In need of discussion for fanfic purposes...

[shipperx]

Okay, it's a question that I don't quite know the answer to.  It's a narrow band question, though.  It's not 'what were Buffy's fears and motivations in Season 8?"  because I could come up with many answers to that.  But this is more specific. 

What in Buffy's actions, choices, behavior, dealings with Twilight reflect her fear of failure?  I don't know whether it was a big motivation of hers in the big scope of things, but it's sort of reverse analysis.  NOt 'what were her fears and motivations' but 'what specifically could be interpreted as coming from a fear of failure?'

Meanwhile, I'll fear that this will fail to be posted.  LJ is basically non-functional today.  But, oh well,   ::fingers crossed::

Comments

[rahirah]

LJ seems to be sporadically up if you want to try editing this post to see if it will crosspost. :P

That's a difficult question. Right off I'd say that one shot dream story, but that wasn't really part of S8 proper and it's not really a choice or action she took. I'd say the biggest one was running away to Tibet and giving away her power, and (if not actually forcing) then strongly pressuring many of the other Slayers to do the same. I can't see that as anything but a big scaredy runaway.

[shipperx]

It doesn't have to be an action per se.

It's that while thinking about it today (and going over some stuff) I realized that it would be stronger to draw some sort of link between Buffy and my OC, and to actually have one moment of actual interaction between them. Since my OC has this tendency to run away / avoid out of a fear of failure, that was the thing I wanted to touch on.

In my head the scene is where my OC finds Buffy with Satsu in the infirmary after the whole Twilight beating debacle. (My OC has somehow -- to her dismay -- gotten the job of Slayer medic).

My thought is perhaps to have her (er... can I admit that for a bunch of reasons, my OC doesn't have an actual name? She only has nickname (in flashbacks with family it's 'duck' (nothing to do with Bangels), in the time of the story she earns the nickname "Doc" due to the medic thing. But I never give her an actual name)... er, anyway, my thought was to have her discover Buffy still at Satsu's side after everyone else has left and Satsu is asleep with perhaps something along the line of how 'it's fun and games until someone loses an eye... then you get kicked out of your own house' with a sigh and "I never wanted to lead an army. I'm not very good at it." With, perhaps, my OC clearing her voice then to make her presence known.

... It's an idea I'm thinking about, at any rate. I just thought I needed to have just a bit more (and a bit more sympathetic) Buffy... at least for one scene... because sooner or later my OC is going to have to deal with the Slayers dying by the score because of Buffy's decisions, so I thought I might need a softer moment where my OC can see that Buffy is human.... a flawed human.

[rebcake]

Hmmm. I guess Buffy must have fear of failure, because, well, everybody does. I see her fundamental fear being out of control, too powerful, even though she also wants to be effective. IDK. It's that whole, superiority/inferiority thing. Does succeeding as the Slayer mean failing as a human/woman/person?

Obviously, she feels responsible for every girl that she "empowered". But, when she was responsible for Dawn, in the parental sense, it didn't seem to bother her too much if she wasn't on top of everything. Again, I don't really know...

[fenderlove]

Well, I think that sleeping with Twangel reflects a fear of failure. Sleeping with Angel back in S2 was her first big "grown-up" mistake. Sure, burning down a school building and causing one's mom to move is bad, but it rings of a troubled teenager. Sleeping with one's boyfriend, have him lose his conscience, putting your family and friends (and their pets) in real danger and resulting in not only the deaths of multiple townspeople over the course of several months including that of her mentor's girlfriend. Even though the information that would have prevented Buffy from making said mistake was kept from her, she feels responsible and also feels as though she has failed as a Slayer. When Angel shows up with his sweet nothing words about the happiness she deserves and the glow that means them being together is the "right thing," it's just what Buffy wants to hear, that one of her greatest mistakes that forever shut down a part of her from other relationships, that shifted how others viewed her judgement was meant to happen, that it's not her fault. If the Universe wants her to be with Angel in their special dimension, then she's not a failure. I think that's why it's so easy for her to go along with what he's telling her. It's only when she gets in an alien environment and stops having physical distractions when she starts to feel uncomfortable with what's going on. She can't stay in Twilight because her friends are still alive and need her. Choosing herself over the world would once again make her a failure in her Slayer duties, so she goes back, still thinking that she and Angel are really going to be together forever now that he won't loose his soul with sex or so it appears. Yet once again, choosing herself and Angel over others, even for a moment, costs her the life of someone close to her, which in turn means that she can't have what she wants and she's still a failure.

[slaymesoftly]

This makes great sense to me. Which sets up some more issues for post season eight Buffy. She trusted, and now she has to deal with those consequences. I doubt the comics will address the issue of Buffy's mental attitude and possible depression/fear of more failure, but fanfic certainly could...

