slayerdom thoughts
Feb. 19th, 2003 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holliThis is all crossposted from Buffistas, but it's been bugging me and I'll probably talk some more about it later, so I figured it should go here too. Folks I know in real life should skip this, as you will likely find it boring and geeky.
I'm turning this ep over in my head, and thinking (yet again) about the First Slayer. I guess I have to ditch my theory that she was born the Slayer, but I'm still wondering about how she got Chosen. I doubt the shamans just grabbed any old girl off the street (would they have had streets? nah), so now I'm thinking of American Gods, and the idea behind the kobold.
There's this weird disconnect between the First and the people who made her-- her people, presumably, but they seemed to have a much more advanced level of civilization, and I can't reconcile that with the First we see. How does she have "no speech, no name" if her people obviously did? Was she isolated from them, chosen at birth by other humans (unlike her successors, chosen by Fate or the Powers or whatever) and kept apart from other humans until she was given her powers? That leads me back to "Restless," and the remark Giles made-- "This is my business. Blood of the lamb and all that." The First was a sacrifice. But she was also the "warrior of the people." She was an unwilling victim, but she tries to force Buffy to be like her in "Restless." There's a fundamental split in the nature of the Slayer, one that Buffy embodies especially well. And maybe that's the weakness the First can exploit. Maybe that's the strength that Buffy can use to win, if she really is the "last guardian of the hellmouth."
Now I'm pondering Buffy's willing sacrifice in "The Gift," and her unwilling reinstatement as the Slayer, and how that might have fucked up the Slayer line in and of itself. Or is the current evil something that's been brewing for some time, because Buffy's the first since the First who embodied the lamb/warrior dichotomy as wholly?
And if I wanna go way back in the show's mythology, there's "Prophecy Girl," when Buffy accepted the burden of Slayerdom-- thought it cost her her life-- and started the whole "two Slayers" mess.
Argh. Too. Many. Theories.
Argh! This is bugging me. The whole point of Buffy is that she'd be monster food were she not the Slayer-- absent superpowers, she's the girl who gets killed in the dark alley. Or, for that matter, the girl who gets thrown into a volcano by the villagers to appease the gods. But because she's the Slayer, she's still a sacrifice, because the fight will presumably eventually claim her life, but she's a sacrifice with teeth-- "the blood cry, the penetrating wound." And now I've just described the First again, because it seems like that was the whole point of the First-- a sacrifice to the demons and the darkness, a sacrifice who fights back and often wins. A Trojan horse?
I'm not going to get this sorted out in my own head until the end of the series at the very earliest. Argh!
I'm turning this ep over in my head, and thinking (yet again) about the First Slayer. I guess I have to ditch my theory that she was born the Slayer, but I'm still wondering about how she got Chosen. I doubt the shamans just grabbed any old girl off the street (would they have had streets? nah), so now I'm thinking of American Gods, and the idea behind the kobold.
There's this weird disconnect between the First and the people who made her-- her people, presumably, but they seemed to have a much more advanced level of civilization, and I can't reconcile that with the First we see. How does she have "no speech, no name" if her people obviously did? Was she isolated from them, chosen at birth by other humans (unlike her successors, chosen by Fate or the Powers or whatever) and kept apart from other humans until she was given her powers? That leads me back to "Restless," and the remark Giles made-- "This is my business. Blood of the lamb and all that." The First was a sacrifice. But she was also the "warrior of the people." She was an unwilling victim, but she tries to force Buffy to be like her in "Restless." There's a fundamental split in the nature of the Slayer, one that Buffy embodies especially well. And maybe that's the weakness the First can exploit. Maybe that's the strength that Buffy can use to win, if she really is the "last guardian of the hellmouth."
Now I'm pondering Buffy's willing sacrifice in "The Gift," and her unwilling reinstatement as the Slayer, and how that might have fucked up the Slayer line in and of itself. Or is the current evil something that's been brewing for some time, because Buffy's the first since the First who embodied the lamb/warrior dichotomy as wholly?
And if I wanna go way back in the show's mythology, there's "Prophecy Girl," when Buffy accepted the burden of Slayerdom-- thought it cost her her life-- and started the whole "two Slayers" mess.
Argh. Too. Many. Theories.
Argh! This is bugging me. The whole point of Buffy is that she'd be monster food were she not the Slayer-- absent superpowers, she's the girl who gets killed in the dark alley. Or, for that matter, the girl who gets thrown into a volcano by the villagers to appease the gods. But because she's the Slayer, she's still a sacrifice, because the fight will presumably eventually claim her life, but she's a sacrifice with teeth-- "the blood cry, the penetrating wound." And now I've just described the First again, because it seems like that was the whole point of the First-- a sacrifice to the demons and the darkness, a sacrifice who fights back and often wins. A Trojan horse?
I'm not going to get this sorted out in my own head until the end of the series at the very earliest. Argh!
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-19 02:15 pm (UTC)Possibly because it is dealing with the beginnings and the (possible) end of the Slayer.
Holli - - were you the one who called the Slayer a "sacrifice with teeth"? Because that was excellent.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-21 08:22 pm (UTC)