Returning to old lives
Aug. 6th, 2006 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI was reading a thing about Riley, and it said
He returned to the military as he would likely return to his faith, but now taking a different position within them -- one where he became truly active in his own life.
Which struck me as wrong, but not, on reflection, wrong in canon. I'm not sure we get enough canon to figure either way.
Riley was in the military, went all secret black ops, got betrayed by them, stopped being military for a while. Went all... undone, all his previous things he called himself not working any more. Not a soldier, not a superhero, not Buffy's beloved, not a whole lot of things, from his point of view. Flirted with dying, because really, getting fed on by a vampire is way too close to getting yourself killed. And then the military threw him a lifeline. Drowning and normless, he got offered a nice ready made identity and set of rules, all clear and decided, and from a part of his life where he hadn't had to do any of that messy thinking.
Maybe he took all his contradictions back in with him.
But maybe he just tried to rewind and start over, be nice uncomplicated by the book boy again.
This is how my Ethan see Giles returning to the Watchers, as running away and letting someone else do his thinking for him. So I look at Riley, and figure, there's a lot of things in common with Giles. Differences too, but things in common. Duty. Rule books. Buffy not actually needing them. Reacting badly to Buffy not actually needing them.
... this is the kind of train of thought that usually leads to /, but I don't want to go there.
Both guys, they had a bad patch. Specific comparison, Giles mentioning his Ripper years in connection with the vamp suck jobs.
Both guys went back to a rigid structured environment they had previously been part of.
But what did that mean? Did they bring their new understandings to the old job? Or did they throw them out and pick up from where it hadn't gone wrong yet? The former would be a positive response, but the latter would be ignoring the whole thing where before it went wrong was in fact part of the path to going wrong.
Its a bit like, Giles can be read as a bit of a rebel as a Watcher. Or, he can be read as basically a by the book Watcher who got fired.
He changed his mind and went against the Council once, at a point where it was pretty much too late, when he'd already done his part of the bad things. The way he trained Buffy was nothing like how Kendra was trained, but Faith had a Watcher too and she wasn't much like Kendra either. The 70s Slayer Spike killed must have been un-Kendra-like too, or there wouldn't be offspring. And when Giles tried to be the boss, Buffy was all "and you would be stopping me how?" so I think how he ended up being was an ongoing negotiation between his preferences and hers. I mean, even Wesley was a bit less of a prat after he'd been there a while. So even shiny Council employees can be a bit flexible.
If Giles set out to do things different, that is one version of him. If he just sort of ended up with a very different Slayer, that is another.
I tend to figure always it is a bit of both, for people are complicated. Janus faces, looks like two but is one.
We didn't see much of Riley after he decided to go back to the before people. We did see a lot of Giles. Still both of them might have done it as a positive progress or a negative retreat.
He returned to the military as he would likely return to his faith, but now taking a different position within them -- one where he became truly active in his own life.
Which struck me as wrong, but not, on reflection, wrong in canon. I'm not sure we get enough canon to figure either way.
Riley was in the military, went all secret black ops, got betrayed by them, stopped being military for a while. Went all... undone, all his previous things he called himself not working any more. Not a soldier, not a superhero, not Buffy's beloved, not a whole lot of things, from his point of view. Flirted with dying, because really, getting fed on by a vampire is way too close to getting yourself killed. And then the military threw him a lifeline. Drowning and normless, he got offered a nice ready made identity and set of rules, all clear and decided, and from a part of his life where he hadn't had to do any of that messy thinking.
Maybe he took all his contradictions back in with him.
But maybe he just tried to rewind and start over, be nice uncomplicated by the book boy again.
This is how my Ethan see Giles returning to the Watchers, as running away and letting someone else do his thinking for him. So I look at Riley, and figure, there's a lot of things in common with Giles. Differences too, but things in common. Duty. Rule books. Buffy not actually needing them. Reacting badly to Buffy not actually needing them.
... this is the kind of train of thought that usually leads to /, but I don't want to go there.
Both guys, they had a bad patch. Specific comparison, Giles mentioning his Ripper years in connection with the vamp suck jobs.
Both guys went back to a rigid structured environment they had previously been part of.
But what did that mean? Did they bring their new understandings to the old job? Or did they throw them out and pick up from where it hadn't gone wrong yet? The former would be a positive response, but the latter would be ignoring the whole thing where before it went wrong was in fact part of the path to going wrong.
Its a bit like, Giles can be read as a bit of a rebel as a Watcher. Or, he can be read as basically a by the book Watcher who got fired.
He changed his mind and went against the Council once, at a point where it was pretty much too late, when he'd already done his part of the bad things. The way he trained Buffy was nothing like how Kendra was trained, but Faith had a Watcher too and she wasn't much like Kendra either. The 70s Slayer Spike killed must have been un-Kendra-like too, or there wouldn't be offspring. And when Giles tried to be the boss, Buffy was all "and you would be stopping me how?" so I think how he ended up being was an ongoing negotiation between his preferences and hers. I mean, even Wesley was a bit less of a prat after he'd been there a while. So even shiny Council employees can be a bit flexible.
If Giles set out to do things different, that is one version of him. If he just sort of ended up with a very different Slayer, that is another.
I tend to figure always it is a bit of both, for people are complicated. Janus faces, looks like two but is one.
We didn't see much of Riley after he decided to go back to the before people. We did see a lot of Giles. Still both of them might have done it as a positive progress or a negative retreat.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 06:20 pm (UTC)I started thinking on it when I was watching A New Man, with the way it compares sets of couples.
I've watched that ep so many times it takes a bit of thinking to find new angles.
also, hello again :-)
Creamy or Crunchy...No, Wait, That's Peanut Butter
Date: 2006-08-06 05:43 pm (UTC)Re: Creamy or Crunchy...No, Wait, That's Peanut Butter
Date: 2006-08-06 06:22 pm (UTC)Spike and Giles got a lot of similar
hence the funny with Spike in a Watcher suit in Restless and Tabula Rasa
I've read people who think Giles' Ripper accent is his 'original' accent, that he's faking his class now. But given the kind of schooling he talks about I always figured Ripper's accent was the fake one, the Spike like one.
Re: Creamy or Crunchy...No, Wait, That's Peanut Butter
Date: 2006-08-06 06:58 pm (UTC)