Well, even though I am the only person who tries to make the movie fit with the show 😀 I'm going to say it anyway: they do make it seem like Buffy's athletic ability is a direct result of her being a potential slayer, before she is actually called.
Yeah I dont think I've ever seen anyone really try and make the movie fit, so you're alone there! lol
But I do agree, I think it lines up to make sense. It's not that she has super powered reflexes better than a normal person, but just a natural affinity for it.
As in; if her and a friend both started training in kickboxing, a potential would pick it up faster than the friend, but thats not to say she'd be able to quit for 6 months come back and try and take on the friend who's kept training and win.
their lives might have been spent training & fighting anyway, even if they weren't called as THE Slayer. So, Buffy & Willow gave them the choice to lay down arms - it's not a matter of well, not all these girls have to fight instead of just one. It seems to me that they were all spending their lives in servitude to the Council in the first place, and the spell set them free from that.
Yeah exactly, I can see why someone doesn't see the power part of the spell as empoweing, but there is an empowering element to it, as it frees the Slayer from the constraints of the council, the rules of being alone and having to fight
Didn't it seem like, at the time, that they thought ALL the Potentials were in that room? That those were the only ones they had found?
...
It's only in Season 8 that suddenly there's a ton of them, which begs the question, did some of them come into their powers later? I mean, you don't see any "baby slayers" or "toddler slayers"....
Yesh it's possible some were activated post Chosen, the spell in still in place in season 8 and 9, so as soon as a potential comes of age she is activated, how long is it between season 7 and 8, a year?
If there are 1,800 slayers, and there were only 20+ at the time of Chosen, you'd be looking at a rate of 150 slayers a month being activated, it's possible when you think of 150 girls in all the world, but it seems a bit excessive.
And here's my other question about Faith - doesn't it seem like Faith was slaying before she was "called"?
Yes totall, just based on all her stories, she doesn't seem like she's a newbie
In terms of what Buffy is saying, it absolutely does matter. She is claiming to offer choice where there is none. She is forcing power on people who have no knowledge of it and have not given their consent to do so. I get that she did what she thought she had to do in a crunch situation, but she is doting herself and everyone else if she thinks she has given any Potential a real choice in the matter.
Ah okay, see thats not what I saw as her offer.
I never took it as her choice was to be a slayer or not be a slayer, but to do the job of a slayer or not do the job of a slayer.
The fact that the girls can be located, and have a natural disposition to slayer instincts means the power is already within them. Like had buffy not been activated she'd always carry that power around with her, it just wouldn't get released, which in my head is how she was still a slayer after she was brought back, the power didn't move onto Faith, but Faiths power was activated, Buffys stayed within her.
What I saw with Buffys offer was the freedom to not be alone. Buffys strength has always been that she didn't fight alone, but slayers are always alone. Buffys offer was that you didn't have to be alone, didn't have to fight alone, didn't have to fight at all if you didn't want to, which you would have had to do under the old rules.
Just over 1800 slayers were called when cast the spell. There was what, 20-30 in Buffy's house? The First may have been tracking them down but it wasn't doing a very good job of it. With all its power it still only managed to kill a tiny fraction of the Potential force.
Oh yeah, Buffys plan wasn't thought through, but she was in the loosing position, just waiting for the First to get through the rest of the girls
But how are they any more able to fight back as a pack of newbies than as individual newbies, one by one? We saw in S8 that the new army of Slayers didn't know how to fight together, Buffy was able to take out 3/4 or her best slayers with very little trouble because they were inexperienced and had no idea how to fight as a team.
The dreams and natural instinct that they have as slayers.
We saw it with Amanda, she worked her way round the vampires in the school becasue she was a potential and she had natural intuition and a natural training.
The natural training and instincts to work as part of a team aren't natural slayer instincts. Thats part of what Buffy and Faith joke about when they say they couldn't get along. Buffys training the slayers in a way thats brand new for slayers and outside of their instincts to be part of a team, it's exactly why Buffy is able to glide around them.
I can accept Buffy making an unilateral decision because she thinks it's what is necessary to save the world, however, I do have an issue with her trying to pass it off as her empowering people by or her giving people choice when she is doing the opposite.
I can understand that as you see the choice and the choice to be a slayer.
