Re: FIC: Deeper-Post Season Six Fic(1/1)

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

I, on the other hand, have mixed feelings about the fic.

Parts of it were very evocative and the concept of Willow cutting
herself off from life to heal Buffy's soul (after Buffy had unknowingly
done the same thing) was quite touching.

However, the action by The Ocean got somewhat confusing, and might have
been cleared up if you hadn't made everyone a spark and just called them
Buffy, Willow, and Tara. As I understand it, at the end there was a red
spark, a big red blob, a blue blob and a blue spark. The red spark was
Willow, the red blob was Tara, the blue blob was Buffy, and the blue
Spark was...also Buffy? Why was Buffy in two parts when the others were
whole? Why were Willow and Tara both the same color (I'm still not sure
which red thing you were referring to half the time) and Buffy a
different color? If Buffy gave a part of herself to Tara does this mean
Buffy isn't whole any more? I'm just too linear for this sequence, I'm
afraid.

That's the minor part. I'm more concerned with the excuses the fic
makes for Willow. First of all, we're supposed to sympathize with her
(Buffy comes around to her position) even though we find out that she's
lying to Buffy at the same time she's stating her case, since you later
made references to the "dark magic circle" the bodies were in. Seems to
me, Willow's lying about the magic undercuts my belief that she's found
the moral truth of her previous actions and has worked out the proper
response to them.

Second, killing Warren is okay because he had it coming. Hmm, then why
not kill Faith in "Sanctuary"? Sure, she's willing to do time for her
crime and work towards redemption, but she "had it coming", too. The
general morality of the Buffyverse is that ensouled creatures have the
possibility to repent of their deeds and do good again, and therefore
shouldn't be killed. What goes for Faith (and now, sadly, Willow) also
goes for Warren. Willow didn't just kill the present bad-Warren, she
killed the possibility of the future good-Warren. That's why Buffyverse
heroes don't kill humans, not because of what they ARE, but because of
what their soul gives them a chance to BE.

Third, forget Warren for a second. What about Rack? He had a soul,
what'd he do that was worth being drained to a husk? Yeah, he deals
drugs; so did Tim Allen. If Bill Clinton passed a sufficient number of
joints around at Oxford or ever charged someone for part of his stash,
he probably could have been arrested for "dealing", too. Oh, and Clem
said Rack had unwholesome sexual tendencies, but we never saw any
concrete evidence of that, and that's not a killing offense, either.

If it's okay to kill Rack, is okay to kill Amy? Is it okay to kill
Willow (not evil Willow, but Willow who uses bad mojo, points Dawn
towards spellbooks and nearly got her killed in the car crash)? Seems
like that "line" is a little too mobile, IMO.

Fourth, the excuse that trying to end the world is no big deal because
of all the "pain" Willow felt. Sorry, that's like trying to blame
killing Warren on the dark magick books. Willow made the decision to
"drink" from first the books and then from Giles; therefore she's
responsible for what she did while she was "drunk", legally speaking.  

But my major objection here is none of these. No, I'm annoyed at the
continuing slur on Buffy's character for the actions of "Graduation
Day".

And again, some minor points before I hit the meat of the argument:

(I guess I'll use letters this time)

A--so what? Even if Buffy did something wrong then, how does that
excuse what Willow's doing wrong now? It might make Buffy not the best
person to give this lecture (and even that could be mitigated by saying
that Buffy had repented of her evil Faith-slaying ways and now wanted
Willow to understand that what she did to Warren was just as evil), but
what Buffy has or has not done doesn't really change the facts of
Willow's actions, does it? 

B--well, gee, then isn't it lucky for Willow that the one character who
can't forgive her is the same character that has such a big chink in her
moral armor? How fortunate for her that all the people she tried
killing to whom she can't say "oh, yeah? Well, what about ___?" have
already forgiven her, isn't it?

[Church Lady] "How con-veeeeen-ient!" [/Church Lady]

It's certainly a nice piece of happenstance for Willow that the writer
makes sure it isn't Dawn, the show's new Embodiment of Innocence, who
can't forgive her, isn't it, instead of relying on Buffy and her
allegedly-bloody hands to provide the anti-murder counterpoint? That
tracks, because Dawn has always been portrayed as being very mature and
never holding a grudge. I have absolutely no reason to believe that the
girl who spent a year being pissed at Riley for not saying goodbye would
have any trouble telling Willow that threatening to change her back into
an energy blob was really not a big deal.

