My season 7 manifesto

[Skytteflickan88]

I saw this article

stormwreath.livejournal.com/67976.html

posted on Whedonesque and talked about it on my blog, but I thought it be funnier to talk to you guys about it as well;

I agree to a lot in this article, but I have some disagreements. The major ones I will post below.

8."There's one specific point to address, which numerous people have made the subject of fics over the years; that a girl suddenly becoming a Slayer might accidentally use her unaccustomed strength to hurt or even kill someone else... and by extension, Buffy and Willow would be responsible for that. While a clever idea, I've never thought it worked that way: all the girls being empowered seemed to me to know exactly what had happened to them, and be in full control... whether it's Baseball Girl's cheeky smile or the look of determination in Abused Trailer Girl's face. 'The Chain' made that explicit, with the emphasis on how the new Slayer was hit by all the accumulated knowledge and memories and wisdom of the entire preceding Slayer line all at once. Of course, it doesn't mean that a newly Called woman will use her powers for good, but it seems clear to me that she'd use them with understanding. And I've already said I don't believe in toddler Slayers. :-)"

As we saw in the commercial in The Chain with Andrew and Vi(I think it was them), although the girl has strange dreams of being another girl in another time, she doesn't know what she is, or why, so no, it's not explicit that all new slayers are in full control and knowledge of what happened to them . For all they know they've been slipped some steroids in their drink and have weird superstrength and dreams to thank for it.

10. I respect and understand your opinions, but if Buffy had made all those women into slayers without the threat of The First's army, she should have deserved a beating.Giving someone power can be wrong. How easy do you think it is, with information about your slayer origin or not, to make love to a fragile human or to hold a newborn baby without squezzing to hard? Accidents happen, self-control slack. Superstrength and a bunch of predator-senses aren't for everyone. Unless they choose it.

It's not right to hand out power like that. Definitly not since not Buffy, Willow or probably anyone alive or dead, fully understands how the slayer energy changes a person, what it is and what exactly it does. They put demonic energy into unwilling girls. They were made into hunters. That fact is undeniable. Remember Buffy needing to hunt in Buffy vs Dracula, before she went to sleep next to Riley? I don't think Buffy would have felt the urge to hunt before she was Chosen. She has been made more... predator-like.

I understand that Buffy didn't have much choice in Season 7, and after all, most slayers she has known had been well adjusted girls(everyone but the first slayer who tried to kill Buffy and her friends in Restless and of course, Faith). They were unwillingly changed but dealt with it.

"However, my main argument against this charge is to say that really, the question of consent is the wrong question to be asking. Becoming a Slayer wasn't something imposed on these women from outside... it was already there inside them in potential, and it was only "the rules made up by a bunch of men thousands of years ago" that prevented them from all having that power. It was the Shadowmen who violated their consent, and all Buffy and Willow did was ensure that these women could enjoy the benefits of that long-ago action as well as having to suffer its downsides. They were breaking the chains, not adding new ones."

Wheter they were born to become potentials, or if the shadowmens spell "blessed" them when they were newborns, you can't say that just because it was in them, it should be let out. Buffy and Willow violated their consent just as much as the shadowmen. The shadowmen might have created slayers from nothing, while Willow created slayers from potentials, but that still does't give them the right to take away choice. I have the potential to become a martial art fighter, but that doesn't mean that I should(although even comparing the most skilled martial art fighter with a mystical demonic fighter is ridicoulous, but still.)

"On a metaphorical level, just as the story of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' was that of Buffy growing up and becoming an adult woman with full acceptance of her responsibilities, so Slayerhood is a metaphor for adult agency. You don't choose to become an adult, you don't "consent" to puberty or maturity. It happens regardless of your wishes, but you do get to choose how you respond to the changes in your body and your life."

I think that's not entirely a good metaphor. You can't compare what nature, our bodies have evolved to to survive, to the conscious acts of Buffy & Willow. The act of evolving from girl to women is unconscious and in our DNA, while the potentials becoming slayers was a conscious act. Adulthood, you can't consent to, slayerhood, you can. I might be to picky, but I just wanted to point that out.

That said, I think Buffy made the choice she had to make. Maybe the shadowmen did too, I have no idea of their motives. Weird that they couldn't find a willing girl tough.

[witcher]

Well this issue is on again.. No wonder. In my opinion this is one, if not the theme, of season 8: did Buffy do the right thing in Chosen when she had Willow turn all of the Potentials into Slayers?
Well this is the way I see it:

Long long time ago demons ruled this earth. Then came men. Demons found ways to stay... and so the vampires were created. Now with vampires around humans are no longer at the top of the food chain - and we do not like that! So Shadowmen decided to fight back. Now they could have infused them-selves with the power of a demon but they did not. Was it because they knew that a Slayer would have a short live time, or because they were not certain it would work at all - we don't know. All we know is that they used a spirit of a demon, some powerful magic and a girl to create a Slayer.

The first Slayer was violated by Shadowmen. They picked her for no reason ( as far as we know ). She could have lived a normal life, and died a normal death.. but she didn't. She became a Slayer and than came violence, fighting and death. Her death. When she died another girl was chosen, and another, and so on. The spell that Shadowmen created recognized a potential in them to become Slayers and so they did.

We do not know how Slayer line worked before. It is possible that a girl was a Potential but never got chosen, because she became to old to be a Slayer when her time came... Maybe.. All we know is that the Slayer line changed when Buffy Summers was called.

First time she changed the line was in S1 finally. Xander gave her CPR, but she died just for a second and that was enough for mystical forces to call another Slayer - Kendra. So no longer was there one girl in all the world with the power to fight demons, but two of them.

