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Post by SpringSummers on Jul 24, 2004 16:57:34 GMT -5
Re: Spike and Olaf - when Olaf initially bumps Spike in the Bronze, Spike's response is an immediate (and cranky) "Watch it, mate!" Only after Olaf turns around and Spike gets a better look at him does Spike back down with "On second thought, do what you like." This strikes me as odd, 'cuz Spike likes to take on a challenge. OTOH, Olaf hasn't really done anything harmful yet. Going w/Olaf as the id, and Spike being mostly id due to his vamp nature, it sets up his struggle in s6. He's battling his inner Olaf, but it's a lot bigger than he is and does what it wants, then harms Buffy. Don't think I'm explaining this well. Just thinking that scene is pretty crucial. I agree with your thoughts here LadyDi. Spike's emotional human personality, paired with the soullness and demon inside, just make for more than he can handle in the end. Spike's inner Olaf is part of Spike - he has an enormous inner struggle going on, and has had since Becoming Part II - it just keeps growing and growing and culminates in the attempted rape and soul-quest.
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Post by Patti - S'cubie Cutie on Sept 9, 2004 20:39:42 GMT -5
Thanks, Nicki. You are all caught up? I will work hard to try to get you behind again! HALF-A-BUFFY: I think Spike gets as much of Buffy as she's got to give by the end of Season 7. No one ever really gives away ALL of themselves, I don't think. If they do, they have nothing left for themselves - maybe Buffy wasn't so much cookie dough, as sour dough bread...
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Post by Patti - S'cubie Cutie on Sept 9, 2004 20:41:16 GMT -5
Wouldn't worry too much about the babbling - at least you kept it on-topic! ;D A rare joy! Not ...I don't mean Lola...oh you know what I mean!
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Post by williamtheb on Sept 13, 2012 16:07:41 GMT -5
Hi Spring!
This is such a fun episode, focusing on a bunch of pairings which are a total joy and ones the show tends not to focus on as much as it could/should -- Willow/Anya, Xander/Spike, and Buffy/Tara are all a delight. I love what you write, about Olaf as the inner id and about the show as season six foreshadowing.
The Cat in the Hat analogy is particularly great because there actually is no clear resolution to the cat/fish conflict in the book; both are (really) necessary. If you listen to the fish, then you never grow up and escape the (sometimes unfair) structures imposed on you; if you just listen to the cat, you destroy everything in sight. And as you say, this episode shows that explicitly. It's necessarily to "let it out" and not keep everything in boxes forever, in order to actually deal with conflict. Had Giles not left in this episode, Willow and Anya would have not come to the conflict *and resolution* they get here. And the same is true in an even bigger way in season six.
So -- if Willow and Spike are The Cat in the Hat, are they really evil, or are they (just) "bad"? I'd say that while Willow & Spike are heading in opposite directions up to and including season six, in season seven they are paralleled but on the same course -- guilt-laden murderers, potentially triggerable by the First, told by Buffy to access their (dark) power in Get it Done, bathed in light in Chosen. And I think that is just right. Willow, before Buffy came to town, had internalized the rules so much that she was completely alienated from her own feelings and self and desires. My read of Doppelgangland is that neither the fuzzy pink good-girl Willow nor the evil dominatrix leather-clad bad-girl Willow are really truly complete without the other; at the end of the episode good Willow hugs and accepts bad Willow, at least for a moment, and accepts (at the episode's end) that she has a few things she can learn from her in order to find a way to live sustainably. She's drawn to evil because she represses and denies it inside her (rather like Buffy -- but it's even more dramatic in Willow's case, because she's even more repressed and obsessed with The Rules). She indulges in her dark side in a way that is so catastrophic it nearly ends the world -- but without accessing and understanding that dark side, she would never have the strength in Chosen to do the spell to change the world for the better. Spike has to accept his William in order to live fully; his all-id act, all desire and no soul, is unstable, and he misses that light inside him. The two are Buffy's biggest assets in season seven precisely because they've accessed both the best and the worst parts of themselves, and it's a way of mirroring Buffy's own arc. Which is why, again, Giles has to leave, and on some level Willow has to rampage, and Spike and Buffy have to have a relationship that is initially destructive. Just as Xander *needs to* take a good hard look at his demons, and Anya has to briefly return to vengeance demonhood before rejecting it. Hopefully we can manage this reckoning with our worst selves without beating our lover in an alley or an AR or flaying a guy or trying to end the world. But it's amazing how much season six NEEDED to happen for everyone, and how they get to such great places in season seven as a result.