C--Buffy didn't do a damn thing wrong in "Graduation Day". Her moral
reputation is the victim of two pieces of hype.

The book Oz reads says that the cure for the Killer of the Dead poison
is "draining the blood of a Slayer". Except that it isn't. (I guess
the vampire who got cured that way figured that while he was sucking on
Slayer's blood, he might as well finish his dinner and killed that
Slayer even though he didn't have to do so.) As it turns out, Angel can
be cured by merely having a nice, non-fatal drink of Buffy. And the
scenario Buffy envisioned, with Angel drinking Faith, was far less
likely to kill Faith than the actual events were to kill Buffy, since
Buffy would have been around to control Angel's feeding and make sure
that he stopped before killing Faith (whereas in "Graduation Day, Part
2" Buffy had to rely on Angel's own self-control, despite his addled
state).

Also, when Buffy stabs Faith, Faith goes "you killed me". Well, no,
Faith ("Faith, a word of advice. You're an idiot." Yup.), she
hasn't--she's done you a good deal less damage than you do to yourself
by taking a backwards header from a fifty-foot height onto the metal bed
of a moving truck. Cordelia got skewered in "Lovers Walk", and even
without Slayer-strength came through just fine. Wesley took a bullet in
the gut in "The Thin Dead Line", and despite not having Slayer healing
abilities AND having to sit through a siege by Zombie Cops for several
hours before he could get to a hospital (not to mention having been
moved several times, which is never good) was whistling "Dixie" in no
time flat. And in Angel Season 3 (vaguing this up, in case Mad Hamlet
hasn't seen the spoilers), a non-Slayer human character survives a
severe wound despite not getting medical attention for many hours.
Frankly, I doubt the knife wound would have even made Faith lose
consciousness.

So maybe Buffy thought for a moment, "if worst comes to worst, I'll let
Angel kill Faith to live"--which, as you address, isn't a revenge
killing, it's merely Buffy only being able to save one life out of the
two and choosing Angel over Faith. But what actually happened was:

Buffy thought about feeding Faith to Angel.

Buffy didn't feed Faith to Angel.

Buffy might not actually have been able to feed Faith to Angel, had she
gotten the opportunity. Having an impulse isn't the same as acting on
it--Willow thought she was going to curse Oz, but discovered that she
couldn't do it, when the time came to actually do so.

Feeding Faith to Angel wouldn't have killed her, after all, so even if
Buffy had wound up with the chance to let Angel drink Faith's blood, as
it turns out she would never have had to actually decide whether to let
Angel kill Faith.

Buffy didn't get the chance to actually make any decisions about feeding
Faith to Angel, because Faith escaped, exacerbating the non-fatal
injuries Buffy had given her in the fight, and still not actually dying.

So Buffy had the idea (which she might or might not have seen through)
to do something (that proved to be non-fatal), but didn't get the chance
to make that decision (because Faith did something else to herself,
which also wasn't fatal). Whoa! Get out the tar and feathers!  

To my mind, this is so far removed from Willow's torturing and murdering
Warren for no reason except revenge that you'd need a telescope to see
it.

So thank you, Mad Hamlet, for taking the opportunity to "fix" the end of
Season Six, and for the well-crafted words and the nice details. I
loved Willow tending the tree by Tara's grave, and Buffy's tendency to
avoid the cemetery. (Actually, I suppose Tara's dad is her legal heir
and will bury her somewhere Willow will never be allowed near, but I
doubt that Joss will address this, either.) I also found the fantastic
segments stimulating, if somewhat confusing.

I just don't buy the reasoning. Sorry.

Dan

PS--Buffy actually has killed humans in combat (The Gruelenstaler
brothers in "Homecoming", the Knights in "Spiral") that I don't believe
she was forced to do for self-defense. But that's the writers being
sloppy about what is and isn't necessitated by a combat situation, not
Buffy making a moral choice that, one might argue, invalidates her right
to criticize Willow for killing Warren, and so I feel it's off-topic for
this letter, and haven't really addressed those issues.