Slayer dreams #6
Feb. 17th, 2003 07:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyAnother BtVS dream. Also some up-through-S7-spoilery cogitation about the economy of souls in the Buffyverse.
This dream was pretending to be tomorrow's Buffy, but was sadly unconvincing. I've had dreams that would almost fly as actual episodes, but this was really not one of them. The first 3/4 (it was also claiming to be structured in acts, though I have no idea if that would hold up either) were supposed to be a slow stripping-away of all Buffy's support network, so Angel slides back to Angelus (nothing dramatic, just a gradual erosion of morals and personality) and she loses track of Willow and Xander, and Giles won't help her. Spike's still there, but she can't see him. (We watched "No Place Like Home" and "Family" last night (3rd viewing), and I think they were coloring a lot of this.) And of course, Dawn's in trouble (must be Tuesday), so Buffy's trying to deal with her isolation and find Dawn at the same time. She also loses what I call her Buffybot-self, the part that can always be proactive with pep, so that we've got S6 Buffy, knowing that her depression is not an accurate reflection of the world but still weighted down by it, trying to act as if her depression did not exist, trying to do the right thing--again--struggling to save Dawn on sheer brute obstinacy alone.
She finds Dawn and things get even more complicated. The trouble Dawn's in is not Dawn's fault; another monk has shown up and said, It's time. The Beast has been defeated. You have to give up your human soul now and return to your natural state of pure energy. And when Dawn protests, he tells her, That soul is not yours to keep. It was only a loan, and the loan must be repaid.
So Buffy's hanging on to Dawn like grim death, because she doesn't know anything else to do. The monk isn't like the wibbly thing at the end of S5; he won't let Buffy sacrifice herself.
But just because Buffy has subjectively lost him, does not mean that Spike isn't still there and still willing to do anything for her. He strikes a bargain (going over the monk's head, I think, although I've no idea what sort of power he was dealing with--demonic? angelic? no freaking clue) and gives back his soul in order that Dawn may keep hers.
And thus the dream ends with Buffy regaining all those things she had had taken away from her and Spike being soulless again, but having sacrificed that soul for pure and altruistic reasons, so is he evil? is the memory of having a soul enough to make one act for good? and what the fuck is Giles doing with a beard?
As I said, this dream started me thinking again about souls in the Buffyverse. It's one of those things I wish they'd just stop, take part of an episode, let Giles go back into good old Sunnydale High library expounding, and explain. What is a soul in the Buffyverse? How do you get one, keep one, lose one, regain one? Spike and Angel seem to be able to take their souls on and off like hats they aren't sure suit them, and the souls themselves just hang around in the off-season, maybe doing some free-weights, drinking beer ... Where the heck do they keep them when they're not in use, and how come they don't get lost? I've been bugged for ... well, okay, not all that long, but a while now about Anya's soul. Does she have it when she's a demon? Does it come and go with her humanity? Are all demons soulless, or is it just vampires? And if demons have souls, are they human-type souls, or are they qualitatively different, as it kind of seems like they'd have to be? And, as this dream drags into the light, what about Dawn? Does Dawn have a soul? Presumably she must, or all sorts of things (not just crazy people) would have noticed she's not human. But if Dawn does have a soul, where did the monks find it? Has the Key had a soul for its millennia-long existence? Seems unlikely. They made Dawn out of Buffy--does that mean Dawn has part of Buffy's soul? Can you split souls, like Glory's worm? Or is there some kind of Celestial Repository of Souls, where vampire souls get stored while they go on their hundred year angst-inducing killing sprees, and they just happened to have an extra lying around? What if Dawn does have somebody else's soul? What if she has Drusilla's? Drusilla, after all, was an innocent before she was turned into a vampire, just as the monk tells Buffy Dawn is.
Okay. Stopping now.
I love Mutant Enemy, and they are all Obsessive Gods of Continuity, but their world-building frankly sucks. Mostly, I say to myself, It's a TV show. Let it go, sweetie, but every once in a while it just gets to be too much for me. As, for example, this post.
