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by mudpuppy post Buffy s3 Kindly donated by Jade's BtVS Theories
A few preliminaries before beginning: Much of this is just speculation based upon the facts as
known to all of us. I don't present this as fact itself, just a theory that I'm willing to have proven
wrong by someone pointing out facts I missed or by future eps of BtVS. Also, my overall point
is not that we should support the Council, just that we are jumping to conclusions by so
vociferously opposing them.
OK, first off, the general purpose of the Council as I see it and believe they see it themselves is
to stop vampires and other demons from carrying out evil. That is their sole purpose to
existence and they view this fight as a war. Ideally only bad guys would die in this war, but they
know that good guys will also perish fighting the bad. Because of the nature of the enemy, a lot
of the Council's ideology is strictly black and white: they do not see subtle shades of gray
because they have no place in a battle versus demons. Individuals, even good individuals, may
have to be sacrificed for the greater good (literally in many cases) in order to survive this war.
Living with this knowledge is a heavy burden and being among those who decide who lives and
dies is an awesome power to posses, an incredible responsibility.
Every war needs generals who are capable of using this power: if the war is worth fighting, we
needs someone who can come up with strategy and tactics that will minimize the losses to our
side and maximizes losses to the other. We don't want someone in charge who is cowering with
fear or unable to decide quickly which troops to send where in the knowledge that this decision
affects the very survival of many people. However, we want the person wielding the power to
have a healthy respect for human life: we don't want them to make arbitrary decisions or to
sacrifice individuals when it is unnecessary. A gallant frontal charge to get the general in the
history books is a poor decision when a few mortar rounds could have achieved the same
objective. In short, we want someone with the ability to use this power, but not someone who
will abuse it.
The goal here, then, is not to prove that the Council has Buffy's best interests at heart: they
don't. They, ideally, would have humanity's best interests at heart. Rather it is demonstrate,
first, that what they have done can be construed as for the greater good and that, second, it is not
overly abusive of their authority. (Some people have questioned why the Council should have
authority over slayers at all. I would be happy to share theories on this as well, but it is not
essential to my point here.) This is obviously a value judgement: what I find to be a decent
balance between respect for the individual and awareness of the collective good, others may not.
But I will try to illustrate as best I can how the Council's behavior can be seen as properly
balancing these two goals.
The most odious thing the Council has done, obviously, has been the test shown in Helpless.
After the airing of this ep, many on the board speculated that the Council doesn't expect any
slayer to survive or, at the least, it is an incredibly rare event for a slayer to survive the test.
However, the head watcher guy said to Giles, "If this girl's everything you say she is, you have
nothing to worry about it." Since we can safely assume (I hope) that Giles has been sending
sterling reports on Buffy, I think that what the watcher guy meant by this was that good slayers
are generally expected to survive the test. Bad slayers, on the other hand are not. But why test
them? Why not assume that if they made it to 18, they must be good slayers and let it go at that?
But what if they were merely lucky slayers? Or they had the good fortune to live during a time
or place when demonic activity was light? You'd want to weed out the poor ones so that should
BIG DANGER arrive, you know you have a strong slayer fighting for you. In a special forces
unit in a normal army, if you can't hack the training regimen, you wash out and they find
someone to replace you (or they expect a certain washout rate and recruit with that in mind.) In
the army against the demons, the only documented way to get a new slayer is for the old one to
die. Unfortunately, this means that should a slayer not be any good, she can't just go into
retirement, she has to die. Harsh, yes. Necessary, also possibly yes.
Now what of Buffy? Why must she be tested? She's stopped Lothos, prevented the Master from
rising (twice), killed the Judge, defeated Angel's attempt to revive Acathla, and so on. She's
saved the world so many times, why should the Council risk her death now? There a handful of
answers to these questions: first, the Council only really has Giles's reports to go on to judge
Buffy. If they doubt his objectivity, they may doubt the veracity of the reports. Second, they
probably know that Buffy has been receiving help from Angel, from her friends, twice from a
second slayer, and from an overly active watcher. (I say probably because Wesley seems to be
oblivious to all these facts, so its possible that Giles has not made it known.) If they know this,
than they may doubt that Buffy could do it on her own.
