Black Eye Guy
Taking over the World!
I thought it might be interesting to see if we could work out some facts about potential Slayers.
I think there's a few things to get straight first.
Age Range
Is there an upper age range on being a potential slayer to become a slayer?
We know from the comics that girls under "maturity" are to young to become a Slayer, and this is different for each girl, Willows Spell activates potentials when they reach maturity (such as in the comics when one of the girls reaches her 16th birthday she is activated)
Have we seen any older slayers in the comics, like any Granny slayers or women in their 30's/40's?
If we haven't, do you think it's possible to hypothesise that once you reach a certain age you stop being a potential?
The reasons I'd give to support that
- Kennedy mentions she thinks she might be to old.
- In general the girls seem to be about the same age (or within a 15 - 19 range - Buffy/Faith/Kendra)
- All the girls who had watchers that sent them to Buffy were all within this same range.
- This would make sense with staff numbers for watchers, in a case like Kendra, her watcher trained with her from a young age, maybe he would have been reassigned if she hadn't been called and got past early 20's?
- Since we know some watchers train girls from early ages, wouldn't you think these girls would have turned up in Sunnydale first, as their watchers would have been the first ones made aware
- if they hadn't stopped being potentials, I think we should have seen allot more slayers in the 30's/40's who had been training since they were 15/16
- Unless these were the ones killed by the bringers?
How Many potentials
(this is gonna contain ALLOT of guestimates on my behalf)
Okay, I wanna see if we can speculate on the number of potential girls there are who could be slayers.
In Season 7, Giles says there are only a handful of Slayers left.
I would speculate that he's basing that off the Watchers Councils statistics and I'd say that becasue
- We know the Council, doesn't find every girl
- Since they don't know every girl, where else could Giles have gotten that information
- Of the potentials we see being killed by bringers, the ones Buffys dreaming about in early season 7, they seem to be confident - their scared and running for their lives, but they look like they know their running from evil, since their not calling for help and stuff.
- I think it would make sense that the Watchers known potentials were the ones being killed, the First was finding them the same way they did, or they'd infiltrated the council.
So when Giles stipulates that there is only a handful of (known) potentials left, what do you think that means in terms of a percentage? 1% of the known Slayers are still alive, 5%?
I'd guess a handful would mean somewhere between 1% - 10%
How many potentials look part in the battle with The First?
I think in general the consonances is about 20 - 30, I had a quick look at stills from Chosen, at any given time (when their cutting their hands to enter the Hellmouth or during the Speech in chosen, I counted around 20+ girls, example - I count 17/18 here, and I think there were more in the room)
And we also have 6 that were brought to Sunnydale who were killed (List here), so I think that all fits in with the council having about 20 - 30 known slayers left.
So using percentage calculations we could guestimate how many Slayers the council was aware of, by taking the number of Slayers sent to Sunnydale, divided by what % they could be (what % I'm guessing a handful to mean) = amount of Slayers the watchers were aware of/training
Lowest - Lowest
20 Potentials
Accounting for 10% of overall known Slayers
20 / 0.10 = 200
The Council had 200 Slayers (180 were killed)
Highest - Lowest
20 potentials
Accounting for 1% of Overall known Slayers
20 / 0.01 = 2000
The Council had 2000 Slayers (1180 Killed)
Lowest - Highest
30 potentials
Accounting for 10% of Overall known Slayers
30 / 0.10 = 300
The Council had 300 Slayers (270 Killed)
Highest - Highest
30 Potentials
Accounting for 1% of Overall Know Slayers
30 / 0.01 = 3000
The Council had 3000 Slayers (2970 Killed)
And we know that in Season 8 Buffy mentioned that there are 1800 slayers,
So if we go off he lowest figure that would have put a figure of about 1978 potentials (200 the watchers council had, 1778 unaccounted slayers - the 1800 would have included Buffy/Faith/the 20(thereabouts) that survived chosen)
Highest Figure 4768 (The 1800 minus the 30 survivers, minus Buffy and Faith plus the 3000 the council had
Range of Potential Slayers: 1800 girls - 4768
World Populations: 7,021,836,029
0-14 years: 26.3% (male 944,987,919/female 884,268,378)
15-64 years: 65.9% (male 2,234,860,865/female 2,187,838,153)
65 years and over: 7.9% (male 227,164,176/female 289,048,221) (2011 est.)
Source - 2012 stats
IT's not totally accurate if you go with the belief that you can stop being a potential slayer, but closest stats I could find for the potential female population group is 15-64: 2,187,838,153
Going off the lowest stats 0.00008% of girls were potentials
Going off the highest stats 0.0002% of girls were potentials
So do you think my stats are in anyway close at all as a guestimate?
If you think about things like the amount of watchers it would take to train the slayers, I think the higher figures sound more accurate, they'd be a worldwide organisation with thousands of employees across the world, so 3000 Watchers (excluding all the ones running everything, Quintin and all those guys) training 3000 potentials could be about right - but with figures like that, they would have had 2970 killed by bringers, they would have noticed well before it got to that amount what was going on.
The lower figures seem to fit that better but I think that sounds very low in terms of the amount of slayers they had, it seemed like they'd found more girls then they weren't aware of, like how Buffy was a special case, having not been found.
Do you think my maths completely off (it could be totally wrong if anyone wants to check it, I'm really bad at maths) but I mean my guessing what a handful could mean it terms of overall numbers?
