Thoughts on Buffy and Other Heroines

[shipperx]

I find Buffy to be an interesting character. I find her quite interesting to write. She's interesting because she's flawed. She's got her fair share of strengths, she has a shit-load of events to deal with, and... she's got her blind spots and weaknesses. Negotiating all of those facets is what makes her interesting and it's what makes her fun to dig into. However, Buffy within the show and Buffy within the comics isn't generally the character I most identify with (which often makes it curious that when I write, I most often write from her POV. Go figure. Maybe it's my urge to figure her out that causes this.)

One of the things I think inescapably effects my view of Buffy is the age difference. I was older than Buffy when the show was on. Had I been closer to her age, I think it would have made it easier to identify with her. As it was, when Buffy was in High School I was finishing my senior (univeristy)thesis and starting my internship. When she was in college, I was studying to pass my registration exams.

In some ways, being older than the character probably softened my response to certain incidents in the story. I remember when Buffy slept with Parker. I had sort of a big sister-ish "Oh, Buffy..." moment. It was possible to see the mistake she was making from a mile away, but so real and common a mistake that I only had sympathy for her. I wasn't in the Buffy online fandom in thoe days but I'm willing to bet she took a fandom beating over that, especially from Bangels which, at that time I kind of was (I liked the Bangel pairing and there really hadn't been a viable alternative presented by that point in the story.) But the prototypical college mistake was so sadly familiar that I only had sorrow for what happened to Buffy.

However, I think being older than Buffy also made me have slightly different reactions to other things than I would have had I been her own age. I remember in Becoming feeling quite sorry... for Joyce. I know we were supposed to feel terrible about Buffy and Joyce not "understanding", but I was also feeling quite sorry for Joyce and the fact that her daughter was keeping her out of her life. Had I been in Buffy's age bracket, I don't know that I would have thought much about Joyce's end of that equation. And that continued the next season when knowing that Buffy had run away. I felt really bad... for Joyce.

One thing that I think is a result of being in a different age bracket from the character is that I have never had a "What Would Buffy Do?" moment. I actually have a hard time wrapping my mind around having a "What would Buffy do?" moment. Age, I think factors rather heavily into that.

When I think of the heroines that inspire me in "I wish I could be more like that..." way, they tend to be the ones whose competence and maturity I only wished that I possessed. I'm mumbledy-mumble years old and I still want to be Dana Scully when I grow up.

Here was Scully, in a male-dominated field, calmly telling Mulder that she'd majored in physics and that her thesis had been analyzing Einstein's Twin Paradox.

I thought, damn girl! That's impressive! It made me feel like a wuss for my own thesis being the far more mundane and less taxing thesis that pre-WWII housing/city planning presented a more livable model for 21st Century urban planning than the Utopian principles in 20th Century Modernism.

I loved Scully for not being intimidated by her bosses. I wanted to be her. I wanted to be that accomplished and that composed. I wanted to be that commanding.

On the other hand when Season 2 BtVS had Buffy say "Waaah! Math Hard." I was thinking' "Way to go, writers" [/sarcasm] (I didn't know who Joss Whedon was then. I was quite the casual fan of the show at that point in time). "Way to reinforce the stereotype for young girls that women aren't good at math and science... or at least shouldn't be" Because, Buffy was the hot girl with guys drooling over her and Willow was the stammering nerd. Had I been in high school myself, I don't know that I would have had those thoughts. But, coming from someone who had just spent years of study in a highly male-dominated major that involved many engineering/building science classes (in which quite often I was the only female), I was actually bothered by the scene -- perhaps irrationally so. And, honestly, it's a scene that continues to stick out in my memory as an irritation. (It's also probably part of the reason why, in those days, I preferred Willow.)

