Buffy season six
Aug. 22nd, 2015 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI watched the whole rest of the season.
Once you get up to Seeing Red it's full of upsetting and I kind of have to let it play through or my feels get stuck.
It's nearly midnight and I need to sleep so I'll reserve actual full length write up for tomorrow, but
that is at the same time one of the more powerful and effecting pieces of drama I've ever seen
and really, really disappointing.
I am pretty sure nobody sat down and decided to be as homophobic as possible, but between Andrew, Tara and Willow, they really managed.
Saving your friends with the power of love is pretty awesome, and being willing to die to save them, all the good stuff.
Also, "I'd like to test that theory" remains one of the hottest moments ever.
Still...
Why did we need this to be the story?
A woman literally gets too powerful, so a man steps in to remind her of her humanity, by reminding her he loves her?
There were no older mentor women to advise her, there never have been, so it has to be Giles to step in with the ... light side of the force.
Much as I love Giles, I don't like what that does to the gendered representation of power here.
This whole season, it deals with some powerful stuff, and there's layers where I'm glad it went there, like Buffy and depression and climbing out of it to show her sister the world.
But there's stuff I'd rather they hadn't done, like going to the old evil-insane-dead place for the gay characters, or calling Willow a Wicca just at the moments when it's most clearly not relevant and she's not following that much maligned religion. And I know they had a whole carpenter symbolism going on, but, the gender stuff leaves me sad about a whole layer of the story.
Yet in principle, Giles being entirely willing to give his power to Willow in the hopes she'll remember to do good with it, Giles being full enough of compassion in the first place to carry that power without filling it up with fear or anger, that's very very good stuff.
Just... is this the story we get? Is this the story we needed?
It makes me tired just when it's also making its strongest points.
Once you get up to Seeing Red it's full of upsetting and I kind of have to let it play through or my feels get stuck.
It's nearly midnight and I need to sleep so I'll reserve actual full length write up for tomorrow, but
that is at the same time one of the more powerful and effecting pieces of drama I've ever seen
and really, really disappointing.
I am pretty sure nobody sat down and decided to be as homophobic as possible, but between Andrew, Tara and Willow, they really managed.
Saving your friends with the power of love is pretty awesome, and being willing to die to save them, all the good stuff.
Also, "I'd like to test that theory" remains one of the hottest moments ever.
Still...
Why did we need this to be the story?
A woman literally gets too powerful, so a man steps in to remind her of her humanity, by reminding her he loves her?
There were no older mentor women to advise her, there never have been, so it has to be Giles to step in with the ... light side of the force.
Much as I love Giles, I don't like what that does to the gendered representation of power here.
This whole season, it deals with some powerful stuff, and there's layers where I'm glad it went there, like Buffy and depression and climbing out of it to show her sister the world.
But there's stuff I'd rather they hadn't done, like going to the old evil-insane-dead place for the gay characters, or calling Willow a Wicca just at the moments when it's most clearly not relevant and she's not following that much maligned religion. And I know they had a whole carpenter symbolism going on, but, the gender stuff leaves me sad about a whole layer of the story.
Yet in principle, Giles being entirely willing to give his power to Willow in the hopes she'll remember to do good with it, Giles being full enough of compassion in the first place to carry that power without filling it up with fear or anger, that's very very good stuff.
Just... is this the story we get? Is this the story we needed?
It makes me tired just when it's also making its strongest points.