Joyce and memories of Dawn

[Wild At Heart]

Well, perhaps it was a huge increase of tumors that year that we never got to know about.
The spell must have done something to people brains after all. Not so it effected everyone but it might not have been so healthy...

But personally I really don't think so.
It was very important for the show that Joyce's death was something unrelated to all the magic and unnatural things that was happening.
That it was something that Buffy had absolutely no control over, something she just couldn't do anything about.

Having the tumor caused by the spell doesn't feel right in that context.

/SK

I agree with this completely. I think it is a great question & something to think about but since it didn't affect anyone else, I'd say Joyce's death was meant to be completely natural & a complete shock to the audience. It was Joss' way of saying this is the reality, this can happen naturally when you least expect it. I think that is what made her death so different & special for the show because her death was completely natural. We knew there was no way we could ever really get her back. However, that is just my opinion. But great question though!!

 

[Misty]

Interesting thought, I've never even thought of memories of Dawn diagnosing Joyce with cancer. Although it was a coincidence that Dawn coming into the picture happened around the same time Joyce got very ill, I think that it was very clear that Joyce had a natural death and it was because none of them could make her better or ressurect her.

 

[Misty]

Even though I think it was a natural death, I just thought that maybe the others didn't get sick because they aren't human. So Joyce could have gotten cancer with all those memories of Dawn.

 

[InsaneMystic]

Even though I think it was a natural death, I just thought that maybe the others didn't get sick because they aren't human. So Joyce could have gotten cancer with all those memories of Dawn.

Huh? Buffy and Spike aren't human, true, and just maybe you could argue that Will & Tara aren't "fully human", being witches - but what about Riley, Giles, and (most of all) Xander? None of them got brain tumors over their implanted Dawn memories, right?

 

[dragx]

Huh? Buffy and Spike aren't human, true, and just maybe you could argue that Will & Tara aren't "fully human", being witches - but what about Riley, Giles, and (most of all) Xander? None of them got brain tumors over their implanted Dawn memories, right?

You have to take into consideration how long Dawn was really in each of the characters lives. Both Buffy and Joyce would have the most false memories of Dawn implanted in them. So, referring to the 'old age' theory discussed earlier here, maybe the amount of memories and possibly Joyce's age were correlated with the tumor..
But then what about the Summer's grandparents, etc?

I don't know, it's an intereseting theory.
They made it pretty clear that it was a natural death though.

I hated s5 Dawn, and was beyond happy when it was implied Joyce recovered after the surgery, so blaming her for Joyce's death just adds to that hatred, lol.

 

[crazysoulless]

When I watch that scene between Buffy and Dawn in Forever I think of what the Scoobies (mainly Willow) did to Buffy in S6. It was such a nice foreshadowing. Buffy was against resurrection and thought it wasn't right to do that to the deceased and said that those spells end badly all the time and the person comes back wrong. There were A LOT of consequences to bringing Buffy back and for months Buffy thought she came back "wrong".

I think that Dawn could have been the supernatural catalyst that lead to Joyce's natural death. When Buffy did the spell to see if something was making her mother sick in NPLH all she saw was the fact that Dawn wasn't supposed to be there. It could mean the fact that Joyce didn't have something making her sick, the fact that the Monk spell was the biggest spell done to the Summers women and thus the one that Buffy saw, or that it was the Monk spell that was the "something" making her mother sick.

 

[Misty]

Huh? Buffy and Spike aren't human, true, and just maybe you could argue that Will & Tara aren't "fully human", being witches - but what about Riley, Giles, and (most of all) Xander? None of them got brain tumors over their implanted Dawn memories, right?

Well, like Crashing Doors mentioned earlier, Joyce had the most memories of Dawn, and since Xander and Giles didn't know Dawn untill they met Buffy then they wouldn't have as much memories as Joyce did. But I still don't really know the answer to this question.

 

[MergedLoki]

I think that dawn herself gave joyce the tumor.

her body just said 'sweet god this girl annoys me that's it i'm checking out!' and boom tumor.

no monk spell involved w/the tumorness lol.

and yea sorry i just hate dawn. all she needed to do was cut her hair diff, start cutting her wrists and she'd be a poster child for emo's the world over. 'every one leaves, no one cares about me, your always leaving me' (yes sucks when people WORK to pay for food/clothes/shelter those things are just awful. 😛 and you can't say she's too young cuz christ she's suppose to be 15/16 or so. show me the 16 yr old that doesn't understand work = money, money = buy things).

 

[Stakesteak]

I think the show definitely conveyed the point that Joyce's death was purely natural and as such was something that Buffy, despite all her powers, couldn't do anything to fight. On the other hand, the monks definitely conjured up some extremely potent and invasive mojo when they incorporated Dawn into the Summers' household. A common theme of the show in the later seasons was that magic always comes with a price and it would certainly stand to reason that forcefully altering a person's entire memory for 16 years would have some serious consequences. Maybe Buffy was immune because of her supernatural heritage and the other humans (Xander, Giles, Willow, and Tara for example) were spared simply because there were much fewer memories of Dawn that were forced into their brains since they knew her for a lot less time. Hank certainly kicked the jerk absentee father bit into overdrive in season 5 so who knows, maybe he had some brain damage too from the spell.

