Slayer said:
I too liked Buffy's best, but about her S7 speeches, they might have been Nazi-like, but it was meant to show that she was the leader and she was to take these girls to war.
[RANT]
Yeah, but after while they just got so over the top, they turned into self-parody. It's like... oh, Morpheus' speech in Reloaded. Meant to be inspirational, but done with such overblown language and gesturing, and hands-on-hips overearnestness I couldn't take it seriously. She's leading some of these girls to their deaths, all those patronising speeches just serve to make her detached to them. S7's constant emphasis on Buffy as a leader/ general/ dictator completely undermined what made her
our hero. I was so sick of hearing the Lord of The Rings Powerchords by the end ... so sick of hearing Mini Duce rant at the potentials. It got to the point that I was going to mute if she looked like she was about to do the powerstance. She's one half of the only person in the world who can relate to these girls, why did she not use that to her advantage, and connect to the girls at ground level? She stopped talking
to them, and never stopped talking
at them.
"I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of hell, and it is gonna swallow me whole. And it'll choke on me. We're not ready? They're not ready. They think we're gonna wait for the end to come, like we always do. I'm done waiting. They want an apocalypse? Oh, we'll give 'em one. Anyone else who wants to run, do it now. 'Cause we just became an army. We just declared war. From now on, we won't just face our worst fears, we will seek them out. We will find them, and cut out their hearts one by one, until The First shows itself for what it really is. And I'll kill it myself. There is only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil, and that's us. Any questions?"
What the hell? That's a speech from the speechin' part of the brain, not the heart. Somebody who gives that kind of speech is somebody who has no connection to their "troops", somebody who understands the concept of what they're facing, not the reality. I loathe that Buffy. There was another Buffy once, and after seven words I would have followed her off the edge of the earth. She told Giles she was young, and afraid of dying. Simple sentiment. Simply expressed. Honest. Best line in the show. So why is it so wrong for her to let the girls know she was/is one of them, and is human, and isn't sure of herself? Short term damaging to morale, maybe, but a fairer way to treat kids you're asking to die for you. They picked a chain smoking, freezer raiding, frequently obnoxious multiple murderer over her, does that tell her nothing about her leadership skills?
[/RANT]