Two things I noticed about general symbolic patterns in the show:
In AtS' "Soul Purpose," a fish is used to stand in for Angel's soul in a dream sequence, which I think is a soul/sole pun. And it's actually pretty common within the Buffyverse for fish to be used that way, surprisingly. The fish in the Cat in the Hat is very superego/soul-like, and we also have Angel killing Willow's fish -- Angel hates his soul, and the act is also part of what (metaphorically) foreshadows Willow's turn to the dark -- and Dru predicts "burning baby fishes" swimming around Spike's head, which I think is a reference to his soul burning him and all the Hellmouth with him in Chosen.
Which is what makes it interesting that the spell that Willow's doing that causes all the commotion is a sunlight spell. Willow is looking for light in her own way, too -- but she is trying to make light artificially, rather than recognizing the real thing. Tara sings about being in the light in OMWF, which is again artificial light (her memories aren't intact). But as you also point out -- there is real light associated with Willow and Tara, starlight in Listening to Fear and Tara's guiding light in Bargaining and metaphorically at the end of the season. It's interesting, too, how "voom" and the sunlight ball as a cleaning product compares with Angel saying the amulet in Chosen is "scrubbing bubbles"; Spike ultimately becomes the "ball of sunlight" Willow tried to make. It seems to me then that while Willow was undoubtedly motivated by the desire to gratify her own emotional needs, the image of Willow ... trying to create artificial sunlight ... seems really powerful to me. She wants the light, she needs it -- she wants to be good, too, though she has her competing impulses (which she's indulging in) to be bad. But she thinks she can create the sunlight out of nothing. Like Spike, she's bathed in light in Chosen (they really hammer in the parallels visually, when a shaft of light from Spike goes right beside Willow) because she's using her power *for others*, to allow others the chance to be empowered as she's been. Uniting her desire to gratify her own needs with her (good) impulses to help the community. Which is very much Buffy's "spiritual" journey, too, where her initial willingness to follow the rules of the slayer myth as presented to her (like Willow's good girl rule-abiding beginnings) give way to her trek through the woods and finally back, triumphant and wiser, into the light, using her knowledge to change and save the world (just as Xander's journey, in this ep as well as elsewhere, is so much about Buffy's "heart" journey).
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Post by SpringSummers on Sept 15, 2012 22:54:20 GMT -5
Hi, and thanks for stopping in again. I am always happy to see that you have posted over here. Willow's "I have faith in you, Anya," reminds me very much of Buffy's "I believe in you, Spike," from Season 7. Anya is an interesting character, with her own redemption arc, though I spend little time on analyzing Anya. There's so much going on in these eps! In probably its most dramatic form, this goes on with Angel, . . . he keeps being drawn to evil, and souless Angel always seems like "the real one," and so relieved to be rid of his soul . . . and it is very much about his absolute repression of that evil, his inability to accept and understand that it is part of him. Well said, I couldn't agree more. That's definitely the message we get - I mean, that you need to get in contact with "your Olaf," get to know the dark side, accept it, harness it, and become fully yourself. The story is very dramatic, operatic and such - I think this is more for entertainment value - at least I hope it is - than that Joss is saying that we all have to actually do Evil acts, indulge our basest desires, in order to be fully realized. In RL, for most of us, we simply need to acknowledge and not deny our baser feelings and desires - serious indulgence in them isn't a requirement. Some never get in the pool, some get into the pool and learn to swim without going under at all; some go under once, or twice, or many times, before figuring it out, and some drown. Yes, I noticed the fish thing, and have resisted believing the "soul/sole" thing, because it is so very cheesy, but there is plenty of evidence there. Love these thoughts about the light, and Willow using "artificial light." I never really thought it through, but I very much like your analysis.
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Post by williamtheb on Oct 2, 2012 0:58:22 GMT -5
Thanks very much, Spring for your response! Alas, I've been meaning to respond but I have fallen behind with life stuff and can't really think very clearly. I might respond more soon, but I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your responses (and to try not to seem rude by not responding).