Similarly, one of the things that made me an Aeryn Sun fangirl was a scene way back in Season 1, Farscape. Aeryn was a soldier and a pilot. Heck, let's face it. Aeryn was kind of a jock in many senses. But there was this scene early in Season 1 where she was going over engineering manuals or something. Crichton questioned her, and she protested that she might be a soldier, but she could learn and wanted to learn more. I loved her for that intellectual curiosity, and for embracing the idea that her job wasn't all that she was. And that though she was a grown woman, she could still learn. Of course, I loved that she was an action hero too. I rather love the scene in P.K. Tech Girl where Crichton and Galina (? sadly I've forgotten the P.K. Tech Girl's name after all these years) anyway Crichton and girl who was heroic in her own right but was never 1/10th as awesome as Aeryn were trapped by the weird fire-breathing alien, and Aeryn swung in like some Schwarzenegger-like action hero saving the day. That was awesome.

But I really loved her for her insistence that she could change and learn. She could become someone more expansive.

I think I may have loved her best in her flashback episode The Way We Weren't when she flashbacked to the lover she betrayed to the Peacekeepsers so that she'd get her promotion in rank, followed by the "present" where she went to Pilot -- after he had realized she was one of the ones who had enslaved him. He flipped, saying "You want a chance to tell me how non-violent you are now? Or what? You’ll blast me into pieces like you did the Pilot who used to sit here?"

And she countered with, "Based on my actions back then, I deserve to die. And if you wish to kill me, I’m not going to stop you. But please, spare the others... and yourself."

With her confessing that back in the day when she'd been in the group that had enslaved him she hadn't understood why her then-lover had shown compassion for the captured Pilot.

She admitted, "Velorek stroked your cheek like this to calm you. Back then, I couldn’t fathom why he would do a thing like that. Now, I couldn’t fathom not doing it. We’ve come a long way since then. And we’ve still got a long way to go." Asking him to not kill himself or...well... her. She said, "Take the journey with me."

I loved Aeryn's ability to grow and change. Her ability to recognize and rise above the prejudices she'd been taught by her upbringing. Her world had been upended. She's lost everything -- her home, her career, her privileged role in that fascist galaxy. Her entire world view. She opened her eyes and saw the wrongs of not only her own past but that of her entire culture -- and she learned to embrace change. Changing herself and the wholesale change of her life.

That's bravery.

Conversely, I always had some problems with Buffy's post-high school career (can it be called that?)

Buffy's dropping out of college didn't bother me. It was rather necessary (what with dying after having been on the run and all). But I remember there came a point in Season 6 where it was mentioned that she'd missed the deadline to sign up for the winter/spring semester of classes. That bothered me. It wasn't that she couldn't pay for it because, money problems aside, she'd never so much as tried. She'd never explored student loans, scholarships, Pell Grants, or deadlines for turning in...well... anything. But, okay, she was pretty suicidally depressed in Season 6. But she didn't try in Season 7 either. She somehow landed a job that she wasn't actually qualified for and never thought about returning to school. And, if we're to take the comics as any sort of continuation, she never has at any point since... and it looks like she never will.

And... okay.

So Buffy isn't interested in a degree. She doesn't want to return to school. I guess I can understand that, except that sometimes if feels like Whedon likes to push Buffy backwards. I remember the heart-sinking moment in Season 7's "Selfless" where Buffy pulls the Angel card and said, "I loved him more than I will ever love anything in this life." (Bolded to highlight). I remember thinking, oh dear god, that's sad. Not sad as in "Oh, what a tragic romance," but sad as in OMG, this is a 22 year old woman who believes that her life peeked when she was seventeen years old! She honestly thinks that nothing in her future can match what she had when she was seventeen!!.

It's why I balk in Buffy turning hyper-girlie when talking to Angel in "Chosen." It's like she's suddenly seventeen again. It's why the comics annoy me. It's as though Joss wants all the characters emotionally at some teenaged point in their development -- permanently.

It's partly why the fetishizing the core four motif is problematic for me sometimes. Bonding with their peers, having peers become very important is a normal part of development for an adolescent. It's part of growing up, to stop being our parent's child. But... but... cliched as it is to say, high school friends do tend grow apart. There's a transition from teens to adulthood where the adult life differs from the teen social circle.

