Buffy Ironies

[nerd4hire]

I've alway loved how chock full of irony Buffy is.

Just for the fun of it, I'm going to start to create a list of all the ironies I notice in Buffy. Anyone out there who can help by adding one, feel free.

First of all though we need a workable definition. I find dictionary definitions of irony don't accurately describe the way the word is used in the common tongue.

For now I'm going to say irony is when the path of something seems to lead to some kind of reversal of itself.

Here's the start of my list of Buffy ironies.

1.) The seemingly weakest (geeks, meeks, a skinny little blond girl) are actually the most powerful

2.) The center of the world's spiritual darkness is in a place called Sunnydale.

3.) The character called Faith has none.

4.) Watchers are manipulators

5.) Oz is by nature under control. He becomes a werewolf and loses control.

6.) Xander is seemingly the weakest, yet he is all the time saving everyone.

7.) Willow has the most natural goodness, yet she has the biggest problem with evil in her nature.

8.) Spike is the most out of control character yet he spends the series under some kind of control (by Buffy, the chip, or his new found soul)

9.) Giles is the keeper of knowledge, yet he always seems to be in the dark (The Bargaining) or needing knowledge from others (eg. the pergamum codex from Angel)

10.) The chosen one ends the series by sharing the power she was chosen for.

 

[Althea]

Heh. Good point.

I don't know if this is an irony but...

The Chosen One at one point became the Chosen Two. (Buffy and Faith)

 

[Jules]

I'm not sure if this is an irony, I guess it depends if your a Buffy and Angel fan....

Buffy and Angel are soulmates and by being together is the only way for Angel to lose his soul.

 

[Soulgasm]

good thoughts yall....

the geek thing is totally true....look at bill gates....probably got his ass kicked every day in hell....but now...he is one of the single most powerful people on earth...lol...good thing i'm a nerd...

 

[vorindë]

you are gona kick me, but i didnt undersat the irony.😛

 

[Terry]

niiice...

 

[*Lost Angel*]

I noticed some of those, like Sunnydale (look at the name) and its the mouth to hell ok, well they might as well called it Hellvile.

Dru

 

[Wicca Will]

nice ironies. can't think of any myself, they've all been pretty much covered.

 

[nerd4hire]

Cassie Newton mentions one in CWDP when she comes back supposedly as a ghost to the UC library to haunt Willow.

She's talking about how she wrote so much about death, and she comes back in a library.

I'm wracking my brain trying to remember this other one. I forget what Willow was referring to, but one time she says, "Irony is kind of ironic, that way".

Irony has been mentioned by the Buffy writers on multiple occasions.

One has to believe they were paying attention to it.

 

[Soulgasm]

lol @ hellville....sounds like smallville on satanic juice....lol

 

[grrarrg]

Pretty obvious, but the only person Buffy's loved is a vampire. Irony lies in the fact that she's a vampire slayer meaning "killer of vampires"...

Double Post (next time use the edit button!):

The fact that the hellmouth lies under the high school.... wait, no irony there. I'd say there was a hellmouth under my high school too 🙂

 

[Anita Blake]

I don't know if this is truly ironic but...

Vampires are supposed to be afraid of holy objects, but the only ones they fear have to do with God. Why aren't they afraid of Stars of David, or pentacles? And why not bibles?

And another thing, why would the gypsies curse Angelus with a soul so he wouldn't be as big a pain and then put a clause in the curse that would let him free to bring a reign of terror to the world again? It makes no sense.

 

[nerd4hire]

Yeah the rules of irony baffle me sometimes too.

As far as the Star of David thing goes I think that would only be ironic if a Jew cast the curse, so Angelus would attack Catholics, then Angelus turned around and ate the Jew.

I think the irony in the escape clause of the Gypsy curse thing is, it takes the goodness of love to turn Angel evil.

You're right about one thing though; the two items you mentioned don't make a lot of sense.

 

[Anita Blake]

Thanks. Thats sort of what I was trying to get at, but it was hard to put into words. But it still doesn't make sense that they would leave a chance for Angelus to come out again. Thats just so...so...stupid.

 

[grrarrg]

If the gypsies put the curse on Angel, and when he got his soul it was just to painful, he could've just gotten really happy and then everything would be back to normal. Didn't the gypsies think of this!? He can become evil whenever he wants now.