Third, do we really know how good a slayer Buffy is? We've seen two other slayers. I will say
that Buffy was a better slayer than Kendra and probably always would have been, although
Kendra was less experienced and may have learned. I'm not as sure of the comparison with
Faith. Buffy is clearly better than Faith is right now. However, we don't know what Faith was
like before her Watcher was killed by Kakistos. Faith has shown that she is a superb fighter,
however she lacks self-control, doesn't take time to think, and doesn't seem to train very often
or very hard. Maybe this is from the recent trauma of her watcher's death, maybe this is inherent
in her personality. But, bottom line, we don't know. Perhaps with hard work, close supervision
from a good watcher, and experience, Faith could rival Buffy. Point is, even if we could clearly
say Buffy is the best of the slayers we've seen, it is still quite possible that she is, historically
speaking, an average or, even, below average slayer. I'm not saying, mind you, that she is below
average: I'm just saying that with a sample size of 3, we can reach no significant conclusions.
Perhaps Buffy is a good slayer, perhaps not.
If one accepts the head watcher's implication that good slayers are expected to survive the test,
than this does become an accurate gauge of the slayer's abilities, a fair test in a certain sense.
View the pre-18 years as boot camp and the 18th birthday as the final test to pass. In a normal
army, failure means a discharge (or a transfer to another unit); in the Council's army, this is not
feasible. If the current slayer can't hack it, a new slayer is needed. This means, unfortunately,
death for the current slayer. Looking at it as someone who loves Buffy, this is a bad thing: I
don't want to see her die. But looking at it as someone who wants the world to not be destroyed
(and pretending to be living in the "buffyverse" for a moment) I wouldn't want a slayer who
wasn't capable to be trying to save the world. Arguments have been made that the normal
course of slaying will weed out the weak ones making the test unnecessary, but the test is a way
to control for all other factors (outside help, an easy time, etc.) and make the slayer rely on other
than their physical abilities.
This leads us to another quarrelsome question: why must they go in without their abilities? I'm
willing to accept the utility of a test that requires the slayer to think and to improvise. Buffy has
many times faced demons as strong or stronger than she: she has survived on her wits for a long
time. Faith, on the other hand, has survived on her fighting skills almost exclusively. My guess
is she would fail the test if it were administered to her at this time. Now I really like Faith and
this would make me sad. If I were living in the Buffyverse, though, I wouldn't want Faith (as
she currently acts) as the only thing standing between the forces of evil and the survival of the
world. From that standpoint, perhaps I'd want Faith to fail the test and the new slayer to be
called. Callous? I'll admit it. Necessary? I'd say yes to that too.
There is an alternative theory offered by Phil PhuD. I don't actually agree with it, but it paints
the Council in an even more positive light, so I'll offer a version of it here as an alternative. The
powers of the slayer are truly impressive and, like the Force, can be quite attractive. There is a
mighty temptation to abuse the physical powers of the slayer and believe that because you have
these superpowers you can "do whatever you want" and can follow the philosophy of "want,
take, have." These slayers are likely to ignore the mental aspects of slaying, and focus on the
physical. The test then serves as a way of eliminating the slayers who have gone to the dark
side.
Another issue of great concern to Bronzers has been Giles's firing. We all love Giles (at least, I
know of no posters who don't love Giles) and seeing him get fired hurt. But was the Council
wrong about firing him? It hurts me to say 'no.' What I wrote above about the test is conjecture,
supposition, and stuff that I find possible but don't necessarily agree with. This stuff about Giles
is my actual opinion and not just part of my theory. Giles has lost his objectivity when he comes
to Buffy: he does love her. 99.9% of the time, this is, in fact, a strength. It makes him a better
watcher, gives him more inspiration to help her, and gets him off his butt as opposed to most
watchers. There are those rare times, however, when this love would hurt him. Giles
demonstrated in Prophecy Girl his inability to send Buffy to her certain death (in point of fact,
she had to knock him out because he wouldn't let her go.) He was more concerned with her life
than with saving the world, and I'm pretty sure Giles loves Buffy even more now than he did at
the end of the first season, so it'd be even less likely he'd send Buffy to her certain death now.
As I argued above, loving Buffy like I do, I'd hate to see her die, but I'd also hate to have the
world end because she didn't do her "sacred duty, yaddah, yaddah" and save the world because
Giles was afraid to let her. (Wow, so much of this theory depends upon me distancing my
emotions from my reason. I don't like that one bit.)
