** To the above tropers I submit we simply didn't spend enough time in Wishworld to see the damage. Note that when Buffy does arrive this is clearly a battle hardened Buffy who's been through more trauma, based on her scars and attitude, than our Buffy went through. I think the world is like Sunnydale the Master rules Sunnydale FROM the Bronze, not the Bronze and he probably figured out something. It's probably like Angel After the Fall and the Master has a small relatively unimportant territory. |
| 70 | ** Possible, but not terribly likely. If the Hellmouth had opened that spectacularly, the Slayer would've been sent to contain it a long time ago. That she wasn't implies that either the Wish rewrote the Master's ascension such that no great amount of demons came out, or else that one demon came out, ate a few hundred people, and wandered off, and the rest weren't actually in a mood to follow. Generally speaking, the Wish is simply not nearly as bleak as the episode tries to make itself out to be, and in fact is probably only a slightly worse world than the main reality of the Buffyverse. First off, we know that, despite appearances, the Buffyverse kind of sucks. Demons seriously abducted people to be worked to death in a world devoid of hope for the demon dimension equivalent of thousands of years before Buffy came along to stop it at the beginning of season three, and Los Angelos isn't situated directly atop a Hellmouth the way Sunnydale is. |
| 71 | *** Most Buffy episodes involve the Scoobies taking on a monster of the week, and while most of those monsters of the week will have successfully menaced Sunnydale, equivalent monsters of the week will have been beaten back by Buffy in Cleveland. Sucks for Sunnydale, but Cleveland is better off. Furthermore, several monsters of the week are somewhere between slightly and extremely likely to take Giles' side of the fight, not the Master's. Amy's mother Catherine, for example, will successfully witch her way onto the Sunnydale High cheerleader squad and thus be invested in the status quo, and side with Giles against the vampiric invaders. Marcy from Out of Sight, Out of Mind might also end up taking Giles' side in the long run. Plus, we know that a different gang of Scoobies was assembled by Giles, one that's likely far more prone to taking losses...But it was only slightly smaller than the Scooby team in the main Buffyverse, which implies that it's had several times as many members as the Buffyverse Scoobies. In addition, the Master and the Mayor are not going to get along, and although neither of them are likely to side with Giles, the conflict between the two gives the good guys some breathing room. The Master also appears to have won, putting the Mayor's ascension plans permanently to rest. Spike came to Sunnydale looking for the Slayer to add another notch to his belt. He probably would've headed to Cleveland instead in the Wishverse, and without Angelus around to even up the odds, he almost certainly would've gotten himself and Drusilla staked by the end of the Wishverse's season two. |
| 72 | *** Darla and Luke are both absent, heavily implying that they were killed off by the white hats (probably as a result of their unsavory new allies), leaving the Master's most vicious servants as Xander and Willow, vampires only two years risen, the latter of whom was no more difficult to remove than any other monster of the week when she showed up in Dopplegangland. Xander and Willow are certainly far more powerful than average vampire grunts, even ones with a century or more of experience on them, but they're not nearly vicious enough to stand up to the likes of Spike, Drusilla, Luke, Darla, and other vampiric heavies from the Buffyverse. Plus, as of the end of The Wish, they're both dead. |
| 73 | *** The biggest threat to the world at large is the Master's mass blood production scheme. Probably the humans fed through the plant aren't killed, just mostly drained and then herded back into a cage to recover and be redrained at a later date. That's slightly better for the captured humans, but it means that the Master's minions have just removed the one limit on vampiric population, specifically that your human population has to be way higher than your vampire population to keep things stable. The food supply is greatly increased and far more stable, allowing the Master to create a positively massive vampire army, do away with the masquerade, and take over the world like a zombie plague. |
| 74 | *** Ultimately, whether or not the Wishverse ends up a twisted hellscape or not isn't decided as of the end of The Wish. It's come much, much closer than the Buffyverse ever has, because Joss is much less reluctant to have the good guys suffer significant losses in the Wishverse for obvious reasons, but both the Master and Giles are down to the wire, very nearly out of resources and struggling to be the last one standing, because whoever ends up controlling Sunnydale is going to dictate whether vampires seize the world from humans or not. Stopping the Master after he gets some real momentum going is simply not possible. Fortunately, it's very likely that Kendra's watcher will direct her to Sunnydale immediately after her activation, since he's sent her to Sunnydale to investigate far less significant goings on in the Buffyverse and was no more aware that Buffy had come back in the Buffyverse than in the Wishverse (where she actually didn't). Thus, ultimate victory or defeat in the Wishverse comes down to whether Kendra, Giles, and possibly Larry and Oz (if they escaped the plant after staking Willow) can kill the Master. |
| 75 | ** Maybe I misunderstood something here, but wouldn't Kendra be a non-activated Slayer (i.e. a normal human) if Buffy had never come to Sunnydale? |
| 76 | ** That makes Buffy's Watcher not believing Giles about Sunnydale being a hellmouth a little odd, but it would lend an extra layer of meaning to Giles saying that the Master is "the local vampire lord around these parts", if there are other vampires and supernatural figures doing the same elsewhere. And it'd explain why Cordelia's family, and other families with the means to just pack up and move away, still live in Sunnydale: maybe Sunnydale's one of the ''better'' places left in the world. As bad as he is, the Master might be the only thing that's keeping the even bigger and meaner demons at bay. |
| 77 | * Well, it was established in "Welcome to the Hellmouth" that the Master had tried to open the Hellmouth, and got stuck, "like a cork in a bottle." His escaping that interdimensional bottleneck opens the Hellmouth. In the Wishverse, he escaped, so the Hellmouth is open. Demons aren't pouring out of it and the Earth isn't Hell, though, for some reason. The most likely reason, unfortunately, is simply budget. Having lots of rubber suits and CGI demons wandering Sunnydale just wasn't feasible for a one-off episode, so they went with the cheaper threat of "town run by vampires." To explain this, perhaps the Master never really intended to completely uncork the Hellmouth and let hordes of demons out, but rather to open it "enough" that more evil magic energy would be available, and this would make vampires stronger and better able to rule the world, instead of destroying it. A few demons likely escaped with the Master, but weren't seen in the episode because they went off to do their own thing. Basically, the Master's endgame wasn't to suck the Earth into Hell, or make Hell on Earth, but just to make Earth a paradise for vampires, and he seems to have succeeded in that goal admirably. There's definitely a lot going on offscreen that we don't get to see, and likely more and more powerful demons are wandering around, killing and getting killed, but it's likely there's also some EnemyCivilWar happening between vampires and everything else, hence why the world isn't a complete monster dystopia. As for the original question, why Darla isn't there: again, it likely had to do with her actress being unavailable at the time, the writers feeling that she was sufficiently unknown to have the proper emotional punch for the audience, or a combination of both. In-universe, a likely explanation is that, with the Hellmouth open(ish) and Sunnydale pretty firmly under the Master's control, he sent Darla and Luke away to begin securing power bases elsewhere, while promoting Willow and Xander to the now-vacant spot of CoDragons. |
| 78 | * Darla was with Luke in the original timeline during the Harvest, its possible that Angel set Luke on fire and Darla got in the way or something, which would explain why the Master chooses to keep Angel in prison being tortured, in the original timeline Darla was his favourite, we can assume that she was in the Wishverse. |
| 79 | [[/folder]] |
| 80 | |
| 81 | [[folder: Losing Faith]] |
| 82 | * "Band Candy", "Lover's Walk", "Gingerbread", "Helpless". Where's Faith? Wouldn't she be helpful in these situations? No wonder she felt isolated from the group. |
| 83 | ** Reference is made at one point to Faith going off on walkabout, hence her absence from that particular episode. Of course, her going on walkabout is probably a ''consequence'' of her feeling isolated. |
| 84 | ** True, that's in "Helpless", but the point stands elsewhere. Also, she's contacted in "The Zeppo" but is never even asked to help avert the apocalypse. |
| 85 | *** She's there for the final battle in ''The Zeppo''. We see Buffy yell "Faith, go for the heart!" |
| 86 | ** Hm. In "Band Candy" and "Gingerbread," the adults of Sunnydale have been magically driven insane. Given that Faith is both mentally unstable and older than the rest of the cast, maybe she was part of the problem rather than the solution. Faith on band candy is a terrifying concept. In "Lover's Walk", as I recall there really wasn't a point where it would have made sense to try to contact her. |
| 87 | ** Um, it isn't canon that Faith is older than the others. In fact, most fans get the impression that she's younger. It definitely would have been nice had they explained Faith's absences a little more. Just a line would have been nice. |
| 88 | *** It's implied it affects everyone, it's just that most teenagers don't notice it because they're, well, teenagers. |
| 89 | *** Faith's story in general is filled with holes that neatly allow you to read her along a whole spectrum of gray. She does bad things ''and'' people, including the heroes, do bad things to her. A throwaway line hinting that the writers had some clue of where she was during these bits might have been nice, but unanswered questions work well for allowing people to be sympathetic to her on rewatching... |
| 90 | *** The main reason is that had she been in all of those episodes too, the screentime would have to be shared between the two character. Faith's character is underused early on in the season, which has both positive and negative impact on the later parts. Underusing her early on keeps the character from hogging the spotlight and increases her isolation, but also leads to fewer episodes later in the season when her true dark side comes out and she becomes a true villain. Faith's 'villain' arc is squashed into a couple of episodes, which is jarring when you look back along the season at all the episodes she's missing from. Ultimately the writers had to use 'Enemies' to address the problems with the season's arc and bring the protagonists to the same point as the audience, who had known Faith was a villain for two episodes already. |
| 91 | [[/folder]] |
| 92 | |
| 93 | [[folder:Jonathan's gun in Earshot]] |