This dream was pretending to be tomorrow's Buffy, but was sadly unconvincing. I've had dreams that would almost fly as actual episodes, but this was really not one of them. The first 3/4 (it was also claiming to be structured in acts, though I have no idea if that would hold up either) were supposed to be a slow stripping-away of all Buffy's support network, so Angel slides back to Angelus (nothing dramatic, just a gradual erosion of morals and personality) and she loses track of Willow and Xander, and Giles won't help her. Spike's still there, but she can't see him. (We watched "No Place Like Home" and "Family" last night (3rd viewing), and I think they were coloring a lot of this.) And of course, Dawn's in trouble (must be Tuesday), so Buffy's trying to deal with her isolation and find Dawn at the same time. She also loses what I call her Buffybot-self, the part that can always be proactive with pep, so that we've got S6 Buffy, knowing that her depression is not an accurate reflection of the world but still weighted down by it, trying to act as if her depression did not exist, trying to do the right thing--again--struggling to save Dawn on sheer brute obstinacy alone.
She finds Dawn and things get even more complicated. The trouble Dawn's in is not Dawn's fault; another monk has shown up and said, It's time. The Beast has been defeated. You have to give up your human soul now and return to your natural state of pure energy. And when Dawn protests, he tells her, That soul is not yours to keep. It was only a loan, and the loan must be repaid.
So Buffy's hanging on to Dawn like grim death, because she doesn't know anything else to do. The monk isn't like the wibbly thing at the end of S5; he won't let Buffy sacrifice herself.
But just because Buffy has subjectively lost him, does not mean that Spike isn't still there and still willing to do anything for her. He strikes a bargain (going over the monk's head, I think, although I've no idea what sort of power he was dealing with--demonic? angelic? no freaking clue) and gives back his soul in order that Dawn may keep hers.
And thus the dream ends with Buffy regaining all those things she had had taken away from her and Spike being soulless again, but having sacrificed that soul for pure and altruistic reasons, so is he evil? is the memory of having a soul enough to make one act for good? and what the fuck is Giles doing with a beard?
As I said, this dream started me thinking again about souls in the Buffyverse. It's one of those things I wish they'd just stop, take part of an episode, let Giles go back into good old Sunnydale High library expounding, and explain. What is a soul in the Buffyverse? How do you get one, keep one, lose one, regain one? Spike and Angel seem to be able to take their souls on and off like hats they aren't sure suit them, and the souls themselves just hang around in the off-season, maybe doing some free-weights, drinking beer ... Where the heck do they keep them when they're not in use, and how come they don't get lost? I've been bugged for ... well, okay, not all that long, but a while now about Anya's soul. Does she have it when she's a demon? Does it come and go with her humanity? Are all demons soulless, or is it just vampires? And if demons have souls, are they human-type souls, or are they qualitatively different, as it kind of seems like they'd have to be? And, as this dream drags into the light, what about Dawn? Does Dawn have a soul? Presumably she must, or all sorts of things (not just crazy people) would have noticed she's not human. But if Dawn does have a soul, where did the monks find it? Has the Key had a soul for its millennia-long existence? Seems unlikely. They made Dawn out of Buffy--does that mean Dawn has part of Buffy's soul? Can you split souls, like Glory's worm? Or is there some kind of Celestial Repository of Souls, where vampire souls get stored while they go on their hundred year angst-inducing killing sprees, and they just happened to have an extra lying around? What if Dawn does have somebody else's soul? What if she has Drusilla's? Drusilla, after all, was an innocent before she was turned into a vampire, just as the monk tells Buffy Dawn is.
Okay. Stopping now.
I love Mutant Enemy, and they are all Obsessive Gods of Continuity, but their world-building frankly sucks. Mostly, I say to myself, It's a TV show. Let it go, sweetie, but every once in a while it just gets to be too much for me. As, for example, this post.