Some have argued that Giles sends Buffy to possible death almost every day. I agree, but with the caveat that there is a difference between possible death and certain death (and probable death.) Giles knows that Buffy can take care of herself on patrol: there's a chance she'll die, but it's an unlikely event in Giles's mind. However he did end up warning Buffy of the test. I believe that he was going to warn her regardless, the escape of Zach just gave him a good rationalization. This is pure speculation, though. Anyway, the council is aware that a Watcher
must, for the greater good, on occasion sacrifice their slayer, send their slayer to her death. The
Watcher shouldn't do this lightly, but should be capable of recognizing when it is necessary and
then be able to do it. Giles demonstrated to the Council in Helpless (and to us in PG) that he is
not capable of this. This is an offense for which he should be fired. Of course, since his love for
Buffy is helpful 99.9% of the time, if I had been the Council, I would have encourage Giles to
stick around and continue helping Buffy, as long as he (and she) accepted that ultimate authority
rests with the new Watcher. But since Buffy and Giles will never recognize the authority of a
new Watcher (even if he isn't a sniveling ninny like Wesley) then it might be best to reinstate
Giles, but keep tabs on his progress. Otherwise, things might start falling apart the 99.9% of the
time when Giles would have been a superb watcher. I suspect, though, that Giles will be
reinstated before the season's out.
In sum, the Council's actions look horrific when one views them with an eye towards loving
Buffy and Giles, i.e. when one is a fan of the series. I suspect this is what Joss wants: he is
setting us up to hate the Council. But when viewed through dispassionate eyes, I don't think
their actions are that awful: they are trying to protect the world and are willing to risk what they
have to in order to achieve that goal.
Lastly, I want to say that I do believe that the Council needs some changes. they need to update
their training regimen, both of Slayers and Watchers. (Also note that they are moving in the
right direction: Wesley mentioned that they emphasize field work more now and he has to face
vamps in controlled settings. Of course, the Watchers should be taught that controlled settings
are not like real settings, but this is still a step in the right direction.) The Council has to take
into account the modern world and realize that it will be nigh impossible to keep the Slayer
isolated anymore. But reform does not mean killing them all and starting over.
Response by Margot Le Faye First, let me say that I truly admire the thought, work, effort and industry you put into this argument. Whatever disagreement we may have on this issue, I'm impressed by the care you've taken in expressing your viewpoint. Despite the work that went into it, however, you said you wouldn't mind if I tore it apart as long as I respected you for having the guts to go up against me. Why anyone should feel they need the guts to go up against me, Mild Margot, or as I know you all think of me, Margot the Meek, I cannot imagine (Uh-huh) So, as I promise to respect you in
the morning, I am going to cut and paste your theory so I can A few preliminaries
before beginning: Much of this is just speculation based upon the
facts as known to all of us. I don't present this as fact itself,
just a theory that I'm willing to have proven wrong by someone
pointing out facts I missed or by future eps of BtVS. Also, my
overall point is not that we should support the Council, just
that we are jumping to conclusions by so vociferously opposing
them. I like the fact
that you are willing to be proved wrong. I'm willing to be proved
wrong, too. Otherwise, what's the point of engaging in debate?
But I don't think those of us who oppose the Council are jumping
to conclusions. The conclusions rather leapt out at us full blown
in "Helpless", and have been reinforced and expanded
upon, rather than overturned, every episode since. In fact, one
can look at least as far back as FH&T to see glimmerings of
WC inadequacies. As Buffy said in "Phases" "I took
a tiny step, and there conclusions were." OK, first off, the
general purpose of the Council as I see it and believe they see
it themselves is to stop vampires and other demons from carrying
out evil. That is their sole purpose to existence and they view
this fight as a war. Ideally only bad guys would die in this war,
but they know that good guys will also perish fighting the bad.