| 94 | * This is a minor thing but it always bugged me: if Jonathan was going up to the bell tower to kill himself in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E18Earshot Earshot]]", why did he have that big, high-powered, rifle? It seem to me if someone (especially someone as short as Jonathan) tried to shoot himself with that gun, he'd bumble around, make a complete mess of the whole task, and most likely leave himself horribly maimed instead of dead. |
| 95 | ** My god, that was so weird. How could you even aim a rifle like that at yourself? With a scope and everything? What was he going to do, shoot his foot and bleed to death? |
| 96 | *** In real life, people have done themselves in with rifles like that by sticking the barrel in their mouths and pulling the trigger with their big toe. |
| 97 | ** No idea where he even ''got'' a rifle like that (then again, this is Sunnydale), but it's not like Jonathan is supposed to have tons of common sense. Without knowing a lot about guns, he probably would have gone with whatever he thought [[RuleOfCool looked coolest]]-- or maybe he assumed using the most powerful thing he could get his hands on would decrease his chance surviving, or having time to experience pain -- or maybe he just hated life so much that he felt that merely dying would be insufficient, and that only [[NoKillLikeOverkill splattering his entire head against the wall like a Gallagherian watermelon]] would suffice. Whichever you pick, it kind of underscores how little he's thought this through, [[FridgeBrilliance which is oddly appropriate to the scene]]. |
| 98 | ** Also why go to the clocktower? |
| 99 | *** Dramatic gesture? The clocktower was a secluded place on campus, and high school was at the heart of his woes. |
| 100 | *** In one of the Season 4 DVD interviews, Creator/DannyStrong mentions that that character always tries to solve everything with 'one big gesture'... |
| 101 | ** Some people stick the barrel of a shotgun in their mouth and pull the trigger with their feet to avoid the possibility of mere maiming that a handgun offers. Maybe he just hadn't kicked off his shoes or put a popsicle stick inside the trigger guard, and couldn't find a shotgun or preferred the idea of a rifle? As to why he was in the clocktower, he would immediately get the notice of everyone on campus not in an inner-building room with a loud enough gun, which would be more traumatizing for those he saw as bullies than an obituary that says "Johnathan[sic] what's-his-face, found dead in his basement after three-ish weeks of decomposition. The coroners guess it might have been a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but they were too busy with the sextuple train-passenger homicide on page three to double-check." |
| 102 | * Maybe someone else he knew owned the gun so it was the only one he could get his hands on. |
| 103 | ** It was probably his dad's hunting rifle or something. Also, it should be noted that rifles and shotguns are a lot easier to get than a handgun. Handguns usually require special permits and registration, but rifles don't. |
| 104 | *** ...What. |
| 105 | *** He's right, though agreed. Why? |
| 106 | *** Handguns are easier to conceal, which makes them more useful for things like armed robbery. If someone robs a store with a rifle they can't just stick the gun in their pocket after they've gotten away, which makes them stand out more and thus are more likely to be caught. |
| 107 | *** As a minor Jonathan cannot legally purchase a gun, and until Season 6 he didn't really seem like someone who'd be likely to have black market connections. As someone above said, there's a good chance the gun was his dad's, or another relative's, and he had to settle for whatever he could get his hands on. |
| 108 | * The meta reason is so that we (and Buffy) would suspect him of being a mass murderer. Neither of us would suspect him if he went to the tower with a handgun, since that's not gonna kill anybody up there. With a rifle though, it seemed definite that he was gonna start picking people off. |
| 109 | ** FridgeBrilliance; it could have been for this very reason; so that someone would care enough to stop him. As a suicide attempt, it's mildly clumsy, as a cry for help... |
| 110 | ** More Fridge: Or if he missed himself (or his hands shaking/survival reflexes made him unable to shoot himself properly), then a kid shooting a high-powered rifle from a tower will definitely get the attention of the police, [[SuicidebyCop who will respond appropriately…]] |
| 111 | * Did we ever find out for sure he was going to shoot himself? Maybe the gun was a last resort and he planned on jumping. |
| 112 | [[/folder]] |
| 113 | |
| 114 | [[folder:Anya's Power Center]] |
| 115 | * Possibly another case of "I forgot, OK?" on Creator/JossWhedon's part, but bear with me: in "The Wish", Anya's first appearance, Giles says that destroying her power center will cause all the wishes she's ever granted to be cancelled and it works, so supposedly they were, but in season 6 (and some other cases I can't really remember), it's explicitly shown that the wishes weren't undone - this guy Anya turned into a demon decades ago was still a demon. It's even shown at a certain point that she caused the Russian communist revolution, so wouldn't that have been undone as well? I realize this is probably just BroadStrokes, but I had to. |
| 116 | ** We don't know that all of Anyanka's wishes were made using that specific amulet. Perhaps their power fades over time, or they're only good for a certain amount of wishes, and Anyanka needs to keep using new ones. Indeed, since Giles got this info from a book, it's implied that this might have been done before. |
| 117 | ** Then again, Anya herself seems to have forgotten about that by the time we get around to "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E5Selfless Selfless]]" in Season 7. Even according to D'Hoffryn, the ONLY way to reverse it is with the life and soul of a vengeance demon (maybe because he just wanted to get his own bit of vengeance on Anya, but that doesn't explain why she wouldn't already know). |
| 118 | ** Anya used the girl's wish to summon the spider demon, smashing her power center would have likely just banished it. |
| 119 | ** It always made sense to me that the amulet caused a snap-back in "The Wish" because shifting between potential time-lines wasn't just a one-shot spell. It required a constant will of effort to prevent the timeline from snapping back into place (And indeed, into time; once the spell ends, no time is seen to have passed). It wasn't a standard wish, and therefore the amulet was essential to its continued effectiveness.\ |
| 120 | Of course that theory hinges on Anyanka never having granted a wish like it before, which is highly unlikely ("I wish I'd never met him" seems like a likely request) and it's also sort of implied that she'd done it before ("I had no idea how much of a difference ''this'' spell would make" or something). On the other hand, that might also explain why this spell was different to the previous ones and required so much more effort to maintain; this one changed massive swathes of lives, not just two.\ |
| 121 | Hell, considering how much changing the past is A) frowned on and B) stated to be really freaking hard if not actually impossible (albeit not in those exact words, but they make reference to "changing the past" when they talk about resurrection) at other times in the series, it seems strange that Anya gets a free pass to remake history as she sees fit. It's possible that any reality altering spell would only be temporary/would only last until the spell was terminated (i.e. by destroying the power center).\ |
| 122 | As a final possibility, the spell might not have been complete when Giles destroyed the power center. Possibly it takes a certain amount of time for the new reality to take prescience over the old one; once that time is up, destroying the power center does nothing. As an added bonus, this would explain why Cordy still remembered the old timeline (seeing as the usual point of wishing you'd never met someone is that you wouldn't remember, surely). Once reality finished asserting itself, she would have forgotten along with everyone else, leaving aside the point that she would also have been dead.\ |
| 123 | Of course, this is all just so much FanWank. The obvious explanation is that AWizardDidIt. |
| 124 | *** It does fit with Halfrak's praise of Anya later, though. She brags about how Anyaka was an amazing artist with wishes, and she could twist and turn them into masterpieces of vengeance. She also never mentions any of those wishes being retroactive. Putting the two together, maybe granting a history-altering wish was a completely new idea that Anyaka had been wanting to try, which is why she was talking to Giles about how "I never knew Cordelia's wish would be so exciting". It's probably really just a RetCon, since Giles knew from his research that the amulet would break her wishes, but it fits in with her later character and reputation. |
| 125 | ** Remember when Xander got split in two? Willow mentioned something regarding her dissolution of the spell, that their natural state is to be together and the magic is doing all the work, she just has to break it and they'll snap back. Maybe there's a statute of limitations on this sort of thing. How long can a person, object, or even reality itself be under the effect of a transmuting spell before the magic becomes ingrained into its central being? Let's say Anya's spell to turn Olaf into a troll. At what point does it stop being a spell, and he starts just being a troll? For older magicks such as that one, that could be why nothing changed; the Amulet isn't doing anything anymore, they've passed their statute of limitations on ending the magic, and that's just the way things are now. Cordelia's wish, on the other hand, was recent. The magic was still working. |
| 126 | ** When Anya explains about how the troll is her ex-boyfriend she mentions that she turned him into a troll because he cheated on her, and ''then'' was offered the gig as a vengeance demon. She didn't use the power center to turn him into a troll, so losing it wouldn't undo the curse. She's implied several times that she used to do witchcraft but chooses not to any longer (also she seems to be quite bad at it, see "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E8TabulaRasa Tabula Rasa]]"). |
| 127 | ** And for the guy who was turn into a demon and sent to be tortured in some sort of hell dimension, well maybe that's why he does the thing he does in season 6; because the curse broke and he is now free. He manages to learn shapeshifting magic, so maybe he reassumes the look that Anyanka gave to him but in order to be recognized by her (or angrily showing her why he is so mad) but he could choose a different look. |
| 128 | * Maybe destroying her amulet only undid her previous curses in the Wish alternate dimension because that's where it was when destroyed? It still caused her to lose her powers because it was the same Anya in both dimensions rather than an alternate, but it only effected the dimension that she was in. That's my WildMassGuessing on the matter, anyway. |
| 129 | |
| 130 | * To correct all of the random guessing - it's never stated that it will cancel all of her wishes ever. It cancels the ''ongoing'' wishes, i.e. the one that rendered the episode's premise possible. It doesn't undo effects that have already been done and ended. Smashing her amulet wouldn't have brought the frat boys back from the dead, as the demon's summoning can be reversed but not what the demon actually did while it was here. |