 

[saturn5]

How can anyone not love the Dawnster? And yes, the whole point of Joyce's illness was that it was 100% natural with no supernatural elements in it whatsoever, otherwise Buffy would have seen the influence whilst under her spell she casts in NPLH

 

[Stakesteak]

There's definitely a couple of huge reasons why I have a hard time becoming a fan of Dawn. One of them is the fact that the monks took an inanimate object, stole some of Buffy's flesh and blood, and used their magic to basically mind-rape Buffy, Joyce, and all the scoobies into believing Buffy had a little sister in order to serve their own selfish goal of protecting The Key without destroying it.

The other is that Dawn was (until late in season 7) and incredibly whiney, pain in the butt kid who drastically altered the chemistry of all the main characters in the show. No longer was Buffy the lone child who had to balance being Joyce's only daughter with a duty to save the world, she now had to adjust to caring for a kid sister and eventually become a single parent who had to struggle to pay the bills and spend enough time with Dawn (who was never grateful).

In addition to those reasons, the fact that in the history of television, introducing a spunky new character into the core of a show without any gradual lead-up is always an early death knell for a show, I definitely have a strong conviction for disliking Dawn. In fact, I saw an interesting piece about BtVS on the Biography Channel where a lot of the writers, including Marti Noxon, were really concerned about adding dawn into the series for just that reason and when discussing the plot of season 5, they really weren't too subtle in letting their concern's about the show's direction be known.

In my opinion, adding Dawn into the series really accelerated the show's end and there could definitely have been an 8th or even a 9th TV season had they kept the same formula they had in the first 4 seasons. Anywho, while I certainly agree that implanting memories of Dawn into Joyce didn't affect her brain tumor, I definitely have a lot of other reasons for disliking Dawn plenty 🙂

 

[saturn5]

I think the show ended at the right time personally although I'd have liked another season of Angel.

You have to remember what Dawn gives Buffy and Joyce, they love her beyond everything else and she gives Buffy the reason to go on in seasons 5/6. Dawn is the love of her life (Angel her great romantic love in my opinion)

 

[Anya2012]

Dawn is so up and down. In season 6 she whinges how nobody wants to spend any time with her. But when Buffy wants some quality sister time, Dawn wants to see her friends. Another reason to hate her. She's also very ungrateful.

 

[ThomasMagic]

Yeah i didn't like dawn at first i thought it was a very unusual way they introduced her into the series.
I just kept thinking, i wish it could go back 2 the old ways.

 

[saturn5]

Dawn is so up and down. In season 6 she whinges how nobody wants to spend any time with her. But when Buffy wants some quality sister time, Dawn wants to see her friends. Another reason to hate her. She's also very ungrateful.

1. She's a teenager
2. She doesn't do anything the rest of the scoobs do
3. She has a LOT to cope with
4. All the Scoobs love her, her pluses far outway her minuses. Even she and Faith love each other in the end

 

[Beaumonde]

I don't get how people can hold all of her whining against her. I doubt Buffy would have handled what Dawn went through any differently at the same age. Dawn had overcome a lot in just two years.

 

[Stakesteak]

Except that Dawn isn't just going through these things for only two years, according to the monk's spell she has all the memories of going through life as the Slayer's little sis basically ever since Buffy was called. There were numerous instances throughout seasons 5-7 where Dawn did reference things that happened in past seasons as if she were there just as other characters talked about past events that had Dawn in them. Considering that Buffy was actually the one who's life was forever changed as she could neither have a normal life nor be expected to ever see her thirties and how well she handled it, I do believe there's a lot of justification for being annoyed at how Dawn acted for so much of the series.

 

[Giantevilhead]

I don't think the monks actually made Dawn from scratch. If they really had the chance to mold every aspect of Dawn, you'd think they would have given her some kick ass martial arts abilities, genius level intellect, and a much more athletic body so that she could at least defend herself. I think their spell created Dawn based on the expectations and imaginations of Buffy, her family and her friends.

 

[Stakesteak]

That's an interesting point you bring up, though I disagree with your conclusion. That they used a piece of Buffy to make Dawn is one thing but basing her off such deep emotional aspects from those people would make her less human in my opinion and more of a patchwork of different people.

I'm pretty happy you brought this up as I've thought about why the monks didn't try to empower Dawn so that she could hold her own against Glory a few times but never had the occasion to express my beliefs. I mean heck, the monks could have made her into anything and re-wrote reality for what they did make her in to, so it shouldn't have been too challenging to make her into something powerful right? The answer I came to is that I believe that the monks' aim was, in addition to ensuring that Buffy would protect The Key with her life, was to give this ancient energy form the spark of life and allow it to live as a normal person in peace once the threat had past. To ability to live and love is a great gift and I think that was a part of why they made The Key human.

 

[Giantevilhead]

The monks didn't even have to make the Key into a human. Glory herself said that the Key could have been made into anything. What the monks really should have done was make the Key into a rock or something and placed it in the most unreachable or unexpected place in the world.

Assuming that the monks wanted Dawn to live a normal life, they didn't have to give her ninja skills, super strength, or magic powers, they could have just made her a really fast runner so that she could at least run away from danger.