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Post by williamtheb on Oct 2, 2012 3:03:46 GMT -5
Well, I seem to have found a little more time after all! Yay! Hi, and thanks for stopping in again. I am always happy to see that you have posted over here. Willow's "I have faith in you, Anya," reminds me very much of Buffy's "I believe in you, Spike," from Season 7.
Anya is an interesting character, with her own redemption arc, though I spend little time on analyzing Anya. There's so much going on in these eps! Definitely. You know, Anya is especially tricky because of the main cast, she seems (to me) to have just about the least to do with Buffy -- she is in the series for longer than Oz or Tara, but her arc is separate from Buffy, and since all roads (often) lead back to Buffy it's a bit hard to figure out where Anya's plugs in. I love her story with Xander, and I love that the Willow/Anya conflict gets played out in different ways -- in Doppelgangland, here, in Same Time Same Place and in small scenes in both Willow and Anya's "dark eps" (the Dark Willow eps and Selfless). They seem to come to a good place vis a vis one another in season seven despite being really at each other's throats in DGL, and they also help one another -- Anya teleporting around and working to keep the spell going to protect Jonathan & Andrew, Willow calling on D'Hoffryn to help save Anya. I feel like they do "get" each other, which is maybe why they have trouble getting along early on. Anya is rude and overtly selfish which drives Willow's conflict-avoidy personality crazy, and Anya is more able to see Willow's dark side than most of the Scoobies who are invested in her goodness. Which, it's a pretty rich dynamic for being only highlighted a few times. And it makes sense that Willow is the one to say "I believe in you Anya," because maybe Willow/Anya and Buffy/Spike are similar (the "good girl" on her way through the woods and the demon on their way to humanity). In probably its most dramatic form, this goes on with Angel, . . . he keeps being drawn to evil, and souless Angel always seems like "the real one," and so relieved to be rid of his soul . . . and it is very much about his absolute repression of that evil, his inability to accept and understand that it is part of him. Yes...I really like the way you have written about it. And it manifests in how much Angelus hates Angel and Angel hates Angelus...so deeply divided. Anya is interesting in that she seems exactly the same in personality whether she's human or demon, even more so than integrated people like Spike with or without soul. That's definitely the message we get - I mean, that you need to get in contact with "your Olaf," get to know the dark side, accept it, harness it, and become fully yourself.
The story is very dramatic, operatic and such - I think this is more for entertainment value - at least I hope it is - than that Joss is saying that we all have to actually do Evil acts, indulge our basest desires, in order to be fully realized. Yeah, I think that it is for entertainment value ... and probably also because it's easier to process that extreme dramatic thing as an audience member. It's hard to learn from other people's example, so it makes sense to make that example as dramatic as possible for the metaphor. I think the other thing I find interesting is that the..."harnessing your dark side" is about both recognizing genuinely evil impulses and recognizing...transgressive, but perhaps positive ones. Buffy thinks she has to be the perfect slayer and do everything, but she doesn't -- and that "dark" impulse to leave the mission behind can be turned around and made positive. Like, Willow believes in season 2 that it would make her a slut to be the first one to kiss Oz, and still has no idea, presumably because of her upbringing, how to express her feelings or deal with any kind of interpersonal conflict. And some of that "dark" is the fact that she's not the perfect person she feels she has to be. Which is okay. The difficult question is how to know ahead of time which "dark" impulses, impulses which society or whoever disapproves of, are worth listening to and acting on and maybe even bringing to light. Which for most people is probably going to be a much more gradual process than is going to be for people with the power and responsibility of Buffy and Willow and Spike and Giles and Angel etc. In RL, for most of us, we simply need to acknowledge and not deny our baser feelings and desires - serious indulgence in them isn't a requirement.
Some never get in the pool, some get into the pool and learn to swim without going under at all; some go under once, or twice, or many times, before figuring it out, and some drown. Right. And that is something I struggle with IRL -- how do I know how deep to get into the pool? I'm young, though older than the characters, and BtVS (among other shows) helps me a lot to think about these issues. I don't plan on doing any evil. But it is reassuring to think that there may be some things I'm not proud of about myself that maybe I can harness For Good somewhere down the line.