| 131 | [[/folder]] |
| 132 | |
| 133 | [[folder:The Zeppo]] |
| 134 | * I've always felt that "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E13TheZeppo The Zeppo]]" was well out of joint with the rest of the series - it gave a DayInTheLimelight to a character who already spends most of his time in the limelight. The weird thing about it was that in order to give Xander an heroic storyline, they had to start him in a place that several notches lower... Unfortunately they started him several notches below where he normally is for the series, geeking him and klutzing him to a point where, for the first ten minutes of the show he's nearly unrecognizible. |
| 135 | For every episode not named "The Zeppo", not only is X usually to be found right by Buffy's side wherever trouble is, but Xand has even ''saved Buffy & Willow's lives multiple times'' (usually by simply being there and assisting in an escape - see "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E2TheHarvest The Harvest]]" {pulling Buffy to safety}, "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E6ThePack The Pack]]" {charging the zookeeper}, "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E15Phases Phases]]" {staking Vamp!Theresa}, and "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E20GoFish Go Fish]]" {again pulling Buff to safety}) Xander had never been a minor character -- yet the storyline of this ep seems to make use of him as if he were. Neither was he incompetant in crisis, but the rest of the Scoobies treat him as if he is, something they had never done before, and never do again. Now it ''is'' cool to see Xander captian his own adventure, and establish his tryst with Faith ... but it's normally best for the like minded to skip through the first few chapters of the ep ... |
| 136 | ** I've always thought that about the episode. Everyone except Xander spends the ep acting quite out of character. Xander has been fighting alongside them for a couple of years now, through all of the Angelus saga and the last time the Hellmouth opened in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E12ProphecyGirl Prophecy Girl]]". All of a sudden in this episode, Buffy, Giles, Willow, Angel etc all act like Xander is in more mortal danger than them. It just doesn't resonate that Xander wouldn't be there with them as always, as USUAL. This sudden concern for his safety disappears in the very next episode. In the teaser, he isn't even injured, he just gets knocked about a bit and falls under some wreckage. The scoobies all suddenly look like superheroes compared to him. This just doesn't happen in other episodes, and is possibly more to do with the writers trying to show how Xander sees them rather than the way they see him. There are also no Scooby Gang meetings onscreen. This a departure for Buffy - at no point do they all sit together and discuss what's going on. Xander has to try and work it out for himself. Even when he sees Willow, she's so concerned with the Impending Doom that she doesn't even mention what it is, nor say 'hey, we might need some help, come to the library!' Xander is intentionally kept with the zombies and that uninteresting plot. |
| 137 | ** Xander was perhaps not quite as bad as the beginning of the episode showed, but he was still basically the laughing stock of the scoobies outside of their group. Take another look at the episode. It is not showing how cool he is in the group, it is showing how uncool he is to everyone else. The scoobies never think of him as uncool, and do think of him as an integral part of their circle. Outside of that circle he is that same guy we see skateboarding and falling like a schmuck on sight of a pretty girl in the first episode. The episode deals with a distinct turning point in his character and a change in HIS viewing of himself through other people's eyes. It is about how he turns from the awkward kid to a kick-ass hero. And look at the change in his character afterward. He lives up to the change and is no longer just comic fodder. Well... not ''just''. |
| 138 | *** That's not what happens in the episode, though. Everyone is suddenly concerned for his safety and he's not brought in on the Hellmouth happenings, having been fighting the Sisterhood of Jhe with them at the beginning. I appreciate he is definitely the least useful of the group...but surely no less than Oz, who gets a free pass as he's a werewolf (a completely useless 'power' since he can't actually do anything to help with it). |
| 139 | [[/folder]] |
| 140 | |
| 141 | [[folder:Giles' Epic Failure as Faith's Watcher]] |
| 142 | * I really think Giles holds a lot of responsibility for how things went bad with Faith. He was officially her Watcher until he was fired, and it was his job to express concern for her well-being. He was basically paid to look after her, but he never did. This was a teenage girl who had seriously been through the ringer. Seeing her Watcher brutally murdered was just the tip of the iceberg in what was presumably her life of utter suckage. In Sunnydale she was lonely, unhappy, and living in a dingy motel room (and who knows how she got the money to pay for it), but we never see Giles make any effort to reach out to her, improve her situation, and provide her with some stability, direction, or even half the affection he showed Buffy. He could have at least asked the Council for some money to provide her with better living conditions. Gwen Post did more than Giles to reach out to Faith, even if she was just faking it for evil ulterior motives. And it was quite clear from Faith's interaction with Gwen and the Mayor that she wouldn't have been too proud to accept any help, attention, and approval Giles might have provided. In fact, evidence suggests the opposite: she would have soaked it up, and it would have made her more mentally stable. It's a shame that the only people who truly expressed an interest in Faith's well-being at this point in time were the bad guys. I think that Giles' neglect of Faith is a major oversight on his part as both her Watcher and, more generally, as an adult. |
| 143 | ** You do realize that the Watcher's job is to train the slayer to kill things and then point her at the things to be killed. It's not his job to keep her sane, comfortable or well adjusted. He's gone above and beyond with Buffy and that has tainted the view of what's expected. Notice how Giles' affection and indulgence of Buffy is considered a very bad thing by the Watchers. I'll grant you it's a failing on his part as an adult but he's not required to do anything for her benefit, Watcherwise. |
| 144 | ** If Giles had asked the Council for money to aid Faith's living conditions, they would've laughed in his face. The Coucil are a bunch of arrogant dicks. They don't give a damn about the slayers. |
| 145 | *** What the above troper said. If Buffy or Giles had asked the Council to give Buffy a salary after her mother died they would have told him to sit on it, so they sure as hell weren't going to give Faith a salary when she could have gotten at least a part-time job (however crappy) during the day. She's unemployed, 17 years old, and a high school drop-out, yet she lives at the motel, travels around, feeds herself, and buys trashy outfits. Her philosophy of "Want. Take. Have." AKA stealing, could explain it, but I think she'd need a more reliable source of income for all that. It is true however that Faith's situation in early season 3 makes Giles look at best distracted by other concerns (Buffy's drama) and at worst callous. The obvious explanation for it is that the writer's didn't think "how come the only adult who has no other dependents doesn't at least visit Faith to see how she's doing?" therefore Giles doesn't think of it either. Probably if he dropped by her motel sometimes people would think he's her pimp or her john. As for Giles not showing her any affection, I give you her first interaction with Giles where she hits on him, when Xander saves her live she has sex with him, and she hugs the Mayor suggestively and calls him "Sugar Daddy" when he gives her a new apartment. Any man that's nice to her, clearly due to her bad experiences with men in the past, she interprets it as a ''quid pro quo'' situation and she responds the way she thinks they want her to. It isn't that Giles doesn't have the will power to gently turn her down, it's just that when someone's brain has been screwed with as spectacularly as Faith's was, it's very difficult to help them correct their thinking to what's healthy without some kind of therapy, and what therapist could Faith have possibly talked to? Giles openly giving an underprivileged, emotionally damaged, orphan teenager money, hugs and "private talks in his office" looks so much worse than when he does those things for Buffy, whose mother knows about their relationship. Faith might have felt like he thought she owed him something and grown resentful of this so-called debt. If he or Buffy pissed her off she likely would have turned on him on a dime, as she did to Buffy a quite a few times, even used his generosity against him to get him arrested (she IS kind of crazy and doesn't think of consequences). He had Buffy and the gang over at his place before they graduated high school because he trusted them as his friends. Giles didn't have Faith over at his house because he barely knew her and she had so many trust issues, and she betrayed them about four months after meeting them, not really enough time for him to let someone get close, let alone for Faith to let someone in. Yet Faith has a certain respect for Giles, if the "canon" Season 8 comics are included (I haven't read much of those because my walls can't take that kind of abuse but I know the general Giles and Faith storyline) along with the few interactions the two characters get in the show. She is ''pissed'' when she finds Giles critically injured in "Revelations". She appeared to want the kind of relationship with the Mayor that Buffy had with Giles, but she never blames Giles for what happened to her. She both verbally and physically lashes out at Buffy, Willow, Xander, Angel and Wesley, but never attacks Giles. Here is my fanwank, based on what we see of their relationship: it's possible that he was her source of income until she broke with the group for good, and all of their scenes were off-screen. If Giles has Buffy in the library to witness him handing over cash to Faith (so there's no paper trail), and Joyce knows about it (Joyce was the one after all who wanted Faith over for dinner more than once) he has people to back him up if something goes awry. In Season 1 of "Angel" she picks Wesley to torture over Cordelia because she has no personal grudge against Cordy - she blames her problems partially on Wesley for his failure as her Watcher and for turning her in to the Council: |
| 146 | |
| 147 | -->'''Faith''': Did you ever wonder if things would have been different if we'd never met? What if you had Buffy and Giles had been my Watcher? Think we'd still be here right now? Or would Giles be sitting in that chair? Or is it just, like, fate? There's no choice. You were going to be here no matter what... Not that any of this is your own fault... I feel it's kind of my duty to tell you that if you'd been a better Watcher, I might have been a more positive role model!... |
| 148 | |