When I talk about age difference perhaps being an obstacle in my identifying really strongly with Buffy this is part of it. In college, most of us see how many, many friendships change with time. I had friends I'd had from kindergarten into college... and I'm still friends. But it's different. It's, let's face it, distant. We all got lives, jobs, families, careers, homes -- lives change and they all change differently. And my best friend from kindergarten through college (for two years, she was my roomate) is on my Christmas call list... but the truth is, we don't have much in common any more except the past. That is also a natural process of growing up and becoming a full-fledged adult. It's allowing our friends to have their lives and ourselves to have ours and not trying to force it into some mould in order to preserve an outgrown paradigm.

...but by the end of the series, the core 4-ing was becoming almost a way for the core 4 to wall out any newcomers (even if they weren't so new). No one can be as important to them as they are to each other (or if they are... they're gonna have to die... as all the love interests did... except Kennedy, I suppose. But then, Kennedy hardly matters. She wasn't much developed as a character and thus in no way a threat to the essential Buffy/Xander/Willow unbreakable bond). It's almost a version of "bros before hos" which... well... there does come a day where buddies don't outweigh life partners. If Xander was marrying Anya, Anya should come before 'bros'. But in the Whedonverse, it really all has to return to the core friends (heck, at this point Giles has been half-ousted) It sometimes feels like Joss et al are trying to maintain the paradigm no matter what.

I tend to have the feeling that Whedon has Buffy in running in circles, if not in stasis. There's some developmental hold-up. It may be because that's when Whendon feels that he had the best feel for Buffy. It may be that there's something in that stage of life that he really, really likes to explore or hold onto. But for myself, as a viewer/reader, I find this storytelling cycle of always returning to a default state somewhat vaguely like when she was seventeen to be an obstacle for my connecting to canonical Buffy as she's supposed to move into adulthood. Rather than going forward, it often feels like she's looking back and trying to recapture. Trying to recapture the doomed teen romance, trying to recapture the way they were friends when they were kids, trying to maintain the relationships as mostly being exactly that way. Maybe it's part and parcel of Joss's love of the girl-woman-waif (frequently with superpowers). That motif shows up again and again in his work even outside Buffy/Angel. He likes that girl-woman-waif.

It's just... the Buffy I wanted was one who's allowed to grow up, one who pushes beyond high school, one who realizes that life didn't reach its zenith when she was seventeen.

It's one of the reasons I don't think "What would Buffy do?" It's why Buffy is a really, really interesting character to write, to ponder, to wrangle-with, and to analyze but it's why, for all of that-- for all her good points, her strengths, her flaws, for all that makes her a complex, interesting character to deal with--it's why she's not an aspirational figure for me. Buffy is a character I love to explore, but she's always a character I want to push forward.

I loved Scully for having nothing but her training and her competence to bravely walk into dark tunnels to confront monsters, carrying only her gun and/or flashlight. True, it took her a damn long time to embrace some truths (but I always sympathized with her insistence on logic. I tend to like to force things into logic as well, so for all that she had to embrace some crazy stuff and many were frustrated by her reluctance to embrace the crazy, in this regard the characters recalcitrance matched my own. I kept wishing Scully would be allowed to right more often. I loved her belligerence in insisting that things should make sense. I'm not saying it's fair. It's just that sometimes we share characters' biases, and I tended to share Scully's bias that things should make sense. :)

I loved Aeryn for accepting the total loss of all that she had known and choosing to build a better life -- a more humane one -- and not mourn the life she lost, or at least try not to. To try not to paint over the dark spots with nostalgia.

And Buffy in fanfic can also go forward and grow... but at some point, I got the feeling that Joss's Buffy would never really push through to the other side of adolescence. Part of his Buffy will forever young and forever trapped dealing with things that happened rather early on in the run of the show. I suspect he prefers it that way. But it's often why she's a heroine that I've never identified with (pitied, sympathized with, frustrated by -- yes. But I still find myself always rooting for her to grow.)