I think there's a few things to get straight first.
Age Range
Is there an upper age range on being a potential slayer to become a slayer?
We know from the comics that girls under "maturity" are to young to become a Slayer, and this is different for each girl, Willows Spell activates potentials when they reach maturity (such as in the comics when one of the girls reaches her 16th birthday she is activated)
Have we seen any older slayers in the comics, like any Granny slayers or women in their 30's/40's?
If we haven't, do you think it's possible to hypothesise that once you reach a certain age you stop being a potential?
The reasons I'd give to support that
- Kennedy mentions she thinks she might be to old.
- In general the girls seem to be about the same age (or within a 15 - 19 range - Buffy/Faith/Kendra)
- All the girls who had watchers that sent them to Buffy were all within this same range.
- This would make sense with staff numbers for watchers, in a case like Kendra, her watcher trained with her from a young age, maybe he would have been reassigned if she hadn't been called and got past early 20's?
- Since we know some watchers train girls from early ages, wouldn't you think these girls would have turned up in Sunnydale first, as their watchers would have been the first ones made aware
- if they hadn't stopped being potentials, I think we should have seen allot more slayers in the 30's/40's who had been training since they were 15/16
- Unless these were the ones killed by the bringers?
How Many potentials
(this is gonna contain ALLOT of guestimates on my behalf)
Okay, I wanna see if we can speculate on the number of potential girls there are who could be slayers.
In Season 7, Giles says there are only a handful of Slayers left.
I would speculate that he's basing that off the Watchers Councils statistics and I'd say that becasue
- We know the Council, doesn't find every girl
- Since they don't know every girl, where else could Giles have gotten that information
- Of the potentials we see being killed by bringers, the ones Buffys dreaming about in early season 7, they seem to be confident - their scared and running for their lives, but they look like they know their running from evil, since their not calling for help and stuff.
- I think it would make sense that the Watchers known potentials were the ones being killed, the First was finding them the same way they did, or they'd infiltrated the council.
So when Giles stipulates that there is only a handful of (known) potentials left, what do you think that means in terms of a percentage? 1% of the known Slayers are still alive, 5%?
I'd guess a handful would mean somewhere between 1% - 10%
How many potentials look part in the battle with The First?
I think in general the consonances is about 20 - 30, I had a quick look at stills from Chosen, at any given time (when their cutting their hands to enter the Hellmouth or during the Speech in chosen, I counted around 20+ girls, example - I count 17/18 here, and I think there were more in the room)
And we also have 6 that were brought to Sunnydale who were killed (List here), so I think that all fits in with the council having about 20 - 30 known slayers left.
So using percentage calculations we could guestimate how many Slayers the council was aware of, by taking the number of Slayers sent to Sunnydale, divided by what % they could be (what % I'm guessing a handful to mean) = amount of Slayers the watchers were aware of/training
Lowest - Lowest
20 Potentials
Accounting for 10% of overall known Slayers
20 / 0.10 = 200
The Council had 200 Slayers (180 were killed)
Highest - Lowest
20 potentials
Accounting for 1% of Overall known Slayers
20 / 0.01 = 2000
The Council had 2000 Slayers (1180 Killed)
Lowest - Highest
30 potentials
Accounting for 10% of Overall known Slayers
30 / 0.10 = 300
The Council had 300 Slayers (270 Killed)
Highest - Highest
30 Potentials
Accounting for 1% of Overall Know Slayers
30 / 0.01 = 3000
The Council had 3000 Slayers (2970 Killed)
And we know that in Season 8 Buffy mentioned that there are 1800 slayers,
So if we go off he lowest figure that would have put a figure of about 1978 potentials (200 the watchers council had, 1778 unaccounted slayers - the 1800 would have included Buffy/Faith/the 20(thereabouts) that survived chosen)
Highest Figure 4768 (The 1800 minus the 30 survivers, minus Buffy and Faith plus the 3000 the council had
Range of Potential Slayers: 1800 girls - 4768
World Populations: 7,021,836,029
0-14 years: 26.3% (male 944,987,919/female 884,268,378)
15-64 years: 65.9% (male 2,234,860,865/female 2,187,838,153)
65 years and over: 7.9% (male 227,164,176/female 289,048,221) (2011 est.)
Source - 2012 stats
IT's not totally accurate if you go with the belief that you can stop being a potential slayer, but closest stats I could find for the potential female population group is 15-64: 2,187,838,153
Going off the lowest stats 0.00008% of girls were potentials
Going off the highest stats 0.0002% of girls were potentials
So do you think my stats are in anyway close at all as a guestimate?
If you think about things like the amount of watchers it would take to train the slayers, I think the higher figures sound more accurate, they'd be a worldwide organisation with thousands of employees across the world, so 3000 Watchers (excluding all the ones running everything, Quintin and all those guys) training 3000 potentials could be about right - but with figures like that, they would have had 2970 killed by bringers, they would have noticed well before it got to that amount what was going on.
The lower figures seem to fit that better but I think that sounds very low in terms of the amount of slayers they had, it seemed like they'd found more girls then they weren't aware of, like how Buffy was a special case, having not been found.
Do you think my maths completely off (it could be totally wrong if anyone wants to check it, I'm really bad at maths) but I mean my guessing what a handful could mean it terms of overall numbers?