| 149 | (Continued) Giles '''was''' her Watcher, but she seemed to regard him as really Buffy's Watcher, which is the way the gang all seemed to secretly feel. Wesley is her Watcher for three episodes, during which they hardly talk, and he made more of a negative impression on Faith than several months of Giles "ignoring" her. Faith's fall was inevitably going to happen at some point even if Giles and the Scoobies had spent all their free time trying to make her feel special and wanted. The responsibility for Faith's turn to the Dark Side lies with the people who traumatized her as a child, not with the reticent British men hired to train her and who didn't give her free shit in return for her constant disappearances and attitude of "back the fuck off". It's entirely possible that Giles did neglect her, but I don't think their later interactions bears this out. Giles has a habit of giving people a lot of space to work personal problems out on their own (such as "Dead Man's Party", "The Freshman", uh, Season 6), just as he insists on privacy when it comes to his own issues ("The Dark Age"), but ultimately he's there for people in trouble, to help them physically, emotionally or financially, even when they're not Buffy. It's truly unfortunate that the writers barely fleshed out Giles' relationships with characters other than Buffy and Willow, and stopped giving a crap about writing him in character by mid-Season 7 when Faith came back on the side of good. |
| 150 | * Just because Faith herself doesn't seem to hold Giles at least partly responsible for her downfall (which I don’t believe was as inevitable as you describe it) doesn't mean he wasn't partially at fault in actuality. Certainly, Faith was screwed up long before she ever came to Sunnydale, but she wasn't completely shut off from people. There's no reason to suggest that Faith would have reacted badly to Giles taking an interest in her well-being. It's made fairly clear in the series that she didn't really have much of a problem with authority figures (beyond them ending up dead all the time), and in fact, she was looking for some adult guidance and support, even if she wouldn't admit it. When you consider the crap authority figures she’s likely had in the past and the fact that her one good authority figure was gruesomely murdered in front of her, it’s kind of amazing how fast she took to Gwendolyn Post and the Mayor. Post, in particular, is the best example here. She didn't shower Faith with affection and physical goods like the Mayor; she was strict and no nonsense and didn't take any of Faith's attitude, but she still expressed an interest in her, even if it was only as a Watcher. Faith might have grumbled about it, but she was still ready to follow Post's instructions (and I don't think it was simply because Post was playing on her fears). I think if Giles had taken a similar interest, things might have gone quite a bit differently. We can discuss how poorly the Watcher's Council treated Slayers and use that as one of the reasons Giles didn't step up to care for her more extensively, but that doesn't explain why we pretty much never see him acting as a Watcher in the most basic sense towards her. That was something that was his job. I find it understandable why he wouldn't get involved in Faith's life, and I really do understand that he had a lot to deal with regarding his own life and Buffy's life, and it's completely human for people to get wrapped up in their own issues. But I still think, if we go by what we actually see (or rather don't see) in the series, that he should be held ''accountable'' for his lack of action regarding Faith, whether it's understandable or not. Faith is ultimately responsible for the things she did, but other people, before and during her stay in Sunnydale, helped drive her to that point. I think Giles was one of those people not because of anything he did, but because of what he didn’t do. He wasn’t on Faith’s radar as someone to get back at because he didn’t do anything ''to'' her. For me, it's just as bad that he didn’t do anything ''for'' her either. |
| 151 | ** Look, yes Giles could have done much more for Faith but he was already busy with his job as a librarian, his own personal life, his life as a Watcher which includes copious amounts of time researching demons, handling Buffy and the regular Scoobies, and on top of that we're going to pile complete responsibility for Faith's emotional problems on him? Could he have done more? Yes. Realistically would any person in a situation like Giles been able to help? No. Is it fair to place so much blame on him for Faith? No, especially not when he'd only been around her for a few months at the most. It's kind of like blaming a girl's suicide on the therapist she's been seeing for a few weeks and saying that it's his fault he didn't do more. Realistically, Giles is only at fault because he didn't go out of his way to make Faith his number one priority when he had no reason to do such a thing until after Allan Finch was staked and by that point it was too late. You're just biased because you saw both sides of what was happening but if you lacked knowledge of what was happening to Faith, you'd probably act in the exact same way Giles did. |
| 152 | ** One of the reason, EVERYONE initially took Gwen Post at face value was that they all expected Faith to eventually have her own Watcher. She had had until he/she was killed by Kakistos afterall. Even if she was now living in Sunnydale, in the same location as the other Slayer, it didn't necessarily mean that Buffy's Watcher was also her own. It wasn't until Wesley arrived to replace Giles as Buffy's Watcher that it was officially stated that Wesley would also act as Faith's Watcher. In that context, Giles may not have wanted to "step on anyone's (future) toes" by going beyond the current official limits of his mandate. Yes, yes, it was only in regards to his duties as Watcher, as a human being and an adult, he might have helped Faith regardless... But you can bet the Council would have held it against him regardless and used it as further proof that he was to close to the Slayer(s). |
| 153 | * I had never really considered this before, but once I read it, it's clear that Giles really could have done more. Several posts have implied or stated that Giles didn't know Faith for long enough to bond or influence her. But the fact is, Dick the Mayor knew her for far less time and came to think of her as a daughter and she genuinely cared about him too. (He also saw her as a instrument, but he was obviously very distraught when Buffy put Faith in a coma; his connection to Faith is how Buffy taunted [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Demon!Dick]] to get him to follow her to the explosive-filled library.) Imagine for a second, what if Giles had been as kind and supportive towards Faith as the Mayor was? (Assuming Buffy didn't get all crazy possessive, that is.) As far as Faith interpreting a guy's kindness as ''quid pro quo'' for sexytimes, again, look at the Mayor. She did think that way at first, but the Mayor gently but firmly rebuffed her advances and told her that her happiness was rewarding enough. And Faith accepted it. She was a little stunned, maybe, that there was a guy being decent to her without trying to get in her pants, but she really, really wanted a family, and when the Mayor offered to be her father figure, she went for it. Makes Faith a much more tragic character to realize that she was really just starved for genuine affection, and if Giles/the Scoobies had tried to make her feel like part of the group, she may have never gone so dark. She wasn't evil; the Mayor was just much nicer to her than anyone else (besides maybe Joyce, but Buffy is very selfish, possessive, and jealous). As for "Faith should have known better anyway," don't forget that however badass and full of swagger she may be, she's still a teenager lacking in real maturity. If Faith had felt like she could count on Giles's support, even if she had still killed the deputy mayor, she would probably have told the truth, gotten some therapy, and the Council would have smoothed things over with the law. Really, as someone who had himself gone through a dark, rebellious, dangerous phase, Giles should have been more attentive and '''Watchful''' with Faith. |
| 154 | ** Part of why Giles didn't offer more is because Giles is not a particularly nurturing parental-type. In the first season, he viewed all the teens with some irritation. In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E9ThePuppetShow The Puppet Show]]", when he got volunteered to run the talent show, he stated that he became a librarian specifically so he did not have to get involved with the students. Buffy, Willow, and Xander eventually grow on him, though, and they have demonstrated a sense of maturity that impressed Giles. Plus, the Scoobies never needed him to be a parent. They had their own parents, more or less, so he did not need to step into that role. So it might not have even occurred to Giles that he should look after Faith like an official guardian. There's no question Faith did need a parental figure in her life, however Giles had never been in that role before, so the idea that he would become that parental figure would have been incredibly strange to him at the time. |
| 155 | ** Well Buffy does seem to view Giles as a father figure (probably because of her own lack of a father) but yes, for the rest is true. Giles has no children and he's not responsable for Faith. Not to be mean here but no one is obligated to provide parental nurture. |
| 156 | * Actually, Buffy is also pretty responsible as well. Faith was clearly desperate for a family and to be included, but Buffy is, as mentioned above, selfish, possessive, and jealous. We're meant to sympathize with Buffy feeling like Faith is pushing her out, but how petty was Buffy really being? Faith was making friends with her friends, and getting attention from her Watcher (who, let's not forget ''really was'' Faith's Watcher too). Buffy's reaction was "Oh no, Faith's taking the spotlight away from me!" I would argue that Faith was just being a little sister and trying to be a part of Buffy's life, but Buffy has never been the best big sister (even with Dawn, she was never very sisterly for long--note the episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayeerS7E12Potential Potential]]" for proof long after the whole Key business/back-from-Heaven depression has worn off). If Buffy had tried harder to make Faith be part of the family, maybe Faith would have started following Buffy's example instead of being the bad influence on Buffy. |
| 157 | ** This. Watch "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E4FaithHopeAndTrick Faith, Hope and Trick]]" back again and you see that Buffy reacts terribly throughout the episode. Faith's personality clearly grates on her and she hates how much her friends like her. Buffy even threatens her in this episode, when Faith essentially calls her out for acting like a jealous bitch just because a new Slayer has turned up in town and she gets along with ''her'' friends. Buffy starts off not particularly liking Faith, but does try to reach out in later episodes. What really damages their relationship permanently is the Faith/Buffy fight that results when she goes to slay Angel. She's betrayed by who she thinks is her new Watcher in that episode, and also battles Buffy, believing Buffy to be protecting a vampire who should be slain. Buffy reaches out again at the end of 'Revelations', but it's clear Faith isn't feeling particularly friendly by that point. |