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Post by SpringSummers on Oct 2, 2012 21:56:33 GMT -5
Well, I seem to have found a little more time after all! Yay! Do not worry about seeming rude and such, if you take awhile to respond. I understand perfectly about RL interruptions and ups and downs - I don't take it personally. Great thoughts on Anya. I especially like what you mention about the Willow/Anya and Buffy/Spike comparison. If I ever get farther along in Season 6, I'll have to pay more attention to that. The show has very overtly compared Anya and Spike before (as they commiserate in Where the Wild Things Are, and then again in Entropy, e.g.), but I've never thought about how Willow and Buffy play similar roles for Anya and Spike, respectively. Do we know that Anya was soulless as a vengeance demon? I can't really remember much of D'Hoffryn's spiel about becoming a vengeance demon, though I have a vague memory of him looking for women who were already ready and willing to get into the vengeance gig. It seems more like, once Anya's powers have been removed, she has to figure out how to adapt . . . well, lots to think about here. The show focuses sometimes on the ability to adapt, and how important that is - and how related that is, to knowing and accepting all parts of yourself, and knowing and accepting reality. I'm unsure what you're saying about turning evil impulses to good . . . let me think outloud on this. Say . . . I get an impulse to say . . . spread horrible, reputation-ruining lies about someone because of anger and jealousy I feel toward this person. How do I "turn this to good?" Realizing I feel these things, and accepting I'm the type of person who does feel these things, is important. If I don't acknowledge my evil impulses, if I make excuses to persuade myself, somehow, that my impulses are justifiable and such, then I can never control those impulses. I will go ahead and tell the lies. So OK, say I'm mature enough to recognize and accept reality, so instead of going the "it's different when *I* do it" route, I acknowledge and find other ways to deal with my anger and jealousy. I try to understand the root causes within myself and and I try to come up with workable, victimless methods for dealing . . . and I guess I could do stuff like exercise, or otherwise turn my energies into something positive and productive . . . Hmmm. I suppose getting to that "mature" place takes some doing and learning and making mistakes. Say I went ahead and spread those lies . . . and of course, they don't help me feel better, not really. And it all comes back to bite me, as people learn of my lies so that my own reputation ends up just as, if not more, besmirched. The only friends I now have are of the same dubious nature as myself, and I can't trust them. Of course, I may or may not notice this, and understand cause and effect. I may start to learn the lesson that evil begets evil, etc. Or, I may redouble my evil efforts, thinking that eventually, they will work to comfort me. I may never figure it out; I may "drown in the pool" instead. So - I think . . . the lessons you learn from following your evil impulses are a good thing, that comes from the Evil. And I think that the time and energy spent on evil planning and action can be redirected toward Good. And I think that you can take disastrous, evil happenings in your life, and let Good blossom there. Anyhow, it's not about how deep you get into the pool. It's about becoming a good swimmer so it doesn't matter how deep the pool is. Well, I've tortured that metaphor enough.
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Post by williamtheb on Oct 15, 2012 12:40:31 GMT -5
Do not worry about seeming rude and such, if you take awhile to respond. I understand perfectly about RL interruptions and ups and downs - I don't take it personally. That is very good to hear! Because, obviously, those delays keep happening. Yeah -- it's interesting, because I do think that Xander/Anya : Buffy/Spike (and Xander/Anya: Buffy/Riley) parallels are more explicit. And plus you pointed out in the Into the Woods review that the Spike/Buffy/Riley triangle is reflected in Willow/Xander/Anya.... All the parallels are so complicated. I have always figured that vengeance demons have souls, because Anya seems the same. And D'Hoffryn seeks out women who are already likely to want to get revenge on men, as you say. I like the point about adaptability. Anya is further interesting because she is very adaptable, but some of that adaptability is a bad thing -- because it comes from that "selfless" nature. In "Selfless," she's even a communist in flashbacks, and a complete capitalist in the present; she enjoys killing, but unlike with Spike or Angel, she isn't really in it for the joy of the kill: D'Hoffryn gives her a philosophy, and Anya adapts to it readily. It's as if for Anya, before her experiences in s5-7, there's very little difference between a job for D'Hoffryn killing men serving justice, and a job for Giles at the Magic Box serving capitalistic individualism. Somehow over the last few years of the show, she forms enough of a sense of self to be able to distinguish between them, and actually let a "self" develop, though. Ohh, right, I didn't actually mean so much using impulses to do evil, as more generally