Because of the nature of the enemy, a lot of the Council's
ideology is strictly black and white: they do not see subtle
shades of gray because they have no place in a battle versus
demons. Individuals, even good individuals, may have to be
sacrificed for the greater good (literally in many cases) in
order to survive this war. Living with this knowledge is a heavy
burden and being among those who decide who lives and dies is an
awesome power to posses, an incredible responsibility. I'm with you until
you say that shades of gray have no place in a battle versus
demons. If that were true, Buffy would never have made her
alliance with Spike, and the world would have been sucked into
Hell by the end of B2. Yes, good individuals may have to be
sacrificed. That, in itself, is a shade of gray. I do agree that
being among those who decide who lives and who dies is an awesome
power to posses
but you vest it in the Watcher's Council. I
see it as being vested in the Slayer. The WC may tell the Slayer
who and what she is fighting, they may help her plan her
strategy, her tactics, her weapons. But she is the one engaged in
the actual battle, and very often, she is the one who makes the
decision about what happens to whom. The Watcher is rarely with
the Slayer when she fights. His/her position is largely, though
not exclusively, that of a non-combatant. Giles warned Buffy in
"Amends" that she mighthave to kill Angel if she
couldn't save him. But he was not on hand to enforce that
decision. Ultimately, it was Buffy's call to make. Every war needs
generals who are capable of using this power: if the war is worth
fighting, we needs someone who can come up with strategy and
tactics that will minimize the losses to our side and maximizes
losses to the other. We don't want someone in charge who is
cowering with fear or unable to decide quickly which troops to
send where in the knowledge that this decision affects the very
survival of many people. However, we want the person wielding the
power to have a healthy respect for human life: we don't want
them to make arbitrary decisions or to sacrifice individuals when
it is unnecessary. A gallant frontal charge to get the general in
the history books is a poor decision when a few mortar rounds
could have achieved the same objective. In short, we want someone
with the ability to use this power, but not someone who will
abuse it. No quarrel there. The goal here,
then, is not to prove that the Council has Buffy's best interests
at heart: they don't. They, ideally, would have humanity's best
interests at heart. Rather it is demonstrate, first, that what
they have done can be construed as for the greater good and that,
second, it is not overly abusive of their authority. (Some people
have questioned why the Council should have authority over
slayers at all. I would be happy to share theories on this as
well, but it is not essential to my point here.) This is
obviously a value judgement: what I find to be a decent balance
between respect for the individual and awareness of the
collective good, others may not. But I will try to illustrate as
best I can how the Council's behavior can be seen as properly
balancing these two goals. Well, this is where
things should get interesting. You want to convince me that their
actions are for the greater good. You don't need to. I know the
WC believes its actions are for the greater good. That isn't my
problem with them. My problem with them is that they do not have
the least idea how to go about achieving that goal. You say they
have struck a decent balance between respect for the individual
and awareness of the collective good. Here, we utterly disagree.
They have no respect for the Slayer as an individual at all. She
is a disposable, instantly replaceable, weapon to them. Nothing
more. If they respected her as an individual at all, Faith would
not have been living in a cheap motel while they had their
retreat in the Cotswolds. Kendra would not have had but a single
shirt to her name, and she would not have lived in isolation for
her entire life, forbidden to speak to boys. And Buffy's anger at
their betrayal of her in Helpless would have been given serious
consideration, not dismissed out of hand. The most odious
thing the Council has done, obviously, has been the test shown in
Helpless. After the airing of this ep, many on the board
speculated that the Council doesn't expect any slayer to survive
or, at the least, it is an incredibly rare event for a slayer to
survive the test. However, the head watcher guy said to Giles,
"If this girl's everything you say she is, you have
nothing,to worry about it." Since we can safely assume (I
hope) that Giles has been sending sterling reports on Buffy, I
think that what the watcher guy meant by this was that good
slayers are generally expected to survive the test. Bad slayers,
on the other hand are not. But why test them? Why not assume that
if they made it to 18, they must be good slayers and let it go at
that? But what if they were merely lucky slayers? Or they had the
good fortune to live during a time or place when demonic activity
was light? Here we get into a
whole other area of speculation. Bad Slayers are the ones who
don't survive? Not necessarily. Because the thing that saves
Buffy from Zach is not her quick-witted substitution of Holy
Water for the glass of water he uses to take his pills. It is the
sheer dumb luck of his having an attack just as he is about to
put the bite on her when she is too weak to fight him off..
"I'm not going to take it all," he reassures her.
Because he wants to turn her. Fortunately for the whole damn
world, he gets his migraine headache at that moment and lets her
go. Because if we are going to speculate, let's speculate that a
vampire who used to be a Slayer would be one whale of a bad@$$
vamp! The next area of
speculation you get into involves the very nature of the Slayer,
and the process by which she becomes the Chosen. You assume that
there are bad slayers, slayers who aren't good enough to fight
off really strong demons. You further assume that no amount of
training or preparation will enable these Slayers to improve. And
you also assume that, if there are bad Slayers, they will not be
weeded out quickly and automatically in the course of the nightly
war they fight, long before they make it to 18. I am not sure that
any of those assumptions are correct. The process by which
Slayers are chosen is a mystic one. It stands to reason that the
supernatural force for good which calls Slayers into being is
going to make sure that the best possibile candidate is chosen.