| 158 | * I'm rewatching the show recently, and I've noticed there are a lot of forgettable lines in season three about Faith shrugging off everyone, going missing for day/weeks on end, and being generally antagonistic towards Buffy and Giles' attempts to reach her. She is starved for attention and love, but she's also traumatized into a "I don't need anyone but myself" attitude and openly pushed back against attempts to reach her with words and kindness. For example, her initial blowoff of Buffy's christmas invitation through the bs excuse of "I have this big party I'm invited to," because she (correctly, in this particular example) assumes Buffy's just being nice out of obligation. People who have been through the kind of trauma Faith's been implied to have had, tend to see everyone around them as a potential threat. Faith reacts negatively to Buffy and Faith's attempts to reach out to her because she sees it as, "What's in it for you? You're not doing this because you care about me, so where is your gain?" If there is no clear answer to that, then she perceives it as either a trick or something they're being forced to do, and has no desire to be a part of either. With the Mayor, there was a more clear-cut, "You do this, this, and this for me. In return, I give you money, a home, and the affection you desire." It was never presented as a wholly selfless desire to help her, and that made her more comfortable opening up to him, because she didn't have to look at him with paranoid thoughts of "What are you REALLY after?" |
| 159 | * Her fall probably was truly "inevitable." Everyone bears some responsibility. By the time Faith came to the Scoobies, she was too damaged to become a healthy human being, let alone a balanced and stable Slayer. She wanted connection and love and companionship, yet at the same time was terrified of it, and couldn't see someone wanting to be nice to her as anything but a smoke screen for them wanting something from her. On the other hand, the Scoobies were all well-adjusted enough not to see how damaged Faith really was, and had no clue how to start helping her if they had. Faith waffles between wanting to be everyone's friend and hang with them and get to know them and going off by herself for, its implied, weeks at a time. And she's probably acting that way because she's getting the kind of connection and acceptance she craves, it's scaring the tight leather pants off her, so she distances herself as a learned survival mechanism. Faith didn't know how to reach out to the others and explain her issues, she was far to scared to admit she needed help with them, and that pain and fear twisted into anger and hate, at first undirected and then squarely focused on Buffy and company. Buffy, Giles, and everyone else didn't see how broken Faith was until it was too late, and even if they had seen it and tried to approach her about helping her heal, she would have gotten scared at the concept of being vulnerable with another human being and rabbited. All this is summed up perfectly in Faith and Xander's sex scene. They have some good sex, we see them cuddling and smiling at each other, than SmashCut to Faith kicking Xander out while he's barely got his clothes back in order. Faith wanted that connection, that love, got it for a second, it terrified her, so she kicked its ass out the door rather than deal with the big, complex, scary emotions she was starting to feel. |
| 160 | [[/folder]] |
| 161 | |
| 162 | [[folder:Spike's Invitation to Buffy' Home]] |
| 163 | * Apparently, after Buffy teamed up with Spike and thus had to invite him to her house, she didn't perform that ritual that revoked the invitation. Are you kidding me? I thought it'd be like a requisite, like washing your hands after you come home from a hard day of garden work! What, just because he promised to skip the town they suddenly decided it wasn't worth the trouble? |
| 164 | * She also had no intention of killing Ben after getting him to promise to skip town, even though he certainly would've reverted to Glory and come back with a killer vengeance if Giles hadn't smothered him. Buffy is a naive moron who's way too trusting. |
| 165 | ** When it comes to dealing with enemies, Buffy is too willing to be TheHero. Throughout the series, Buffy retains her own personal honour code that is...imaginative and more than a little naive. She's too willing to let enemies live, or to team up with one when she knows they aren't in it for anything but themselves. It's one of the (many) flaws in her character that makes her a fully fleshed-out human being, unlike many television characters. There's also her continuing belief that she knows best because she's the Slayer (when there are others present that are EXPERTS), that she has any knowledge of combat tactics beyond 'I run up and hit it', and her continual ability to fall for very, very obvious diversionary tactics. Even ''Angelus'' said to her 'you never learn, do you?!' when she fell for his diversion in 'Becoming'. |
| 166 | * Spike said he was skipping town with Dru, and it did sound like he wasn't coming back. While he IS a vampire, he did make it clear that he's not stupid and he's not suicidal like Angel or Dru, trying to bring the world to an end. He's looking out for himself, and picking a fight with the slayer isn't normally a good idea. Besides, Buffy didn't come back to her house after that; after saving the world, she skipped town and didn't come back for months, as shown in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E1Anne Anne]]". I think it's excusable that with all the stuff going on, the fact that she had invited Spike, who's seemingly a non-threat at the time, into her home just slipped her mind. |
| 167 | * Of course, it's entirely possible that the invitation was revoked, and that Joyce invited him in again. |
| 168 | ** Spike sneaks up behind Joyce in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E8LoversWalk Lover's Walk]]" so there goes that idea. But there is the possibility that Buffy just ''forgot'' to perform the ritual. Directly after she kills Angel, she packs her things and leaves Sunnydale. She's incredibly distressed over her mother seemingly kicking her out of the house and having to kill Angel. By the time she gets everything sorted and returns home, she's just forgotten that Spike can enter her home. And after he leaves in "Lover's Walk", she has a lot of drama to deal with, issues with Angel and being there for her friends after their relationships with Oz and Cordelia ended. She just forgets about it because it's not a pressing concern (Spike says both times he's leaving and not coming back) and she has other things on her mind. |
| 169 | * Also, remember that Spike's a [[HeroKiller Slayer killer]]. He ''likes'' hunting them down and killing them, and it's one of the reasons he came to Sunnydale in the first place (the other being to heal Drusilla). However, Buffy's kicked his ass on numerous occasions, and he even relates to Harmony in Season 4 that he ''hates'' having come back to Sunnydale precisely because he's been so thoroughly pwned there. By the end of Season 2, Spike has realized that he's bitten off ''way'' more than he can chew with this particular Slayer, and Buffy understands that, even if Spike does return to Sunnydale (which he promised not to do), he has little interest in picking a fight he can't win with the one Slayer he can't kill. (At least, not until he gets the Gem of Amara.) |
| 170 | [[/folder]] |
| 171 | |
| 172 | [[folder:Angel's Blame For Angelus]] |
| 173 | * Why didn't Buffy just say "it wasn't Angel that did those horrible things, it was Angelus"? Angel wasn't himself, literally. He IS his soul, and his soul was removed, leaving only the demon Angelus that tortured Giles and killed Jenny. While I forgive Xander and Giles for not being too friendly towards Angel after that, why did no one remind them Angel now has his soul and he's a good guy again? I guess Xander was still being a petty, jealous loser and Giles did sorta lose his love interest to him and got tortured by him, but still, they should've realized earlier that the Good!Angel was back. |
| 174 | ** Logic really doesn't come into it. If it did, why would Angel feel guilty for all the evil Angelus did? Darla offered to show him the world, not turn him into a soulless murder fiend, so it's not like he asked for it. |
| 175 | * They were probably afraid that Angel would lose his soul again, she and Xander saw Buffy and Angel in an intimate moment. I think Giles and Xander had good reason to still be bothered by him either way. |
| 176 | * Angel's soul is not his personality, it's his conscience. Angelus is present all the time, lurking just beneath the surface, and the only thing stopping Angel from succumbing is the presence of his soul, which knows right from wrong and makes him capable of remorse. Consider the human beings in the Buffyverse who do horrible things, all while having souls; Angel doesn't do good because he's a... well, angel inhabiting the body of a demon, he does good because his superego got forcibly reinstalled after over a century of murder and sadism, and with it came a guilt trip that's going to last him for the rest of his life, however long that may be. The creature that tortured Giles in his basement didn't die when Willow did her hospital bed mojo. Giles finds it pretty unsettling and doesn't want it in his house. |
| 177 | * Because people aren't emotionless logic-bots who immediately forgive all grudges, wrongs and vendettas just because someone points out a mildly logical argument. |
| 178 | ** The real headscratcher is why they (especially Xander) don't apply the same courtesy to Anya, probably a much worst source of suffering and pain and for much longer time than Angelus. And, unlike Angel, she doesn’t show any remorse at all. |
| 179 | *** That's because Xander's hatred of Angel grew out of jealousy that Buffy was in love with him. For the whole of Season 1, Xander wants to date Buffy and has a major weakness for her for the rest of the series. When Anya comes along, he never mentions her past, her murder of probably far more people than Angelus. At the very least, Anyanka has to have ruined more lives in over 1,000 years than Angelus ever did in only ~150 (the rest of Angel's life having been spent ensouled). |
| 180 | *** Again, people are just fickle about these things. It's the same reason we care more about news reports of disaster in our own country fellow than those happening far away. Objectively we know they're just as bad, and objectively the gang would probably admit that Anya has done just as much wrong as Angel, but Anya never did anything awful to them personally, or that they even saw (that they know of - obviously their Wishverse counterparts might see things differently). It's also a case of growth, probably. By the time Anya began to integrate into the group, the conflict with Angel was over and perhaps everyone had learned a few things from it. You'd hope that on a good show, conflict is there for characters to learn from, and that they're not doomed to endlessly play out the same mistakes over and over. Angel was vindicated in the fullness of time, so perhaps Xander was ready to give the next demon-with-a-trail-of-blood-behind-them but-a-willingness-to-change more of the benefit of the doubt. And his growing romance with Anya may have helped him see the issue from Buffy's side too |
| 181 | * ''Buffy'' feels a need for hiding that a) Angel is back in their dimension and b) she's dating him again. Would she do that if she felt there's nothing wrong with that? |