Comments

[next_to_normal]

Interesting thoughts. I am actually younger than Buffy, but I was in my senior year of college when I finally got around to watching the show. And I definitely identify with her more in the later seasons than the high school years. I've never really gotten the feeling that Joss wants her to be forever seventeen, though. The things she has to deal with - basically becoming a mother to Dawn, her depression, a way more complex romantic relationship, and being a leader to the whole group, but particularly with the Potentials in S7 - feel like very grown-up problems. In fact, what I saw was a girl forced to be a grown-up before she was ready. I could never have taken on the responsibilities she did at 20 years old.

I do think she has some longing for the simpler life she had in high school, before her heart was broken, before her mother died, before she had to make all the hard choices. But I'd call it nostalgia rather than regression - much like she kisses Angel and then sends him back to LA, she recognizes that she can't go back to the past, no matter how much easier it might have seemed. She keeps pushing forward, even though sometimes it's a slog, because that's all she can do.

I also agree that it's unusual to keep the same friends you had in high school your whole adult life. And yet... my mother is still friends with the same people she went to high school with, forty years later. We actually were talking about that recently, how different our experiences are, and I thought it was a generational thing. And maybe it is, a little, but my mom said the big difference is whether or not you go to college. Because that's when you grow apart and have different experiences and meet new people - and THOSE are generally the friends you have for life. My mom and her friends never had that experience, so they remained close.

Buffy and Willow sort of went to college, but they didn't actually leave Sunnydale, and they never finished, so they didn't really have the college experience of growing apart. Plus, I think the saving the world gig served as an additional glue - that's something that no one else can understand, and so they need each other, depend on each other for support, and trust each other in a way they can't really trust other people. And maybe that is problematic, in the way they shut people out, but I don't think it's unrealistic for the situation. I've seen them compared to soldiers in a war zone - the relationships formed are very different than normal friendships would be.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I agree that Buffy had to grow up too soon. I actually think that's a factor in her plateued emotional development. It's a factor in why she could say mid Season 7 that she'd never love anything in this life like she had the guy she'd dated for a year when she was seventeen.

Buffy is a brave soldier. She can shoulder a lot of burdens. She does what she has to in a crisis. But in Season 7 she's claiming that she'll never love anything like she did back in high school, she reverts to a high school personality as soon as Angel walks into the scene. The post-Touched conversation between Spike and Buffy in the quiet house really speaks to that for me as the communication in that scene is so garbled for both of them, with her looking hopeful for him yet at the same time asking "Does it have to mean something?" I'm not sure whether she's asking or dodging at that point... and I don't know whether it actually matters because whatever her motivation, it works as a dodge. She's become elusive. She can't articulate what she wants (and I'm continually baffled by her line about Spike sending mixed signals. Spike isn't difficult to read, so I'm always left figuring that she must be projecting). But she can't articulate what she wants. and only can articulate any of it when she reverts to Girlie Buffy and she reverts the cookie dough analogy. Which, on one level is fair, but on another level, if BtVS was her growing up, I wished for something different than her announcing that she needs to grow up. (Only, is Season 8 her having grown up? I'm not sure).

Joss keeps returning and returning to the same theme with her over an over again. At the end of Season 5 she's worrying that she's detatched emotionally. In season 6 she's become detached emotionally. In Season 7 they announced a theme of "back to season 1" but it still ended up with another season of "is Buffy detached emotionally?" And the Core 4 scene in the finale tends to feel to me as though the show is trying to recapture a past long after these four characters were actually those people.

Now we have Season 8 comics which are all "Buffy is detached!" and resulting in her getting her happy with her high school boyfriend, after all they could never, ever be happy with anyone else. And that most likely turning into a return to the Season 2 paradigm of it really comes back to her friends (which in one light I applaud. And in another... we're back to the unchanging paradigm).

And, I fear, if there is a Season 9... Buffy will be fearing that she's detached. Again.

It's like part of Joss thinks she was broken sometime in the early years and the rest of him keeps meditating on the same "Buffy is detached and trying to reconnect" story... and it tends to end with a return to the original stasis point and a reassurance that the core hasn't changed.