And when Kendra died - still two - Faith was called. But when Buffy died in Gift no other Slayer was called, so its safe to say that she was no longer a part of the Slayer line, Faith was and only her death would allow a new Slayer to be called.

That is until Chosen. Buffy had Willow turn all the Potentials into Slayers. Now this sets ground for S8. Did she have right to do it? Does good have to much power now?

The way I see it she had to do it. Some people say she gave power to girls that didn't ask for it. Well we saw what happened to girls who didn't have that power and were attacked by Bringers. ( just so you know they died ). By giving them power she not only protected them, but she made herself an army that would help her stop the First.

Now there goes that speech she violated them like Shadowmen violated the first Slayer. Well not quite. They could have given power to them selves, they could have turned themselves into Slayers. But they didn't. They made one girl a Slayer, and destined thousands of others to become one in centuries to come. Buffy had to play by some rules. She could not give power to lets say Xander or Dawn. It had to be Potentials, they had to help her stop the First. And what was her other choice? To let all those girls die at the hands of Bringers? She gave them power to protect themselves and the world around them, she gave power to those who were destined to have it.

Her army does look a little gang-ish but the Slayers don't have to join it. We saw that Latina Slayer in issue #21.. she said no and no one forced her to join.

Does this system have its flaws. Of course. But Buffy didn't fix the world, she changed it! Was it for better or worse? Now thats the question S8 has to answer.

[siredbyspike]

I myself have always wondered why the Shadowmen would choose a girl. Is is because a meek little seemingly helpless girl would add the advantage of surprise as the vampires/demons would never suspect them? Or is it more because they viewed it as women tending to be slighter of frame, more flexible and quicker than men-or even that women would handle the prophetic dreams and the sensing of demons better because they were more emotional and intuitive and listened to their instincts better than men? (please don't blast me on this one, i am not trying to say women are better than men or to be offensive!)
And, like Sky, i have a disagreement with point #8 as well...
where it says the girls that were recently empowered seemed to know exactly what happened to them and be in full control. Um, no. That is why Watcher's existed, to train and help out the slayers coming into their powers. And also, how do you explain Dana then? Yes, she was crazy before that, but like Sky said for all they knew they could have thought they'd been drugged. Also if it was that easy, Buffy would have known exactly what she was doing and been pumped from day 1.
Just because Buffy gathered these potentials and helped get them ready to fight and explained to them things it took her a long time to learn doesn't mean they just automatically grasped all that accumulated knowledge from past slayers the second the power hit them. I mean they were in the Hellmouth fighting for their lives, Distracted much?
Also i disagree with point #1 about the Turok-Han being imbued with the First's strength thereby making it stronger than the rest of them that they fight in Chosen. I think they are all meant to be that strong.They aren't regular vamps to me they are like ancient, feral, Nos Feratu type vamps... before the bloodline of vamps got diluted and intermixed and vamps powers weakened over time. Like the missing link between the full demon Old Ones, and the vamps like Angel and Spike. Yes, they seem pretty easy to cut down in Chosen, but i think that just shows the strength of the girls and it would cheapen that for me if you say that those Turok-Han were weaker.

Point #9 I disagree with also. I think that the Slayers are part demon. Why else would Spike have been able to hit Buffy with his chip? I think just like Cordelia had to take on some aspects of a demon to handle her visions, the Slayer did also to handle her powers.
And that brings me to point #10-the slayer spell was empowerment and not a violation. This area for me is shades of gray instead of black and white. I think different women affected by the spell would see it different ways, and you just can't say whether it was a violation or not as a whole, but just case by case or Potential by Potential. Buffy and Willow meant well and had to do what must be done even though it may not have necessarily been right. For example, the abused girl that is about to get hit by her boyfriend... who's to say that her smile is a smile of empowerment? She just as easily could go overboard since she was abused and kill the boyfriend, and go on to run around killing other people she felt had slighted her in her life. Or it is possible that being a victim for so long she has started to see herself as less of a person and believes she is unworthy and upon recieving the power she feels violated from it.

Yes, it would be nice for the most part with all of these potentials becoming Slayers all of a sudden, but again it is against some of their wills. Buffy herself had issues with the whole Chosen thing most of the time and just wanted to live a normal life. Nobody would want to be saddled with worrying about the fate of the world all the time, but at least if there were that many they could at least sleep at night-unlike Buffy, Faith and all of the single slayers before.

A question i have though about the slayer line is what happens now if Faith were to be killed? Would another slayer be called? Or are all the potentials used up now? Because later we do have Fray, so after Buffy and everybody from season 8 does their final battle and magic is banished, then they die off and the slayer line dies off too and is rekindled by Fray? Or does it just lie dormant, and potentials are born and grow up and die and just aren't called ?

Sorry i wrote a book!!

[Skytteflickan88]

Jan 31, 2009 23:48:33 GMT -5 siredbyspike said:

Point #9 I disagree with also. I think that the Slayers are part demon. Why else would Spike have been able to hit Buffy with his chip?

He couldn't hit Buffy. Not until Buffy died and changed on a molecur-thingy level. Until then, even tough she was a slayer, the chip reacted.

I'm not saying that I disgree with you on that slayers are part demons, but I just couldn't resist correcting you.

And about the slayer line... I haven't read issue 21, but wasn't a girl suddenly chosen at her 16th birthday or something?

[henzINNIT]

The world would have likely ended if Buffy hadn't made the choice to do that spell, so of course it was the right decision. There are still massive conscequences to face for it though.