Not really, but it is a very nice metaphor: After "the walls of reality break down", we get two seasons where the story practically weaponises the fourth wall.
Ha, right! Which does, in fact, start with "The Gift." OK, so Dawn is The Key to the dimensions opening up and to reality crumbling. The Key has been inserted into the story by basing her on Buffy. And Buffy realizes at that moment in The Gift that it actually works both ways -- that if The Key to storytelling can be made incarnate, so can Buffy move from flesh to Myth. Once she's brought back, the universe remains unstable.
Exactly; her death in PG may upset the story prophesised for Buffy Summers in-story, but it doesn't upset or subvert the traditional Hero's Journey - it's basically Frodo getting stabbed on Weathertop. It changes Buffy's story, in that she's now a free agent within the myth, but it doesn't change the myth itself.
Right, yes. Which is also why, though I had never quite placed my finger on it until recently, PG is kind of unsatisfying in and of itself. Buffy's willingness to self-sacrifice is heroic -- it's amazingly heroic! -- but it also is the thing that lets the Master go, because she still plays by the written rules. That she "gets to" live anyway always seemed to me to be hard to parse. I'd heard people comparing this to Greek myth, in which characters who submitted to their fates as doled out by the Gods were typically rewarded with a reprieve; it also reminds me of Abraham and Isaac, where willingness to sacrifice yourself (or in that case someone precious to you) is what ends up saving you. But that is, of course, not what happens. God or the PtB don't swoop down and save Buffy or give her a reprieve: Xander does, Xander who flunked the written even more than Buffy does. In that sense, Buffy's actions, though heroic, are the wrong ones. The way in which she triumphs is more indirect -- her heroism is what inspires Xander to go save her. But it's not a direct line, like Chosen or even The Gift. It makes sense as the first finale, of course, and at that part in the Hero's Journey. The only other major finale in which Buffy doesn't rewrite the rules is Becoming, but I think that is a case where Buffy really does do the Right Thing; there really seems to be no other way out of the Acathla situation, and in a sense her action there is more to send Angel to the place that Angel has earned through his own actions -- season two is, in part, about Buffy becoming involved in something greater than her, and finding the strength to extricate herself from it. Which is in a lot of ways her whole Destiny story, but season two is the clearest case where Buffy has no real doubt about what she Has to do, and is ultimately correct as a result.
There's also that from a certain point of view, Buffy is quite simply wrong when she says life isn't a story. Or rather, when Sarah Michelle Gellar says the line "Life isn't a story", written by Jane Espenson for episode 7.16 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. :) Just as when she points out in "Chosen" that the only reason there's only one Slayer is because the Shadow Men wrote her that way (insert Jessica Rabbit quote here).
Haha, right. The distinction then is between stories that simplify to the point of losing what is real and stories that enhance or clarify what is real, which is...very difficult to know, though it's generally obvious which side of the line Andrew spends most of his time as.
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Date: 2012-08-31 09:19 pm (UTC)Ha, right! Which does, in fact, start with "The Gift." OK, so Dawn is The Key to the dimensions opening up and to reality crumbling. The Key has been inserted into the story by basing her on Buffy. And Buffy realizes at that moment in The Gift that it actually works both ways -- that if The Key to storytelling can be made incarnate, so can Buffy move from flesh to Myth. Once she's brought back, the universe remains unstable.
Exactly; her death in PG may upset the story prophesised for Buffy Summers in-story, but it doesn't upset or subvert the traditional Hero's Journey - it's basically Frodo getting stabbed on Weathertop. It changes Buffy's story, in that she's now a free agent within the myth, but it doesn't change the myth itself.
Right, yes. Which is also why, though I had never quite placed my finger on it until recently, PG is kind of unsatisfying in and of itself. Buffy's willingness to self-sacrifice is heroic -- it's amazingly heroic! -- but it also is the thing that lets the Master go, because she still plays by the written rules. That she "gets to" live anyway always seemed to me to be hard to parse. I'd heard people comparing this to Greek myth, in which characters who submitted to their fates as doled out by the Gods were typically rewarded with a reprieve; it also reminds me of Abraham and Isaac, where willingness to sacrifice yourself (or in that case someone precious to you) is what ends up saving you. But that is, of course, not what happens. God or the PtB don't swoop down and save Buffy or give her a reprieve: Xander does, Xander who flunked the written even more than Buffy does. In that sense, Buffy's actions, though heroic, are the wrong ones. The way in which she triumphs is more indirect -- her heroism is what inspires Xander to go save her. But it's not a direct line, like Chosen or even The Gift. It makes sense as the first finale, of course, and at that part in the Hero's Journey. The only other major finale in which Buffy doesn't rewrite the rules is Becoming, but I think that is a case where Buffy really does do the Right Thing; there really seems to be no other way out of the Acathla situation, and in a sense her action there is more to send Angel to the place that Angel has earned through his own actions -- season two is, in part, about Buffy becoming involved in something greater than her, and finding the strength to extricate herself from it. Which is in a lot of ways her whole Destiny story, but season two is the clearest case where Buffy has no real doubt about what she Has to do, and is ultimately correct as a result.
There's also that from a certain point of view, Buffy is quite simply wrong when she says life isn't a story. Or rather, when Sarah Michelle Gellar says the line "Life isn't a story", written by Jane Espenson for episode 7.16 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. :) Just as when she points out in "Chosen" that the only reason there's only one Slayer is because the Shadow Men wrote her that way (insert Jessica Rabbit quote here).
Haha, right. The distinction then is between stories that simplify to the point of losing what is real and stories that enhance or clarify what is real, which is...very difficult to know, though it's generally obvious which side of the line Andrew spends most of his time as.