[fenderlove]

I also think that there's some tragic irony in that in both instances of Buffy sleeping with Angel that caused catastrophe (since she doesn't remember all their L.A. sex because it technically didn't happen), the people who kept the information from her are the ones who wound up dying. Jenny didn't tell her about the curse, and Giles refused to give her the necessary information she needed about the Slayer spell and the terrible ramifications it might have. In both cases, by the time the adults actually give up the vital info, it's too late, and it's apocalypse time. In a way, Jenny and Giles are the ones who pay the ultimate price for their actions in keeping Buffy out-of-the-loop. However, Buffy does not have enough insight to recognize this, not that it would make her feel not guilty. She would still feel guilt, but what would her decisions have been along the way if she had all the information? It's like she's got people all around her dangling the keys to the driver's seat just in front of her face, but they'll never hand them over, and she'll never be fully in control of her life. However, now that Giles is dead, the only people who might be able to help her understand what happened to cause these events are Angel and Spike, and for once Angel might be the most helpful to giving her the resources to feel better about herself, to understand that the things that were her fault and the things that weren't, to do a postmortem accounting of what transpired to get them all where they got to... and Spike could be a buffer between them just in case the curse was back... but Whedon can't do that. He can't have the characters behave as adults and have self-reflection, so he'll keep Buffy and Angel apart to mess with the Bangels, put Spike and Buffy in close proximity to mess with the Spuffies, and none of the characters will be allowed to resolves their issues. And that's terribly sad.

[shipperx]

Angel can't do that because he's still too busy rationalizing how he was jutified in his own actions. There's a preview panel of his telling Faith that he had previously seen L.A. taken to hell and now it was going to happen to the whole world.

Hey, ANGEL! The reason L.A. went to hell was because of YOU... and he did it all over again. Given his track record, maybe Whedonverse folks would be safter if Angel stopped trying to 'save the world.'

[fenderlove]

Well, someone has to be trying to rationalize anything that happened because none of it makes sense. L.A. getting sucked into hell was partially his fault in a giant confluence of events that wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been so trigger-happy about signing on with W&H. Granted, it was so his kid wouldn't be dead, but for a hero who's supposed to put the world first, it may be noble in the parental sense but it's not too bright. Sure, he tried to put the "We're going to clean up this one horse town!" spin on things, but he should know better. In Hell, he gave his life to set things right again. Granted, he sorta knew that giving his life wouldn't be a permanent things, and again, he was motivated by bringing Connor back to life (and I might say that that is one of the most tragic things I've ever seen- Spike cradling Connor's dead body while Angel rushes into death... and then Spike nearly going full-out "Dru" because Angel is dead, and the realization that his family is gone hits him). He saved L.A, gave his son back his life AGAIN, so why would he just roll over and say, "Oh, the world is ending? For realz this time? Well, okay, I guess I'll help bring that about since you say there's no hope." Everything Angel has done in the past few years in their 'verse has been for Connor. He gave up a part of his scruples, if you could call them that, to take control of W&H, and he was willing to move time itself and Heaven and Hell... and all for that mussy-haired boy with Darla's eyes. I could believe Angel would join Twilight if it had promised, "The world's going to end! Everyone's going to die, but if you help me your son will live!" However, "The world's going to end! Everyone's going to die including your kid, but if you help me you and your ex-girlfriend can bone in Paradise while everyone is suffering a fate worse than a thousand Hells!" is not something I really see him going along with at this point. Maybe the writers could have sold me on the idea, but they were too busy with mechas and centaurs and stupid crap to actually tell me the story and sell the characterization.

Angel needs some therapy... and also maybe some hero business management courses... Spike should get custody of Connor in the meantime. XD

[slaymesoftly]

Sad for the characters and their lives - but good for fanfic writers, yes? :)

[fenderlove]

It could be good for fanfic writers if they don't get frustrated the way I do. Sometimes my general dislike for how the show/comic writers jerk their audience around makes me not much with the inspiration. With a lot of my own fanfic, I want to do a continuation of the action I've seen, not have to go back and fix everything the writers did poorly. I can make connections and I can write meta and try to force square pieces into round holes with the show's logic all day long, but in the end if the writers didn't intend any of it, don't plan to do anything with it, then it gets tiresome. I feel like all the canon boils down to is that Buffy never gets to grow up or be allowed to stop being miserable, and Spike and Angel will never be allowed to be free away from her and resolve their own issues. I've been having a lot of fandom struggles lately, and I feel like a boat without a sail... and even though I have the spare parts to make a motor, I'm not sure I want to at this point, so I'm adrift in a fandom ocean.

[slaymesoftly]

I'll admit the comics season in general didn't inspire much fic in me. I borrowed a few things from the very early parts here and there when I could fit them into an AU future story without having to dwell on them excessively. I didn't actually write anything set in canon until the very end - then did the obligatory space frakking crack ficlet and the also obligatory "this is how the reunion on the ship should have gone" one. But the ending gave me a starting point for a longer post season end fic, so I'm cautiously optimistic about getting inspiration from the new season. If nothing else, I don't mind starting someplace and going "ok, THIS is how I think it should have gone from here..."

[fenderlove]

Personally, the comics have shaken my confidence as a writer. I feel like if this is how Whedon views his characters then did I ever really know them at all? These characters aren't the characters I knew from the show, and there's been no light at the end of the tunnel. I have to admit that when Victor Drujiniu posted the pages drawn from a proposal S9 script he received when he was trying to get the job of artist for the season (he got the script before S8 ended and before they decided to keep Jeanty as the main artist), I felt some hope. It had Buffy, Angel, and Spike living in Romania in a small rundown apartment. Buffy was still in hiding as an international terrorist, but she was still working on fixing some of the damage caused by the destruction of the seed and from her own dalliances. Angel was still recovering from what had happened, and Spike was there to help them both. It seemed more natural, even without words. However, what they've released page-wise from the actual S9 and from what Whedon and Allie had stated in interviews, I just don't want to see anymore. I'm beginning to think that it would have been better if everything ended in Season Five of BtVS.