I did like the sister theme of Season 5. But, then, Season 5 is my favorite season of BtVS, so that's probably not all that surprising. It's actually the season when I liked Buffy best.:)

[next_to_normal]

It's like part of Joss things she was broken sometime in the early years

Well, I tend to agree with him, so perhaps that's why it doesn't bother me. :) I've always thought that when she says she'll never love anything as much as she loved Angel, it's just the simple truth. She'll never open her heart like that again - and that IS a factor of growing up, because she'll never be that naive and innocent again. Angel broke her heart, and her years of being the Slayer hardened it, and I don't know, maybe she can overcome that someday, but not while she has all the burdens on her that weigh her down in the latter seasons.

And I'll admit, that's a very personal reaction - I didn't have an epic romance in high school or anything, but I definitely identify with Buffy being damaged by her past relationships and therefore sucking at making that connection, even thinking sometimes that it's hopeless and she'll never be happy.

I have nothing positive to say about Buffy's development in S8, so I agree with you there. Part of me was actually really bothered by the TGIQ retcon, because I wanted to believe that Buffy had finally found the freedom to be happy and (relatively) carefree, that she was able to maintain a balance between slaying and normal life stuff that didn't drain her of all her hope and energy. And as a Spuffy shipper, I want to believe that someday she WILL be able to make that connection (with Spike!), that she'll manage to open up her heart enough to heal the brokenness. So I guess I do like the idea of having that closure, that progress, that someday in the future she WILL get over her emotional detachment, but I don't need to have it happen during the series?

I did like the sister theme of Season 5. But, then, Season 5 is my favorite season of BtVS, so that's probably not all that surprising. It's actually the season when I liked Buffy best.

Me too! :)

[scarfman]

I think you're right about Whedon's Buffy never being allowed to grow beyond certain boundaries. To some extent it's a requirement for the format of the stories she's in - in my fanfiction Buffy becomes a leader, but that means she stops patrolling herself in order to be making the Big Decisions instead; she gives up being Captain Kirk to be Captain Picard. Whedon'll never let her do that.

It's the same thing with 'shipping. I read all sorts of discussion of Buffy's relationship with [insert your favored souled vampire's name here], especially in the wake of the latest comics issues. Everyone complains that Joss seems to have it in for their OTP, and I have to say, "Well, of course. There's no story in being happy." Now, letting them be happy is the story I'm trying to do. But expect it from Whedon? What do they say is the definition of insanity?

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

It's why the comics annoy me. It's as though Joss wants all the characters emotionally at some teenaged point in their development -- permanently.

I don't know if it's wanting to keep the characters at their age permanently so much as he doesn't know what else to write or if it's what he thinks people want to see. It's like his reasoning for writing Angel the way he did in S7. People like petty Angel, y/y? That was his thinking anyway, so that's what he wrote. Comic!Buffy, emotionally, is really just presented as a rather sexist stereotype or parody, IMO. Even in the show, Buffy wasn't THAT screwed up in regards to relationships and by the end, I think she came to have a somewhat cynical view of them. But yeah, as evidence has shown for the run of them, established characterization means nothing to Joss, thus you get emotionally 12yo emo!Buffy and Angel.

I do admit, the Core Four thing (which is Joss's OTP) got annoying by the end, but given the medium and actor contracts, I just figured all of them being friends was just the easiest way of making screentime requirements. Honestly, after like S3 I wondered why they were even friends other than sentimentality.

I definitely identify with the character more in the latter years, but I was the same age having similar issues, so maybe that makes a difference in how fans feel about characters. I could *get* her more than other characters like Mulder and Scully that, while I liked them, I just couldn't get a feel for them.

[quinara]

I think that, to some extent, the fetishising of the core-four is part of a fetish of static youth - look at River and Kaylee (who acts so so young) and Dollhouse, which seems to be all about people trying to grow up but generally failing. He seems to intend to have Buffy grow up, but doesn't actually know how to write that; her lost youth is something she has lost and has to try to find again, rather than something she needs to let go and move on from. Thinking about it, this is probably why alarm bells were supposed to be ringing all through S7 when Buffy took control of her life and didn't seem to care that high school was slipping her by...

