Hi guys, I have a Question about slayers:

[Chasing Cordy]

From what you know about the slayer mythology (based on the thoughts of the series creators)...
How is it there can be only one slayer?
Let's say a slayer dies on January 1
Does the new slayer start right away (with training and most of all convincing her of her duties) thus being trained prior to the previous slayer's death?
If she was being trained prior to the Jan. 1 death of the previous slayer, that means there's two slayers, right?
On the other hand, if we train the current one after the previous one's death, that means there's no true slayer until the current one comes to full strength...and therefore vampires run amok!

 

[eponinethen]

Well, the new slayer gets called the same moment the "old" slayer dies (as I've understood it, heh), which means that's when she gets her super strength etc., and she was not a slayer before this. Sure, some potentials are getting trained, it seems like, even though there's no way to know whether or not they will ever be called. But there's never more than one slayer (with the obvious exception for Buffy/Kendra and Buffy/Faith), only one is supposed to have the super strenght at the time. And even though the newly called slayer might not really be prepared (like in Buffy's case, and surely most cases), she starts being the slayer the minute she's called "“ the minute the previous slayer dies.

I agree that it might be a bit dangerous and that it might take a while for the new slayer to accept her duties etc., but then again, the whole slayer doesn't make super much of sense anyways since tehre is only one in the entire world and she obviously doesn't travel much and can probably only control a small amount of the "evil" going on in the world anyway.

 

[nerd4hire]

The 1 slayer rule was put upon the slayer line by the Shadowmen. Buffy pretty much says that in that whole "this woman has more power than all of them combined" speech of Chosen. She seems a little perturbed about the 1 slayer rule at that point, so perhaps we can assume the Shadowmen created the rule for selfish motives of some sort.

The thing I never really understood was the Slayer being guardian of the Hellmouth thing. It would explain why 1 slayer could do the job, but it doesn't explain why slayers are popping up all over the world. Unless of course there are many Hellmouths, with one being the most powerful at any given time, and therefore "the Hellmouth".

Perhaps that would explain how the demon power we saw in Get it Done chooses the next slayer. It judges where the next rise in power of the Hellmouth will be, and takes the slayer most likely to be able to get to it. You'll notice both Faith and Kendra wind up in Sunnydale.

 

[Black Eye Guy]

I would guess that the reason the shadow men created one Slayer is so they could control her, If there was more they could turn on them.

The thing I never really understood was the Slayer being guardian of the Hellmouth thing. It would explain why 1 slayer could do the job, but it doesn't explain why slayers are popping up all over the world. Unless of course there are many Hellmouths, with one being the most powerful at any given time, and therefore "the Hellmouth".

Thats interesting, I would maybe say it has something to do with population, like maybe there is a certain amount of girls that can be a potential, just say 0.0000003% - 0.0000004% of all the women in the world get chosen as potentials(I don't know exact figures, I used a calculator to get a very rough estimate, and I just divided the population of the world by 2 to separate out the men, so very rough), well as population grew so would the amount of potentials. And as populations grow they spread out, sending potentials all over the world? It would have been a very different world to the one when the Slayer was created!

 

[eponinethen]

MentPatient agrees: Haha, "potentionals". Funny. =]

*Hits herself on head and reminds herself not to type without glasses again...*