Currently, in a population of 6 billion human beings, there's
gotta be a about a million potential candidates. What are the
odds of that one in a million being someone who can't cut it?
Vanishingly unlikely, I'd say. Second, it simply
isn't true that Slayers can't improve. This season Buffy is far
more capable than she was even last year. Witness the scene in
DMP when she does not need the warning Oz bears from Giles to
know that she must go for the demon's eyes. Or the scene in Band
Candy when she knows, based on no clue we can discern, that Ethan
Rayne is hiding in the crate behind her. In the unlikely event
that a Watcher finds a substandard Slayer on his hand, he trains
her within an inch of her life. That's what Giles started to do
in Season One. And it is what Merrick had to do in the movie.
Now, if the Watcher's council really saw no shades of gray, and
if they never saw Slayers improve over time, they would have
regretfully decided that having a girl who had never received any
training as a Slayer was utterly unsuited to the task. They would
not risk a major evil attacking while this untrained Slayer was
just starting out. They would have, doubtless shaking their heads
at the necessity, given her a dose of some deadly, painless
poison so that a suitably trained Slayer could take her place. Finally, I can't
agree that, even if I agreed with your first two assumptions, an
unsuitable Slayer would make it to the age of 18. They appear to
be called when they are 15 or 16. Just possibly, to judge by
Faith, 17. But even if a Slayer is called just before her 18th
birthday, if she truly isn't suited to her tasks, even with the
preternatural abilities that go along with the job, it won't take
long for her to become vamp fodder. But in point of
fact, it isn't that the Council tested Buffy that makes their
actions not merely odious, but heinous, it is the way in which
they conducted the test. Because if the aim of the test is to
determine whether or not a Slayer can think on her feet, even
when disoriented and weakened, there are other ways to find this
out. Ways that do not involve sacrificing the Slayer. Ways that
will help a Slayer learn so that, in the future, she can think
more clearly, no matter how disoriented or weakened she becomes.
As I've said before, in those societies where youth are expected
to pass a life and death coming-of-age ritual, they usually spend
their entire lives preparing for said ritual. It isn't normally
sprung on them when they don't have a clue as to what's going on.
You'd want to weed
out the poor ones so that should BIG DANGER arrive, you know you
have a strong slayer fighting for you. In a special forces unit
in a normal army, if you can't hack the training regimen, you
wash out and they find someone to replace you (or they expect a
certain washout rate and recruit with that in mind.) In the army
against the demons, the only documented way to get a new slayer
is for the old one to die. Unfortunately, this means that should
a slayer not be any good, she can't just go into retirement, she
has to die. Harsh, yes. Necessary, also possibly yes. I think I already
covered this one. But let me add that it is utterly foolish to
replace a Slayer before you have to. Because you loose whatever
experience she has. You lose whatever knowledge she has of
timing, strategy and tactics. And you replace her with a raw
recruit who has been trained in theory, but who is an unknown
quantity
and may, if some Slayers are indeed incompetent, be
even worse. On another
note
isn't it a bit nervy of the Council to second-guess
whatever force is mystically calling Slayers? Playing God much? Now what of Buffy?
Why must she be tested? She's stopped Lothos, prevented the
Master from rising (twice), killed the Judge, defeated Angel's
attempt to revive Acathla, and so on. She's saved the world so
many times, why should the Council risk her death now? There a
handful of answers to these questions: first, the Council only
really has Giles's reports to go on to judge Buffy. If they doubt
his objectivity, they may doubt the veracity of the reports.
Second, they probably know that Buffy has been receiving help
from Angel, from her friends, twice from a second slayer, and
from an overly active watcher. (I say probably because Wesley
seems to be oblivious to all these facts, so its possible that
Giles has not made it known.) If they know this, than they may
doubt that Buffy could do it on her own. Um, okay, and they
would doubt Giles' veracity this late in the game because
?