On the other hand when Season 2 BtVS had Buffy say "Waaah! Math Hard." I was thinking' "Way to go, writers" [/sarcasm] (I didn't know who Joss Whedon was then. I was quite the casual fan of the show at that point in time). "Way to reinforce the stereotype for young girls that women aren't good at math and science... or at least shouldn't be" Because, Buffy was the hot girl with guys drooling over her and Willow was the stammering nerd. Had I been in high school myself, I don't know that I would have had those thoughts. But, coming from someone who had just spent years of study in a highly male-dominated major that involved many engineering/building science classes (in which quite often I was the only female), I was actually bothered by the scene -- perhaps irrationally so. And, honestly, it's a scene that continues to stick out in my memory as an irritation. (It's also probably part of the reason why, in those days, I preferred Willow.)

See, Willow has always annoyed me in these scenes, because for years I was in exactly her position, trying to help people less interested in school with maths or whatever - but everything Willow ever says to Buffy seems designed to make her feel more stupid under the guise of 'helping' her. That thing with the Chemistry in Becoming about how Buffy can learn it 'really easily' or whatever if she just pays enough attention? It's not necessarily true at all; and the more difficult Buffy might then find it afterwards, the more she'll get frustrated and feel stupid, which isn't in any way conducive to learning. Willow always seemed obsessed with her own learning and intelligence, as if letting anyone else approach her would diminish her own worth, and it drives me up the wall, because you can't teach like that and it essentially puts you on a crusade to make everyone around you feel stupid. Which is rude.

I do kind of wish Buffy had broken some of those stereotypes though, because, even if it was supposed to make her more relatable, it did come across as if 'well, girls might be able to kill things if they get a sacred birthright, but they sure as hell won't be able to be clever as well'. With her SATs and what seems like good abilities at reasoning (and her A in Psych that time and the fact her poetry teacher seemed to like her), I don't know why she had to be so bad at stuff that she didn't even seem to have the hunger to learn (which you can have at any intelligence level, so they didn't need to sign her up to MENSA), and why she had to stay a college drop-out.

I'm not sure I've ever thought 'What would Buffy do?', and the vast majority of her experiences are too alien to my own for me to identify with her (but given this is true of practically everyone on TV, I don't find it that much of a problem), but by S7 I did love her, even if I discounted things like Selfless and Chosen and weighed other parts of her character more strongly. I can live with her only becoming the Buffy I want her to be in fanfic.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I suppose I cut Willow some slack mainly because Willow wasn't Buffy's teacher. She was just helping her. So it's not like it was on Willow to teach Buffy.

And, yeah, they do tell us that Buffy is intelligent. I never think she's dumb. But while they don't have to make Buffy a scholar, the way things go combined with the babytalk and malpropisms her constant -- deliberate -- misunderstandint/disinterest with Giles' explanations, it's almost anti-intellectualism. I wish that they would've shown her just a little intellectually curious about stuff. As you say, she had the intelligence, it was just neer something she seemed remotely interested in. And yeah, she may have thought she'd die soon, but that still doesn't mean she couldn't have some area of interest. It wouldn't even require official schooling, just... hey, why not an effort to pick up a few books on demonology or something?

And really it's not just that Buffy dropped out of college, they all did (at least, I don't think there's any evidence that Willow actually finished).

It's not so much a criticism of Buffy as a character but Joss's choices to make his empowering heroine for young girls primarily about Buffy having supernaturally gifted superpowers. I wish he had a bit more expansive view of empowerment. I could've used perhaps a bit more emphasis on Buffy inspiring others to heroism. I supposed "Get It Done" was some hint on that, but it seemed a bit garbled. As a story it probably worked best with Spuffy as she did inspire him. But I rather wish she'd been more inspiring to the potentials and bit less disliked general who then passes out supernatural gifts with a spell.