| 182 | ** She knew people would react badly to it. That is not the same as knowing there's something wrong with it. If someone has an affair, they will likely try to hide it from their family. Clearly, in that case they know they've done something wrong. If someone enters into a perfectly healthy relationship with a very nice person but they know their family would disapprove (such as if there's a rivalry between their families or there's prejudice involved) they may still feel the need to hide it. In that case the relationship itself isn't wrong. So the fact that someone feels a need to hide something is not in itself proof that they believe what they're doing to be wrong. |
| 183 | * There's also some debate about whether Angel ''really'' has his soul back or not. Sure, we the audience know the spell worked, we the audience know Buffy is correct that it's Angel now and not Angelus, but there's precious little unbiased evidence. Angel was completely feral upon his return, and it took him quite some time to really come back to himself. Buffy's judgement as regards Angel is not good, her ''saying'' it's okay and he has his soul back doesn't make it so. There's also the fact that Buffy being with Angel caused him to lose his soul once before, and everyone can see that there's serious danger in these two being in the same zip code. Plus, as mentioned, everyone has suffered rather personally from Angelus, and while they may intellectually understand that Angel with a soul does not equal Angelus, you're still looking into the same face that murdered Jenny Calendar, among many other horrible things. Love isn't brains, children, it's blood, and the same goes for hate. It isn't until Angel puts his life on the line to help destroy the Glove of Whatever-gon that the other Scoobies really believe he's good again, and even in the face of that proof, the emotional wounds take a bit longer to scab over. It would have been more unrealistic for Angel to be EasilyForgiven. |
| 184 | ** The fact that Buffy being with Angel caused the initial loss of the soul is important too--Willow just re-ensouled him the exact same way with the exact same curse, meaning true happiness will cost him his soul again. And note that it's "happiness" not "consummation". Even if they never sleep together again, staying together is still a gamble. Maybe they just go out on a particularly nice date, or Buffy buys him a particularly thoughtful gift... absolutely anything could bring Angelus out to play again, all it takes is for Angel to be happy enough. Yes, the others are going to have a problem with Buffy and Angel gambling with lives so they can date, it's not terribly unreasonable of them either. |
| 185 | [[/folder]] |
| 186 | |
| 187 | [[folder:Faith, the Watcher's Council, and Gwendolyn Post]] |
| 188 | * A few things concerning Faith and Watchers don't really make sense to me. After Faith's Watcher died, why wasn't she assigned a new one? Gwendolyn Post came and everyone assumed that that was her new Watcher, but it turned out that she had been kicked out of the Council. So where was her real replacement and how come they never sent one? And for that matter, how did Gwendolyn even find out about Faith needing a new Watcher in the first place? And on the topic of Watchers, why are there so many Watchers to begin with if there's only one slayer? |
| 189 | ** There's only one Slayer at a time but many don't last long. Since the Council can detect potentials but has no way to know exactly which one will be called at any time it only makes sense to have Watchers stationed all over the world. Also, if a Watcher is too close when their Slayer goes down they may not survive either. Having plenty of backups seems only reasonable. |
| 190 | * A number of reasons seem perfectly logical. First as we learn in Season 7 there are at the very least dozens of potentials at any given point and there seems to be no reliable way to know who's next in the Slayer line. It's at least implied between Kendra and a few of the potentials in seven that Buffy is unusual in that she wasn't trained for years. Also research can get tedious and while on the show a band of teenagers and one experienced adult are always able within a few days to identify a demon or find a prophesy within a few hours, days at worst I imagine that in most cases a call back to England would be in order. As for Gwendolyn post there are seers in the world, that's how they tracked down potentials in Season 7. I suspect it works even better on slayers, like the difference between finding a cell phone and finding a cell phone that's transmitting. Word of two slayers probably got around really quick. The only real question is how did she know Faith was watcherless. |
| 191 | ** It's entirely possible she didn't. The "I'm your new Watcher since the old one died" story could have been made up on the spot, after she got to Sunnydale. She probably would have done a little recon before strolling into the lives of not one, but two Slayers, and a Watcher in contact with the council. She would have seen that there was only one Watcher for Buffy and Faith, and known it was Buffy's (because presumably the Slayer's Watcher is fairly well known among other Watchers) and made her plan from there. On the other hand, the seer she used to find Faith in the first place told her that Faith was Watcherless. |
| 192 | * As for why there are so many Watchers to only one or in this case, two slayers: Aside from training and safeguarding the potentials, it is hinted throughout the series that the Watchers are the ones doing the global threats that spring up everywhere. As a slayer is normally taken to a place that has a problem, say a vampire nest or cultists bringing about some demon god or something, taking out the big problem emerging, then leaving when she's done and her Watchers escort her to whatever apocalypse is happening somewhere else. Buffy and Faith are the exceptions, Kendra was the rule. The Watchers, seeing as how the ones we've seen have magical abilities and are rather good in a fight from their training and aren't wet behind the ears like Wesley initially was, probably also serve combat functions and fight demons and vampires. To put it another way, The Watchers are the mystical army, the Slayer is their superweapon in case of escalation. |
| 193 | |
| 194 | [[/folder]] |
| 195 | |
| 196 | [[folder: Why not the Wishverse already?]] |
| 197 | |
| 198 | * Buffy didn't come to Sunnydale until she was in high school, and from the sound of it, there wasn't a Slayer there until she came. The hellmouth's been there forever, why wasn't the town already the disaster that it was in the Wishverse? You'd think that without Buffy there, chaos would have reigned much sooner. Unless the Wishverse was the sole result of the Harvest being successful (interestingly, no Luke in the episode, but that's probably because they couldn't get the actor again or something) and nothing else, but still, Sunnydale seems like it should have been far worse if it's been plagued with vampires and demons since way before the Slayer came to protect the town. |
| 199 | * Without a Big Bad, the random killings are just that. There were certainly high mortality rates before, but Wilkins ran a tight ship and kept his town under control. When the Master arrived, however, there was now another major player in town causing chaos. One Harvest later, and he runs the place. |
| 200 | ** Fun theory: maybe Wilkins had a little something to do with the Master's failure the first time. Opening the Hellmouth for an army of rampaging demons would have seriously upset his plans. |
| 201 | * Because of The Mayor, the series make clear that The Mayor kept the city with certain level of stability in order to fulfill his aspirations. The police knew about the existence of vampires for example as shown in season 1. Yes, The Mayor to some degree let the minor monsters to kill once in a while, but an Apocalypse level event (you know, besides the one he was planning) that’s another issue. |
| 202 | * The Master was also "stuck" in the Hellmouth after trying to open it a long time ago, and the circumstances weren't right for an escape attempt until Buffy arrived (or more accurately, Buffy arrived when the circumstances were right for an escape attempt). Giles says as much in the first episode, "There's a reason why you're here, and a reason why it's ''now''." It seems likely that the Master's botched attempt to open the Hellmouth made any further attempts impossible until he was removed, so the random villains who show up wanting to open the Hellmouth and plunge the world into chaos couldn't accomplish anything while the Master was "stuck in the lock." The Master rising at the end of season 1 sprung the key from the lock, and now anyone can come along to try and pick the lock. |
| 203 | [[/folder]] |
| 204 | |
| 205 | [[folder: The difference between ''solar eclipse'' and ''sundown''...]] |
| 206 | |
| 207 | * Not sure if this belongs in Headscratchers or FridgeLogic but, did anyone else notice that the solar eclipse in "Graduation Day" apparently lasted for the rest of the day? |
| 208 | * That was supposed to be a Solar Eclipse? I thought it was just some magical thing that blocked out the sun. |
| 209 | |
| 210 | [[/folder]] |
| 211 | |
| 212 | [[folder: What was the Mayor thinking?]] |
| 213 | |
| 214 | * So, the Mayor's brilliant plan was to ascend to a super demon. A super demon that is really large and noticeable, and not stealthy in any way. A super demon that can be killed by explosives. What on earth was the mayor thinking? That he'd muck around and kill a few hundred people before the army noticed and shot him with a missile launcher? How on earth was this a benefit over being completely invincible? |
| 215 | ** I always wondered about that until ''[[{{Series/Angel}} Angel]]'' introduced us to [[spoiler:Knox]], a modern-day worshiper of Illyria who secretly worked his whole life to bring her back. Looking back on it with that in mind, Wilkins was probably a similar worshiper of Olvikan, and his long-term goal was to ascend and become Olvikan's new vessel on Earth. The transformation wasn't a means to an end, it was the entire end-goal in itself; that the transformation also retained some of his human personality was just a lucky break for Buffy. Also, going by his dialogue to his vampire henchmen about how he had to feed to "sustain the change" (and the last ascension of Olvikan being stopped by a volcanic eruption) the form might be vulnerable in its newborn state in a way that, if Buffy and the class hadn't intervened, would have worn off. |
| 216 | ** We don't really know that the transformed state of the Mayor is any less invulnerable than the Mayor was previously. Yes, we've seen the Mayor recover from quite a few injuries, some of which certainly would have been lethal, but his giant snake demon form was also supposed to be unkillable by most means. We don't know that the Mayor could have regenerated from being exploded into paste any better than his transformed snake demon form could. |
| 217 | ** We also have no way of knowing if his invulnerability was permanent or not. He only became invulnerable 100 days before the Ascension. It's entirely possible that if he missed his chance, he would have become vulnerable again. There's also the fact that he's over 100 years old and this plan has evidently been in the works for a very long time. When he first started the plan, his demon form would have been a lot harder to kill with contemporary technology (no tanks, no rocket launchers). Given that he had been working for demons, once he was committed opting out may not have even been an option without at best turning into a mortal human again or worse being killed or even severely tortured by the demons who'd given him his power for refusing to cooperate (given how big demons are on the whole mass killing thing, they probably wouldn't have looked too kindly on him turning up his nose at a chance to commit a massacre for them). |