His objectivity doesn't really have a lot to do with this. Buffy
destroyed the Judge. Who wasn't supposed to be able to be
destroyed. Giles lack of objectivity might have him send
enthusiastic, glowing and fulsome reports about the situation
back to the council. But the basic fact of her having destroyed
the Judge is independent of how Giles gushes about it. Second, if
Buffy has been receiving help from her friends, why would that
matter, either? The point is to get the job done. That she has
friends who will back her up is an advantage that the Council
would be foolish to throw away. And as we all know, when it comes
down to it and push comes to shove, it is Buffy herself who has
to act. In B2, we saw that even in the most overwhelming
circumstances, Buffy can and does do it on her own. Giles knew
that weeks before her birthday, when he finally got her to come
clean about what was going on, in FH&T. His report on the
matter should have obviated the necessity for any test. Third, do we really
know how good a slayer Buffy is? We've seen two other slayers. I
will say that Buffy was a better slayer than Kendra and probably
always would have been, although Kendra was less experienced and
may have learned. I'm not as sure of the comparison with Faith.
Buffy is clearly better than Faith is right now. However, we
don't know what Faith was like before her Watcher was killed by
Kakistos. Faith has shown that she is a superb fighter, however
she lacks self-control, doesn't take time to think, and doesn't
seem to train very often or very hard. Maybe this is from the
recent trauma of her watcher's death, maybe this is inherent in
her personality. But, bottom line, we don't know. Perhaps with
hard work, close supervision from a good watcher, and experience,
Faith could rival Buffy. Point is, even if we could clearly say
Buffy is the best of the slayers we've seen, it is still quite
possible that she is, historically speaking, an average or, even,
below average slayer. Uh huh. Which is
why Spike, who has taken out 2 Slayers, doesn't want to go near
her. Which is why Lothos, who made a career of scarfing up
Slayers for about a millenium lasted all of a month against her.
I think the evidence we have is against you on that one. I'm not saying,
mind you, that she is below average: I'm just saying that with a
sample size of 3, we can reach no significant conclusions.
Perhaps Buffy is a good slayer, perhaps not. We have more than a
sample of 3 to go on. We have the evidence of Spike and Lothos.
Buffy defeated them where generations of other Slayers failed. We
also have a casual comment by Giles in the first season. Taking a
look at what she had accomplished to that point (negligible in
comparison to what she would accomplish by the end of that
season, let alone in the succeeding ones) Giles felt she was
doing quite well. If one accepts the
head watcher's implication that good slayers are expected to
survive the test, than this does become an accurate gauge of the
slayer's abilities, a fair test in a certain sense. View the
pre-18 years as boot camp and the 18th birthday as the final test
to pass. In a normal army, failure means a discharge (or a
transfer to another unit); in the Council's army, this is not
feasible. If the current slayer can't hack it, a new slayer is
needed. This means, unfortunately, death for the current slayer.
Looking at it as someone who loves Buffy, this is a bad thing: I
don't want to see her die. But looking at it as someone who wants
the world to not be destroyed (and pretending to be living in the
"buffyverse" for a moment) I wouldn't want a slayer who
wasn't capable to be trying to save the world. Arguments have
been made that the normal course of slaying will weed out the
weak ones making the test unnecessary, but the test is a way to
control for all other factors (outside help, an easy time, etc.)
and make the slayer rely on other than their physical abilities. Here you have the
three assumptions I already covered, restated. And let me point
out that your fourth assumption, only Slayers who 'can't hack it'
die, is utterly wrong. Buffy ultimately defeated Zach by using
her wits. But she survived to do so only because of dumb luck.
Sure, a good Slayer, is expected to survive, but if she
absolutely were going to, why would you test her in the first
place? Wouldn't you know, long before her 18th birthday, if you
had a strong slayer on your hands or a dud? I am here allowing
that some Slayers are duds. An argument I do not actually buy
into, again as discussed previously. This leads us to
another quarrelsome question: why must they go in without their
abilities? I'm willing to accept the utility of a test that
requires the slayer to think and to improvise. Buffy has many
times faced demons as strong or stronger than she: she has
survived on her wits for a long time. Faith, on the other hand,
has survived on her fighting skills almost exclusively. My guess
is she would fail the test if it were administered to her at this
time. Now I really like Faith and this would make me sad. If I
were living in the Buffyverse, though, I wouldn't want Faith (as
she currently acts) as the only thing standing between the forces
of evil and the survival of the world. From that standpoint,
perhaps I'd want Faith to fail the test and the new slayer to be
called. Callous? I'll admit it. Necessary? I'd say yes to that
too. Ack! Cannot go with
you there at all! Fortunately, I think you sell Faith's survival
instincts way too short. See, faced with Zach, and his stated
intentions toward her, I think Faith would have gone seductive on
him, 'til she got him in a vulnerable position and did the kind
of lethal damage even us weak girly-girls can inflict if needed. There is an
alternative theory offered by Phil PhuD. I don't actually agree
with it, but it paints the Council in an even more positive
light, so I'll offer a version of it here as an alternative. The
powers of the slayer are truly impressive and, like the Force,
can be quite attractive. There is a mighty temptation to abuse
the physical powers of the slayer and believe that because you
have these superpowers you can "do whatever you want"
and can follow the philosophy of "want, take, have."