Ah well, I guess it's all second guessing. We should appreciate what we actually got.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

It's not so much a criticism of Buffy as a character but Joss's choices to make his empowering heroine for young girls primarily about Buffy having supernaturally gifted superpowers. I wish he had a bit more expansive view of empowerment. I could've used perhaps a bit more emphasis on Buffy inspiring others to heroism.

Agreed. Although I'd note that "Anne" definitely had the inspiring-others-to-power message, an episode I love for that exactly reason. Too bad they lost track of that message in subsequent years.

[quinara]

I suppose I cut Willow some slack mainly because Willow wasn't Buffy's teacher. She was just helping her. So it's not like it was on Willow to teach Buffy.

That's fair. With me it sort of rebounds off all the other things I find annoying about Willow, so I'm a bit biased in my perception. :D

it's almost anti-intellectualism. I wish that they would've shown her just a little intellectually curious about stuff.

*nods* It's interesting what you say about college, because I think they actually did this best with Xander, who clearly finds his 'niche' with building and carpentry - the odd comments dropped here and there about 'carpentry's pretty cool' and talks on tool maintenance. On top of not finishing, Willow never seems to even find a major (or was that what the sociology was about? I can't remember when you pick majors...) - her character gets stuck in the stasis of 'good at school' and 'beloved by her (generic) teachers'.

But I rather wish she'd been more inspiring to the potentials and bit less disliked general who then passes out supernatural gifts with a spell.

Yeah, I could have lived with a bit more hero worship from the Potentials, rather than the universal 'Buffy, you suck - and depending on my character I will either tell you to your face or keep it to myself'. Maybe as the the season went on they could have grown into that position, but from the get-go most of them seemed to like ignoring what she was saying. (And those who did want to listen, like, say, Annabelle, were clearly weak-willed and prone to suicide.)

We should appreciate what we actually got.

Where's the fun in that? ;)

[shapinglight]

I'm eleventy mumble mumble years older than you, so for me identifying with Buffy in the high school years was even more of a problem (plus, schools in the UK are not the same, so there was the alienness of it all to factor in too). I watched the show with my kids, who were a lot closer to Buffy's age than I was and yes, surprise, surprise, if I identified with anyone (which I didn't really) it was with the parental figures, Joyce and Giles.

I also think you're quite right about Joss's obsession with the childlike waif female character.

That said, I do think Buffy in the show grew up, though like you I think she suffered permanent emotional damage from her affair with Angel (which is very realistic IMO, there are examples of similar things in my own family).

[elisi]

This is a very interesting post. And yes to the age difference thing - I never really connected with Buffy in High School, and (on rewatch) I've realised that she doesn't become *my* Buffy until the second part of S5 when she's not just the one with resposiblity for the world, but also for her home.

Re. her going in circles, then that is one reason I love Chosen, because she is finally out of that trap, and can go do whatever she wants.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

Very well put (shocker :P)

When Buffy first aired, I was eleven/twelve. Eleven and a half, as I would have said back then. As I grew up, watching the seasons, oftentimes, I found myself thinking "Do what Buffy doesn't," and not asking myself what would she do. You mentioned being disturbed about her Angel comment to Xander in "Selfless," and I remember--remember being disturbed by her "But he's my lover!" line in s3, and I was only thirteen years old.

I never looked at any of them as role models, honestly--I just enjoyed it for what it was. And if I had to choose a television character to look up to, it would be Det. Olivia Benson.

Also, re: the college thing, I feel as if it were a huge slap in the face to Joyce. Joyce wanted her to at the very least have an education, if not get the hell out of Sunnydale of her own volition...

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

"But he's my lover!" line in s3, and I was only thirteen years old.

Yeah, that's a line that can only be used ironically. I read that line and all I can think of is Sex and the City and Carrie Bradshaw walking around playfully announcing that she's considering taking "A Russian lovahhhh!" and all the other women make fun of "her lovahhh." The line is treated as a joke.

Seventeen year olds don't have lovers. Boyfriend. What's wrong with boyfriend at that age?

