Interesting ideas but Anya/Aud/Anyanka representing Buffy's desire for vengeance ultimately doesn’t work for me. Or for you it seems, as by the end you point out what she does is quite different from what Anyanka did. I do see parallels being drawn between Buffy and Anya but it’s not that their both vengeful but that they’re both consumed by their professions. Anyanka is vengeance, Buffy is the law.
Vengeance is personal, it has no limits. It is, as we were told in S2, not like commerce, an eye for an eye but a living thing, never satisfied by anything but the maximum amount of pain that can be inflicted. I read Anya not being killed by a sword through the chest not as vengeance not dying but as vengeance (who in this eisode is represented by D’Hoffryn) not being satisfied. Death is too easy for her.
Law, justice, is impersonal. Buffy in her role as the Slayer is the Law as far as demons are concerned and by demon standards she’s infinitely restrained. She doesn’t set out to kill Anya just because she’s a demon, she waits until it’s become clear that Anya is a lethal threat. She doesn’t firebomb vampire nests while they’re sleeping, she leaves it until they come out at night and start threatening people. When she’s doing her job properly, if they run away she lets them go. I really don’t see demonizing people as a central theme of this season at all. S7 isn’t about demons, whether Buffy has a dark side, where her powers come from. We learn an answer to that but it turns out to be largely irrelevant to the final resolution. I think S7 is about Slayers not demons. What does it mean to be chosen, to be the one girl in all the world, to be the law?
At the beginning of the season she’s embracing her calling as an adult for the first time. A fresh start, a new High School opening. No council, no Giles, she’s on her own. It’s all going swimmingly until Spike and then Willow turn up. She can’t ignore her past, the Slayer can’t ignore her history. Help uncovers a little more of what she’s taken on, the simple fact that she can’t save everyone. It recalls Spiral in S5 and how she responded to the belief that she couldn’t save Dawn and it looks forward to the arrival of the Potentials, an army of Dawns who she won’t be able to save either. Selfless is a wonderful episode but I think as far as the season is concerned the heart of it lies in that central confrontaion with Xander when she has to spell out what she is, what she has to do and that she has to do it alone. Being the Slayer means that the final responsibility is always hers.
no subject
Vengeance is personal, it has no limits. It is, as we were told in S2, not like commerce, an eye for an eye but a living thing, never satisfied by anything but the maximum amount of pain that can be inflicted. I read Anya not being killed by a sword through the chest not as vengeance not dying but as vengeance (who in this eisode is represented by D’Hoffryn) not being satisfied. Death is too easy for her.
Law, justice, is impersonal. Buffy in her role as the Slayer is the Law as far as demons are concerned and by demon standards she’s infinitely restrained. She doesn’t set out to kill Anya just because she’s a demon, she waits until it’s become clear that Anya is a lethal threat. She doesn’t firebomb vampire nests while they’re sleeping, she leaves it until they come out at night and start threatening people. When she’s doing her job properly, if they run away she lets them go. I really don’t see demonizing people as a central theme of this season at all. S7 isn’t about demons, whether Buffy has a dark side, where her powers come from. We learn an answer to that but it turns out to be largely irrelevant to the final resolution. I think S7 is about Slayers not demons. What does it mean to be chosen, to be the one girl in all the world, to be the law?
At the beginning of the season she’s embracing her calling as an adult for the first time. A fresh start, a new High School opening. No council, no Giles, she’s on her own. It’s all going swimmingly until Spike and then Willow turn up. She can’t ignore her past, the Slayer can’t ignore her history. Help uncovers a little more of what she’s taken on, the simple fact that she can’t save everyone. It recalls Spiral in S5 and how she responded to the belief that she couldn’t save Dawn and it looks forward to the arrival of the Potentials, an army of Dawns who she won’t be able to save either. Selfless is a wonderful episode but I think as far as the season is concerned the heart of it lies in that central confrontaion with Xander when she has to spell out what she is, what she has to do and that she has to do it alone. Being the Slayer means that the final responsibility is always hers.