impulses that are negative in some way. So in your example, if I had a desire to spread rumours about someone because I was angry at them ... I might have to think about why I was angry at them. Maybe that person actually did do me wrong in some way -- and I could use that anger as motivation to redress the situation, not by getting revenge, but by making sure they don't hurt me again. Or maybe the anger comes from somewhere else, from something else about myself I'm not happy with -- which again I can use to change something. What I actually meant is more this. Let’s take Buffy, Willow & Spike since they are the biggest players in Chosen in terms of how much they accomplish. (Which is not to say they are necessarily the most heroic—Xander & Dawn & Anya & Faith & Giles & the new slayers etc. all risk their lives and they really don’t need to.) And let’s look at their lowest moments in s6, or at least moments that are very low. Buffy refuses the antidote and nearly kills her friends in Normal Again, and some of that is because the mental hospital seems like a better world to her. That’s bad, and it’s great that she (with Joyce’s help in the mental hospital) snaps herself out of it. But the actual recognition that her life, with its heroing and being the centre of everyone’s universe, is hurting her so, is meaningful; she had been repressing that resentment and so it came out, but knowing that she is apart from her friends and this bothers her is part of the key to figuring out that she needs to empower the slayers, and not continue living as the One And Only. Willow goes dark and tries to end the world. This is deeply evil—she is near drowning. But her impulse to end the world comes from experiencing that the world is full of pain—and from the fact that the world actually is sometimes an awful place. It’s great that Xander helps her off that ledge. But the recognition that something is wrong with the world, and that maybe radical change is needed, is part of what allows her to get to the point of getting the strength to change the world in s7—she does change the world, for the better, with the slayer spell. Spike nearly rapes Buffy. But what motivates him is partly this knowledge that he really can’t stand being in no-man’s-land and wants desperately to be with Buffy in the light. That desire to be in the light is good and is what motivates him to get his soul and save the day in Chosen. So for all three of them, buried under their worst actions is a positive impulse. Which isn’t to say that the actions were good, but that maybe the anger and self-loathing and so forth that motivated them could be turned around—that realization that something about their world was so bad that they needed to change something about themselves or about the world, at first manifested in a destructive way, but then became constructive. One reason I relate is that I relate a lot to Willow and to a lesser extent Buffy. To elaborate a bit with Willow as an example, partly because her dark is so very dark: I grew up very much a "rule-follower", smart, kind of socially isolated. And I always felt that if I was ever angry about something, it was a sign that there was something wrong with me ... but I think that trying to follow all the rules, some of which don't actually make sense, was really not sustainable, or something I even should have wanted. What I think is interesting is how those two especially (though others in the cast) make big mistakes in part because they both...repress their dark sides, but also because they were trying to live with a combination of rules that made things impossible for them. Willow's inability to connect with any desires she thought might be bad, or against the social code, or whatever, even extended as far as being in denial about her sexuality -- which makes sense, since this is the girl whose parents seemed to be liberal in theory but also wouldn't let her have boys in her room when she was in 11th grade, and was concerned that making the first move with Oz would make her a slut. She eventually goes (to put it mildly) overboard in abusing magic -- but magic, and power, was also really necessary for her, to get out of being the bullied girl in denial about herself, who (from Doppelgangland) kind of thought she should just stay in, and floss, and die a virgin. So buried under Willow's disproportionate anger and need for control is her actual need to exert a reasonable amount of control over her life, to be free from bullies, to be allowed to live and be herself, etc. So the "turning dark impulses to good" is more about...figuring out whether those dark impulses are trying to tell you something about yourself. In season seven, Willow is (IMHO) much better at setting limits on herself, w.r.t. her relationships with her friends, and articulating her needs -- for example, telling Kennedy, in "Get it Done," after taking her energy, "that's how I work" [while trying to save Buffy from portals] -- and being generally honest with people and herself, in a way that she is still very much afraid to do in earlier seasons, including s6. Which! I guess, it's sort of about...realizing that it's okay to be selfish sometimes, in order to be able to find a space in which you can live and express yourself.
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