These slayers are likely to ignore the mental aspects of slaying,
and focus on the physical. The test then serves as a way of
eliminating the slayers who have gone to the dark side. Oh, goody! Fresh
Blood! See my answer to the preceding paragraph. Then consider
this. Say Faith didn't think she could survive. Say she had
turned to the Dark Side. She walks up to Zach and makes him an
offer he doesn't want to refuse
and then when the Watchers
come to remove her body, she turns them into a buffet. Another issue of
great concern to Bronzers has been Giles's firing. We all love
Giles (at least, I know of no posters who don't love Giles) and
seeing him get fired hurt. But was the Council wrong about firing
him? It hurts me to say 'no.' What I wrote above about the test
is conjecture, supposition, and stuff that I find possible but
don't necessarily agree with. This stuff about Giles is my actual
opinion and not just part of my theory. Giles has lost his
objectivity when he comes to Buffy: he does love her. 99.9% of
the time, this is, in fact, a strength. It makes him a better
watcher, gives him more inspiration to help her, and gets him off
his butt as opposed to most watchers. There are those rare times,
however, when this love would hurt him. Giles demonstrated in
Prophecy Girl his inability to send Buffy to her certain death
(in point of fact, she had to knock him out because he wouldn't
let her go.) He was more concerned with her life than with saving
the world, and I'm pretty sure Giles loves Buffy even more now
than he did at the end of the first season, so it'd be even less
likely he'd send Buffy to her certain death now. As I argued
above, loving Buffy like I do, I'd hate to see her die, but I'd
also hate to have the world end because she didn't do her
"sacred duty, yaddah, yaddah" and save the world
because Giles was afraid to let her. (Wow, so much of this theory
depends upon me distancing my emotions from my reason. I don't
like that one bit.) And of course,
Giles never learned from his mistakes, either. After Buffy choose
to go to her certain (but fortunately temporary) death, Giles
tried to get her not to face the undefeatable Judge, and he
didn't want her anywhere near Acathla. Right. But lets leave that
question aside for the moment. By your own figures, Giles love
for Buffy gives him the advantage 99.9% of the time. But we
should throw that aside for the sake of the .01 % of the time
when it is not an advantage? Doesn't that mean that you increase
the odds of Buffy being defeated 99.9% of the time? Do you really
want to do that? Some have argued
that Giles sends Buffy to possible death almost every day. I
agree, but with the caveat that there is a difference between
possible death and certain death (and probable death.) Giles
knows that Buffy can take care of herself on patrol: there's a
chance she'll die, but it's an unlikely event in Giles's mind.
However he did end up warning Buffy of the test. Because he saw the
test for what it was: an unnecessary, barbaric betrayal of trust.
An anachronistic ritual that did NOTHING to make Buffy a better
slayer at all and put her into totally needless danger. I believe that he
was going to warn her regardless, the escape of Zach just gave
him a good rationalization. This is pure speculation, though.