I see in differently as I saw it as a choice to chuck out the old answer to the shadow mens rules.
True, but they are attributes that normal young girls have too. There is no way to distinguish from a potential and someone with innate talent, great genes or a phenomenal work ethic. They look or feel as extraordinary i.e. a girl could easily live her whole life never knowing she was a Potential. Being a Slayer doesn't offer the same subtlety or freedom.
Yes totally, I only think they might naturally lean that way, not that they would even be top of the class, but just that they have a natural affinity for stuff like that.
This again goes back to Buffy framing the spell as a choice when it was not. I'm not arguing the necessity of the spell (though if I was I would be dubious about it) I am arguing about whether that spell was empowering and in my opinion it wasn't because didn't allow for every girl her own choice.
Buffys framing of the spell for me was always about breaking the one slayer rule and the being alone, the idea that to be the slayer you have to be alone and what was empowering was sharing the power, sharing the responsibility and sharing the burden - if you wanted
If I had been a Potential in that room and was asked what I wanted, I really don't know if I would have picked being a Slayer. Maybe I would have picked it in the end, but If Buffy was telling me I had a choice, I would have wanted the actual freedom to choose.
But you could never have freedom to choose.
Just say you were in the room (hurry stake spike!!) and you said no, and Willow activates everyone but you, they go into the school and they get squished. There's probably a good chance you're getting activated.
Which is why I dont see the need to focus on the consent part of the spell, yes it sucks and it's awful, but it's already done. You are already in line to receive that power no matter what your choice is.
Now if you were in that room, said no what would you do next? You already know you are on a hit lists, and your a walking time bomb of possibly being activated at any time, and if you are your going it alone.
Buffys spell gives you a little bit of control over your crappy situation, you aren't just spending your life waiting to be activated, or wasting your life not knowing if you going to be activated, you get to know you are a slayer, and then you get to choose to actually go out and fight.
It was 1800 Slayers activated, not 18000.
Oops!
That's my point exactly, Buffy makes a concerted effort to move her life away from slaying. Twice she tries to make new stats and both times slaying find her. She can't get away from it. Giles tells her it wasn't chance that brought her to Sunnydale and in Anne she says herself that she just wants to be left alone but trouble keeps finding her. Just by being the slayer all makes her more likely that it fighting evil will be part of her life.
Well we know now it wasn't chance, she was the slayer so she was moved into that position, but she was moved into that position cuz she was the other one, if there are 1799 other options now it wouldn't be the same.
Absolutely, but I still think it counts as many people say that you can just choose to not slay and live a normal life and I don't think it is true. Faith left Boston and he followed her 3000 miles to finish her off.
True but she was slaying, the 1300 girls the scoobies approached that said no thanks, presumably didn't start a grudge match with a big badass vampire.
Faith had a responsibility to hunt vampires which moved her into the position of having to run into him, the new girls dont have that responsibility.
The same goes for Buffy, the watchers council sent Giles to her. Had she moved to Cleveland they would have sent Giles to Cleveland, and he would have directed her from there.
Because she was the one she was sought out.
We can't know which way is true but I had always assumed that you get dreams relating to you. As in each slayer has their own "mission" and they'll get dreams that matter specifically to them. Just because we don't see Kendra have dreams doesn't mean she isn't having them. We know Buffy has dreams yet we didn't see her have one warning about Faith being attacked by a Bringer in the prison. That doesn't discount the power of Buffy's dreams though.
I agree with that, I got the impression they were related directly to you and your mission. But if the new slayers aren't being active slayers they aren't on a mission, which is why I hypothesise they might not get as many dreams as Buffy did.
The shadowmen had no consent from the first slayer. They chained her to a wall and forced the demon essence into her.
Yeah this is important.
If we are to presume that that process Buffy went through was what happened to the first slayer, it is horrific.
But thats already done to the girls.
The girls already have the demon essence within them, it's just being kept locked down by the one slayer clause. But where the shadow mens forcing the demon essence into a human is shown as violent and horrific, the activation of the power within a potential is shown to be empowering a 'rush', described as a 'first orgasm' in the shooting script.
The activation spell isn't depicted as a foreign demon essence being forced into the potential, it's depicted as the power being released from within them, allowing them access to their full potential.