And, I know, you would think that Joyce had a college fund somewhere for Buffy that went to waste.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Scully love. So wonderful. And Aeryn, OMG yes. Where have characters like that gone on TV? Nowadays it seems to be all about how damaged and broken the characters are, angsty sympathy pity-partycakes, sigh.

RE: Buffy, I'm tempted to put whole regression trend down to a combination of the waif-attraction thing (there's a special term for this in Japan: moe, a sort of protective instinct toward younger women that's meant to be platonic, but in practice tends to broadcast a bit of a creepy, sexual vibe as well) and that Hollywood school of writing that insists on certain unexamined static "truths," such as the Eternal BFFs and the Eternal Lovers-Who-Were-Meant-to-be. Refusing to grow Buffy as a character means writers can always return to that well of ye olde recycled story ideas and messages from the Good Old Days instead of spending brain cells reevaluating relationships (y'know, like people do in the real world) or generating something new to say. Especially about a woman growing older, or more mature and experienced, because who wants to hear about that, eh? How threatening.

Possibly related: I never watched Sex and the City, but it does seem steeped in that BFF thing in a similar way, or is that unfair? Also: Buffy always had a very uncertain relationship with knowledge and experience, to the point that anyone trying to gain skills and apply them usually became suspect (Willow, for instance) while those who blundered around in a largely incurious and this-mission-chose-me-I-didn't-choose-it state (Buffy) were more elevated. So perhaps all this could be put down to some gut-level (by which I mean unconscious on the writers' part) pro-emotion, pro-instinct, anti-intellect, anti-ambition worldview?

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Sex and the City is very much steeped in Best Friends Forever... however, I do give them some slack because these women are in their late 30s, not their teens. So it's basically about a different period of life. And it does become an issue at a few junctures such as Samantha having issues with Miranda having a baby, or when Carrie decided to move to Paris. And, it's primarily an offshoot of -- due to the premise of the series -- all of the men being somewhat disposable (though I do have a soft spot for Charlotte's Harry. In fact, I rather liked Charlotte's arc where at first she was so focused on wanting the perfect house, the perfect husband, etc. Only when she got the perfect white wedding and the 'perfect' doctor husband with the perfect style magazine house, it was so very not perfect. In fact it was rather unsatisfying for her (husband was a nice-enough guy but something of a headcase and it was an unhappy marriage) so she ended up divorced and falling for the not-pefect guy... who loved her, thought she was hot, and was demonstrative and supportive.) Anyway, because it was women in their late 30s (now 40s) it played a bit differently for me. (Though why in the hell they're still making these movies I do not understand! We've got the 'ending' for those characters. Charlotte got her good marriage, Miranda finally came to terms with her situation, Samantha is eternally single, and Carrie is stuck forever with her co-dependent creep. We don't need any more follow-up.)

As to what it all meanton Buffy. I don't think they necessarily realized that they had set up their universe in quite that way. It's just that Buffy is so marketed and intended as a empowering heroine that I wish they had thought a bit more about the ways in which she was supposed to be empowering. I was never quite satisfied that in the Buffyverse empowerment basically boils down to being a chosen elite invested her improbable strength for their size without also providing empowerment in a few other, more achievable, aspects.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

I love Aeryn and Scully too. I'm so glad I finally watched Farscape so I can appreciate Aeryn properly!

It's as though Joss wants all the characters emotionally at some teenaged point in their development -- permanently.

I agree completely. This is a big part of why I'm enjoying Supernatural so much--as flawed as it is, I absolutely love that the characters do deal with their issues, change, and grow up. BtVS is written better in terms of individual episodes and lines of dialog, but when it comes to the big character arcs, SPN is massively superior--I don't even think Joss has coherently thought-out long-term character arcs, whereas SPN's characters grow and change consistently from 1x01 to 5x22.

[owenthurman.livejournal.com]

Yes to all that.

Season 2 BtVS had Buffy say "Waaah! Math Hard." I was thinking' "Way to go, writers"

Technically, she was in Algebra II her sophomore year which is the advanced/accelerated math track in USA high schools. She complains about it even though she does well at it.

Actually, that just makes me even more disappointed.