Could General Voll be right?

R

RuhiWarrior19

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As little as I liked the first arc of Season Eight (The Long Way Home) I liked the evil introduced in it. General Voll as the leader of an Initiative like branch of the US Govmt. It seems to me that this evil is right to fear the army of Slayers Buffy has created. These girls are accountable to no-one, Buffy herself seems to have disintegrated as a character, since she isn't accountable to anyone and acts like it lately. It also calls to mind the fact that the First in Season Seven generally manifested as a deceased Big Bad (Except in a few occasions) or a Slayer.

Could General Voll be right?
 
His methods, and those of his ally Twilight, make it completely irrelevant to me whether he's right to fear the Slayers or not. One could make a list of things that Stalin and Mussolini and Hitler and Mao were "right" about... but it really wouldn't matter. General Voll and Twilight are hateful murderers and have to be stopped.

But all good story villains have to have something about them that you can kind of identify with. Otherwise they're just melodramatic mustache-twirlers.
 
AndrewCrossett said:
But all good story villains have to have something about them that you can kind of identify with. Otherwise they're just melodramatic mustache-twirlers.
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Actually, that is one of my least favorite things about the Buffyverse, I rarely find the villains sympathetic. The only villian I find even vaguely sympathetic is the Mayor, and I have only seen him in flashbacks.

Unless you consider the Initiative a villain, they were definitely sympathetic. And Harmony, but she was never really a Big Bad.
 
Actually, it's not important that they be sympathetic so much as that they be at least partly understandable.

You have to be able to see why a normal person could come to think and act like the villain does, beyond simply "I must be eeeeevil!" They have to be motivated by something you could imagine agreeing with if you were angry or crazy or obsessed enough. General Voll is all three.

He's not right... but you could construct an argument to support the idea that he is.
 
R
RuhiWarrior19
You make good points!
AndrewCrossett said:
You have to be able to see why a normal person could come to think and act like the villain does, beyond simply "I must be eeeeevil!" They have to be motivated by something you could imagine agreeing with if you were angry or crazy or obsessed enough. General Voll is all three.
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I can see myself agreeing with him, him being right. I see Buffy as a character becoming more detached and less and less "good" and her and her army are accountable for nothing. I don't approve of his methods.
 
RuhiWarrior19 said:
I can see myself agreeing with him, him being right. I see Buffy as a character becoming more detached and less and less "good" and her and her army are accountable for nothing. I don't approve of his methods.
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I think as the season goes on, we may see that Buffy becomes more and more a mirror of General Voll... someone who gets so wrapped up in her mission and her dedication to her sister Slayers that she loses the big picture and starts to be a negative force in the world.

When Buffy finally confronts the rogue Slayer Simone over her use of firearms, I'm wondering... will she try to stop her, or will she decide that she in fact agrees with her?

I have a feeling that Faith and Giles may have an important part in giving her the reality check she needs. The others are too close to her right now.
 
RuhiWarrior19 said:
I have no recollection of this Simone, or a Rogue slayer Dana I have heard people around here mention . . . Dunno how I missed them.
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Simone is the Slayer with the punk hairdo who was asking Andrew why Slayers can't use guns... and then took her own group of Slayers out and stole some.

Dana is from the "Damage" episode from season 5 of "Angel".
 
I keep thinking about that it's only 1800 new humans with demonic qualities in a world filled of supernatural beings. I don't know how many there already are, and I know that slayers are feared by the demon communities, but still. They're only 1800 hundred, and only 500 are active.

I know that that fact that they're an army counts, because they can do much more damage as an army than individuals, but I disagree with Voll's "kill first, don't ask later"-approach, since he doesn't know if the slayers will do more harm than blow up some banks.
 
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