| 218 | ** As of the season 12 comics [[spoiler: The Mayor survived his explosive end, it just took a helluva long time to regen]] the body found in the volcano was probably discarded by the demon as lava flows tend to make the concept of regeneration a bit painful and hard to move. |
| 219 | |
| 220 | [[/folder]] |
| 221 | |
| 222 | [[folder: Willow never liked Faith?]] |
| 223 | |
| 224 | * Reading about the site I've it said a few times that Willow never liked Faith. Somehow that's not how I remember it. |
| 225 | ** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E3FaithHopeAndTrick Faith, Hope and Trick]]" everyone liked Faith except Buffy. |
| 226 | ** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E4BeautyAndTheBeasts Beauty and the Beasts]]" Faith was going to watch over Oz, who is highly offended and sees it as overreacting. |
| 227 | ** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E10Homecoming Homecoming]]" Faith was going to go with Buffy, but joins the others in trying to get her and Cordelia to make up instead. |
| 228 | ** "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E7Revelations Revelations]]" has Faith's watcher trick her, leading to a confrontation with Buffy over Angel. For Willow's part she is more concerned that Buffy kept Angel a secret. |
| 229 | ** After "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E8LoversWalk Lovers Walk]]", Willow has far more important things to worry about than Faith's loss of...ah faith in humanity. |
| 230 | ** As far as I know Willow's feelings towards Faith do not come up again until "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E14 Bad Girls]]", when she feels Buffy is rejecting her because she has a new Slayer girlfriend. |
| 231 | ** From "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E19Consequences Consequences]]" onward, things really go downhill. Willow learns of Faith trying to frame Buffy for murder, and sleeping with Xander. This was also the episode that had Faith's infamous attempted rape and murder of Xander, which may or may not be known about. |
| 232 | *** Faith never tries to rape Xander. I've seen that episode many times, and it's just not there. Most likely this a big misremember by a LOT of people who have been told it happened, don't remember the episode well enough, so go with it. |
| 233 | *** Not much happens since Angel intervenes, but that scene definitely had some rape-y overtones. |
| 234 | *** This could be a case of language barrier but when I read "Faith tried to rape Xander" I tend to imagine Faith with a dildo and poor Xander tied up face down. The scene was more like Faith trying (unsuccessfully) to seduce Xander to be more accurate. Rape implies forced penetration (at least in most languages, maybe not in English). |
| 235 | *** It's a sadly common misconception that men cannot be raped by a woman because that rape necessarily involves forced penetration (or because men are 'always up for sex'/generally physically stronger etc etc). Rape is sex where one party has forced, or coerced their partner, or has had sex with them despite their inability at the time to meaningfully consent (too young, too drunk etc). So any gender can rape any other. A man needs an erection for heterosexual sex, but imagining that a man getting an erection means he wants and consents to sex is like saying a woman getting wet during forced sex means she really wants it. These are physical responses that enable sex to happen, not consent from the human owner of that body. So yeah, the scene is ambiguous but try playing it in your head with Faith as a man and Xander a woman and if it feels rapey that way round, it's still rapey played out the original way! |
| 236 | *** Again, it is probably a lost in translation issue. In Spanish the word "violar" can only mean to penetrate, and is generally translated as "rape", if rape in English means any form of unwanted sexual contact then probably the translation should be another like "abuso" or "estupro". |
| 237 | ** From here anything else that happened, Faith kidnapping her, poisoning Angel, the body swap and such would certainly give Willow reason to not like her. I'm just curious in how people say Willow never liked her when in the first half of the season Willow thought Faith was cool. |
| 238 | ** Willow has an unfortunate habit of retconning her own past in her head. |
| 239 | *** This is unfortunately a symptom of the season's approach - once Faith is a villain, we're supposed to think that she's 'always' been a bad apple and at odds with the gang. But she actually wasn't, especially early on. 'Revelations' and 'Consequences' are the main catalysts for Faith's feeling that the world is still against her like she always thought, and she responds in kind. |
| 240 | [[/folder]] |
| 241 | |
| 242 | [[folder: Rich's Tattoo of Lily]] |
| 243 | * Why get a permanent tattoo of a temporary name? |
| 244 | ** Not to be mean, but he didn't look particularly smart to me. And he probably didn't know it wasn't her real name. "Lily" basically wants to escape reality, so she probably genuinely thought or at least hoped they'll be together forever. |
| 245 | *** He did know, because he picked it himself. And "Lily" tells Buffy the name will do "for now." |
| 246 | * The real question is how the tattoo retained its clean lines and sharp colors after a lifetime in the Demon Dimension of Metaphorical Commercialized Industry. |
| 247 | [[/folder]] |
| 248 | |
| 249 | [[folder: Slayer's Blood]] |
| 250 | * In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E21GraduationDayPart1 Graduation Day Part 1]]", why would Faith attempt to kill Angel with a poison to which the only antidote is the blood of a Slayer? She ''is'' a Slayer. I suppose it could just be explained by Faith being too cocky to consider that Buffy might be able to hurt her, or just too reckless to bother seeing if there was an antidote, but surely the Mayor would have checked these things even if Faith didn't. When Buffy's LoveInterest is being slowly and painfully killed by a poison which can be cured by killing her nemesis's [[TheDragon Dragon]], what did they ''expect'' to happen? |
| 251 | ** They expected Faith to win the fight, because Buffy's too distracted worrying about her dying lover to bring her A game. They didn't know Buffy very well. |
| 252 | ** I haven't read all of the comics so maybe this comes up again but between the two shows this is the only vampire poison ever shown. It might be the only one in existence. My honest opinion would be that the Mayor and Faith were either unaware of what the cure was or hoped/expected that Buffy would do what she ultimately did and sacrifice herself. |
| 253 | ** As far as I know, the cure was only mentioned briefly in one of Giles' books. The Mayor of course doesn't have access to Giles' resources, and it's possible that this one book was the only known reference to the cure of that particular poison. I mean, they couldn't exactly have googled it to find out what the cure was, and if the Mayor and Faith didn't have the exact book needed to explain what the cure was, they probably assumed that Buffy and Giles wouldn't have it either. In fact, as far as anyone knows, that poison might have had many other antidotes, but the only one known to Giles was Slayer's blood. Dealing with supernatural stuff is harder when all your info comes from a small number of obscure grimoires and tomes. |
| 254 | ** Faith acted genuinely surprised when Buffy mentioned that the cure was Slayer blood so that part is easy enough. Whether or not the Mayor knew the cure is up in the air as far as I remember, but it seems perfectly in character for him to assume that Faith could beat Buffy and that, consequently, Buffy would be out of the picture one way or another. |
| 255 | ** There were accounts of other vampires who survived through different means, and it was Oz who found the slayer's blood account. Oz aka the second smartest person on the team after Willow. So that seems to suggest it was an obscure account that not anyone could just come across. It seems they just heard of a poison that could kill vampires and decided to use it on Angel to both torture Buffy watching her lover die and distract her from planning for the Ascension by looking around for a cure. |
| 256 | [[/folder]] |
| 257 | |
| 258 | [[folder: Murder is not the only option, you know]] |
| 259 | * The Mayor was invincible, alright, but he didn't seem to possess any other supernatural abilities, like strength or speed. When he tried to kill Buffy in the hospital, Angel easily tackled him. So why didn't they subdue him, take away and imprison until the time for Ascension is gone (or hell, forever, if that's what it takes)? Sure, abducting a prominent political figure couldn't be easy, but worth a try with the world at stake, especially since he didn't wary of visiting them alone. |
| 260 | * By that point it wasn't an option. They could presumably have tried this sooner but that was after he ate the box full of spiders which was as far as we know the final part of the spell and they didn't know he needed to feed to maintain the change. Even if they had he was pretty fast and California doesn't have a lot of places isolated enough from a population center that I'd trust him not to get to one. |
| 261 | ** If their objective is ultimately to put him on ice until they can find a way to kill him permanently, they are under no obligation to make his confinement in any way comfortable or humane. Which means nothing stops them from sealing him into a barrel and dropping him overboard in the middle of the bay, as was done to Angel after the season 3 finale of [=AtS=]. They could have done this at any time after the Hundred Days began, and since he dies if he simply misses his launch window on Graduation Day for the Ascension, that's all they'd have to do. |
| 262 | *** Where do we get the idea that he even could miss his launch window? He transformed all on his own and while he was eating people I don't remember anything stating he had to eat people. Dropping him in the bay with tons of fish might be a very bad plan. |
| 263 | [[/folder]] |
| 264 | |
| 265 | [[folder: Xander sleeping outside on Christmas Eve]] |
| 266 | * Granted it wasn't cold, but Buffy and Willow both knew that he was sleeping outside to avoid his parents' drunken fights. Willow at least had a romantic reconnection with Oz planned and having Xander anywhere near that is going to ruin it (she's lucky that Oz was cool getting back together with her still spending most of her time with Xander) but what about Buffy? She invited Faith over and Giles was only not invited because Joyce still felt awkward about the "Band Candy" sex. She didn't even seem to suggest having him over. |
| 267 | * He sleeps outside on Christmas Eve to avoid his family's drunken fights, presumably more than just his mother and father. Season three happens while the cast are somewhere between fifteen and seventeen. How many parents on either end do you think would be accepting of a boy/girl/girl sleep over? Sure we know that the best Xander could hope for spending the night with Faith and Buffy would be them letting him pick the Christmas specials but what little we learn about his parents suggests they are benignly neglectful not outright bad parents. Assuming school starts in September in Sunnydale (like it did in most places in California at that time, now its in August) Buffy has only been back from her walkabout three or four months and Faith is Faith. Call my paranoid but I know what presents I would expect to be unwrapped if I were Joyce. Also Xander doesn't make sleeping in the backyard really sound horrible so much as a tradition of his. |