Anyway, the council is aware that a Watcher must, for the greater
good, on occasion sacrifice their slayer, send their slayer to
her death. The Watcher shouldn't do this lightly, but should be
capable of recognizing when it is necessary and then be able to
do it. Giles demonstrated to the Council in helpless (and to us
in PG) that he is not capable of this. This is an offense for
which he should be fired. Of course, since his love for Buffy is
helpful 99.9% of the time, if I had been the Council, I would
have encourage Giles to stick around and continue helping Buffy,
as long as he (and she) accepted that ultimate authority rests
with the new Watcher. But since Buffy and Giles will never
recognize the authority of a new Watcher (even if he isn't a
sniveling ninny like Wesley) then it might be best to reinstate
Giles, but keep tabs on his progress. Otherwise, things might
start falling apart the 99.9% of the time when Giles would have
been a superb watcher. I suspect, though, that Giles will be
reinstated before the season's out. You do realize that
you've just made my argument for me, right? The Watcher should
not send the Slayer to certain death lightly, but should be
capable of recognizing when it is necessary? And therefore, when
it is unnecessary. Like for this golblamed ritual! And you also
agree with me that it is foolish to trade the 99.9% advantage for
the .01% advantage. Good. :-) In sum, the
Council's actions look horrific when one views them with an eye
towards loving Buffy and Giles, i.e. when one is a fan of the
series. I suspect this is what Joss wants: he is setting us up to
hate the Council. But when viewed through dispassionate eyes, I
don't think their actions are that awful: they are trying to
protect the world and are willing to risk what they have to in
order to achieve that goal. Um, no. They are
willing to risk the Slayer. That is all they seem willing to
risk. When Giles was trying to contact them to find out how to
save the world from the reopening of the Hellmouth, they wouldn't
even risk accepting his phone calls. It was saved despite their
incompetence, not because of their lofty, selfless ideals (which
they don't have, in any case). Lastly, I want to
say that I do believe that the Council needs some changes. they
need to update their training regimen, both of Slayers and
Watchers. (Also note that they are moving in the right direction:
Wesley mentioned that they emphasize field work more now and he
has to face vamps in controlled settings. Of course, the Watchers
should be taught that controlled settings are not like real
settings, but this is still a step in the right direction.) The
Council has to take into account the modern world and realize
that it will be nigh impossible to keep the Slayer isolated
anymore. But reform does not mean killing them all and starting
over. I don't want to
kill them. Um, well, not too badly. I will admit that the
temptation to lock them in the basement of the Sunset Club and
inviting Spike, Trick and company to an All You Can Eat Moron
Buffet is overwhelming at times. So is the idea of unloosing
Faith on them with a crossbow and a sheaf full of quarrels.
S*C*R*E*W the B*A*S*TA*R*D*S wants to remove EXCESS Watchers from
the council, not from the living. That is, those who are too
hidebound to learn anything new, too married... [Jade's note:
Margot's post was dingoed at this point, ending her theory.]
Reply by mudpuppy ...OK, let me first admit where I was wrong or where I overlooked things: first, I love your theory of how Faith would survive the test. I still think she'd die, but your theory is great and I hadn't considered it. Second, I had overlooked the fact that Spike had killed two slayers in the past. (I'm leery to really include Lothos because I haven't seen the third part of the comic yet, so I don't know what happens inthe canonical version of that story.) Now let me backtrack and rationalize why this doesn't destroy my theory. First, this increases our sample size to five. Still not that big. Second, Spike was willing to face Buffy until he realized she had friends, a mother, and Angel on her side. that's when he suddenly lost confidence in himself! That backs up my point that the Council can imagine that Buffy would be toast if she were on her own. (They're wrong, but it's not a bad assumption on their part.) I may have been too hasty to not include my ideas on why the Council should have authority over the Slayers. The question of the extent of the Council's legitimate power seems to be at the heart of a number of our disagreements. My feeling is that the Watchers are called as well. (Or at least, the Watcher families are called.) The same mystical force that chooses Slayers, choose Watchers and endowed the Watchers with authority over the Slayers. (Of course, John Locke's First Treatise of Government would tear this argument to shreds, especially if only the families that Watchers were drawn from was chosen by the mystical force, but let's ignore that problem right now.) The Council can abuse their authority, but in my opinion their actual right to have authority is not to be questioned unless one wishes to question the mystical force. Again, though, this is pure speculation on my part. I don't feel that this force is perfect, though: bad Slayers may be called; bad Watchers may be called. Some bad Slayers may survive the test and some good Slayers may die, but on avergae I would imagine that good slayers survive much more often than bad ones do, based on Travers's comment. And again, the reason why we cannot just take the fact that they survived to 18 as proof that they're a good slayer is that they may have gotten lucky, evil may be in a lull for a couple of years, or maybe they had the assistance of a powerful, yet good, vampire. The test allows for control over a lot of factors. To your point that the Slayers can improve: I agree completely. That's the why the test is administered when they turn 18, to give them training time. If the test were administered the day they were called, I would agree it was unfair. Lastly, as to the 99.9% issue, the ideal solution, in my mind, would be to have someone with authority over Buffy and Giles be there but to have Giles still around and active. Giles and Buffy are not objective enough for this and so a second- best solution is needed: Giles in charge of Buffy but with supervision (or help) of some sort. Opinions
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