| 268 | ** In season three the cast are in their final year of high school making them seventeen or eighteen and Buffy turning eighteen led to "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E12Helpless Helpless]]". Xander doesn't have to be honest with his parents about where he was going if he thought they would react badly and given how neglectful they were they might not have even minded. But if Joyce was that concerned about Faith being alone in a motel on Christmas do you really think she would have told Buffy that no she couldn't have Xander over and he would have to just sleep outside to avoid his family's drunken fighting because there was the slight possibility that she'd have sex with the guy she's never been interested in but who at least is human and not a vampire while her mother is in the house? Maybe the Joyce of the first two seasons wouldn't have allowed it but after finding out about the Slaying I can't imagine why she would suddenly start insisting that Buffy can't have a platonic guy friend spending the night because of Sex. Since Buffy can literally be gone at any hour without being all that specific because of things like patrol or vampires, she could easily be getting up to all kinds of sex every single day so there's actually less chance of it happening there at home. And the fact that Xander makes something rather horrible seem like just a casual tradition of his adds to the horror because it's so normal to him. |
| 269 | *** For that matter, Xander regularly tells his parents that he's staying over at Willows for an all night study session, and they seem pretty okay with that. |
| 270 | *** Xander may not LEGALLY have to answer to his parents. Most people who live under their parent's roofs still answer to their parents regardless of the legal reality of the situation. Joyce was worried about Faith spending Christmas ALONE. Xander wasn't spending Christmas alone, he probably ate dinner with his folks and would wake up to presents and hung over parents. In addition Joyce didn't even meet Angel until AFTER the two had sex. Buffy could have been up to all sorts of sex but Joyce was actively trying to get her out of slaying at that point. The only reason she was so nice to Faith was because Faith was a living breathing OUT for her daughter. Finally we don't know that Xander had a horrible home life. They could easily have thrown him out at eighteen and didn't. He didn't have to invite them to his wedding and he did. I suspect that him sleeping outside for Christmas was something akin to Willow going to his house to watch Christmas Specials, at worst a minor annoyance but nothing horrible. |
| 271 | [[/folder]] |
| 272 | |
| 273 | [[folder: The Wishverse doesn't make sense.]] |
| 274 | There are a lot of things in the Wishverse that don't seem to add up. |
| 275 | * First what happened that made that world so crapsack? It's heavily implied that Buffy is very busy running around with her Slayer duties. So much in fact that Sunnydale is taken over by vampires and the Watcher's Council had other better things to use Buffy on. Little if any of which happened in the regular Buffyverse. It can't be that the Master opened the Hell mouth because we know the physical location of said Hellmouth and the library was still there and being used as a base for the White Hats. Besides in the grand scheme of things vampires aren't very powerful. While it's not impossible in the long term that vampires could defeat demons, after all regular humans did it with just one slayer in no way does less than three years have them concerned more over having fun than defending their turf. |
| 276 | * Which leads to how did the vampires stay in charge? Without the Masquerade to protect them vampires aren't that big of a problem. Even if you assume the Initiative couldn't handle them in fair fights once they start taking over cities you bomb them. During the day. Sure there is collateral damage but you evac the citizens during daylight hours and start burning things and you win and that world looked bad enough to justify doing some property damage. |
| 277 | * The vampires didn’t really take control of the city as much as terrorise it by the nights. Sounds a lot like Detroit or Ciudad Juarez, hardly enough for the government to send the Military to handle the issue, especially in the case of a very small town in the middle of California. We have cities in real life that are not so different than Sunnydale in The Wishverse. |
| 278 | ** The answer to both these are the conditions of Cordelia's wish. She wished Buffy had never come to Sunnydale so the consequences of Buffy not being there were the Master escaping and the town going somewhat literally to Hell. However as Buffy could not be allowed to be sent there the damage the Master and the demons of the week could do was limited. Likewise the damage elsewhere would be increased to keep Sunnydale from becoming a priority. They could make big plans but couldn't put them into motion until after the wish was made. So things were bad but controlled until right after we switch to the Wishverse. |
| 279 | ** Another part that doesn't make a lot of sense is that in the wishverse, where was the mayor? Sunnydale was explicity built over the hellmouth to feed evil, and with that deal come the mayors ascension, with the population of sunnydale down to a fraction, and the masquerade well and truly broken, the Mayors plan to eat everyone and become a demon wouldn't work as well and I'm pretty sure the Master wouldn't want a pure demon ruling the town instead of him. |
| 280 | [[/folder]] |
| 281 | |
| 282 | [[folder: What happened to the other slaves in Anne]] |
| 283 | * After Buffy fought the demons that imprisoned and enslaved the teens in Los Angeles she saves just like half a dozen of them, the rest (and seem to be a big number) remained behind and the inter-dimensional door is closed. Yes, she killed the leader and a large number of the demons, but some should have survived (some were just hit, not stabbed or anything like that). But even if all the demons were killed, did all the other human slaves just get trapped forever in that dimension? |
| 284 | ** Well we don't cut back to her until after she's packed and ready to go home, so perhaps there was some finding a way to open the portal and free the human slaves. Maybe Buffy and Lily/Anne spent some time trying to help them. And in the meantime, having seen the two girls rebel against their masters and kill them, the other slaves were inspired to fight back and start a rebellion too. |
| 285 | [[/folder]] |
| 286 | |
| 287 | [[folder: Finding Faith in Graduation Day]] |
| 288 | * Why didn't Buffy try to follow or track down Faith when she jumped off the roof in "Graduation Day"? She should have been able to see that she landed in the back of that truck. Even if we assume that Buffy wasn’t feeling strong enough to climb off the roof and follow it, she could have at least tried to see the license place (or to find some security footage showing the license place from a nearby building, which wouldn’t be hard to break into with slayer strength). Even if she didn’t, it was a pretty good guess that if someone discovered Faith’s body in the back of their truck they would either take her to the hospital or, if she was dead, call the cops. Either way, with Willow’s hacking abilities there was a pretty good chance they’d have been able to track her down from either hospital or police records and not only would there be guaranteed enough blood to save Angel but Buffy would have been at full strength for the fight with the Mayor. I understood there were time constraints, but given how desperate she was to save Angel it just didn’t make sense that when Faith jumped off the roof Buffy seemed to immediately accept that she was gone forever. |
| 289 | * There are a few things. First if you look at Buffy's expression when she stabs Faith it's pretty obvious that there is a gap between believing you need to kill someone and being ready for the burden. She utterly freezes right then and the angle she was at didn't let her see the license plate. The other solutions mentioned would have taken too much time. If Faith was already in a hospital (which she apparently was fairly quickly) they'd have the additional issue of sneaking her out or Angel in. Finally while it's possible Buffy didn't think of this Faith might have been no good at that point. A gut wound plus blunt force trauma that clearly left her busted up might have caused too much blood loss. The cure is said to be draining a slayer, but Buffy didn't die and no amount of after the fact blood transfusions brings you back from being drained. So what the cure actually was seems to be "draining more than the Slayer can expect to survive." A near dead Faith might not have had enough blood. |
| 290 | ** You have to also remember that Buffy was at the end of quite a long and exerting fight. A slayer is built to withstand the strength of demons and match them for power. Buffy is fighting someone who is enchanted to be as strong as her, so by that logic a hit from Faith is bound to hurt a lot. Buffy may have been running on adrenaline for most of the fight, but once it was over, fatigue hit her and she may not have had the strength to chase after a moving truck. There's also the fact that she believes she's killed a human and the realisation that she may have lost her best chance to cure Angel, and I'm not surprised that she froze. Buffy is still a young girl prone to very human reactions and weaknesses. |
| 291 | ** Or perhaps she realised that time was running out for Angel, and chasing down the truck to bring Faith to him risks him dying before she can get to him. But if she gets him to drink from her under controlled circumstances, he has more of a chance. |
| 292 | [[/folder]] |
| 293 | |
| 294 | [[folder: Faith punching Willow]] |
| 295 | * In the episode where they steal the box of spiders that the Mayor needs for the Ascension and Willow accidentally is left behind and has the scene where she tells off Faith who socks her in the face, is their any non PlotArmor reason as to why Willow didn't lose as least a few teeth? Faith is very strong, Willow is not durable and it didn't seem as though Faith would hold back, if anything Willow made her more angry and she would punch harder than normal. |
| 296 | ** Willow by that point has already begun training as a witch, so the magic she's been using may have buffed her slightly against a hit from a Slayer. It's only two seasons later that Willow is strong enough to hurt a goddess, so she might be already SuperTough. |
| 297 | [[/folder]] |
| 298 | |
| 299 | [[folder: Why didn't Xander apologize]] |
| 300 | * While the Willow/Xander/Oz/Cordelia plot early in the season is one of the worst story arcs in the whole show but there is one specific point to raise. Why didn't Xander ever apologize to Oz? The two seemed to be reasonably friendly before this and Oz didn't do anything to deserve this. Willow and Cordelia not having a similar scene makes sense because they weren't really friends but Xander and Oz seemed to be relatively close and while Oz would obviously be more involved with Willow after this it did seem odd. |
| 301 | * I get the feeling they came to the unspoken agreement to never speak of it again. |
| 302 | [[/folder]] |
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