Weak Buffy

Willow Rosenberg

Willow Rosenberg

I might be just like you!
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Was it just me or did Buffy seem weak in the beginning of Season 4, especially fighting Sunday and Kathy. I mean there was nothing really special about Sunday.
 
Personally I think that it was because she had alot on her mind, therefore she wasn't concentrating enough on her slaying. For instance she was starting in university (not the easiest experience, I might add), she was put in a new place and a new situation. I think the trouble that she had was a sign that "high school was over," therefore the baddies got worse as well.
 
I also think it was a lot of her not feeling confident. She felt like she was in this new big scary place...and she wasn't very confident in her transition to college....therefore she also wasn't confident in her own skills as the slayer....which caused her slaying skills to suffer...
 
Beer_Nut and Billiehunter, you both make excellant points... That I'm going to echo.

Everything in Buffy is either metaphorical or designed to illustrate the human experience, to be relateable. Transitions, weather good or bad are just that, transitions, changes, things that sometimes don't just change one aspect of your life but have spiraling characteristics that invade other spheres.

A person can rarely separate the emotional aspects of one experience from the other parts of their lives. If something affects a person, they stay affected. They can't (or at least I don't know any) go back to a state of perfect emotional (pr physical) homeostasis when they move onto a different issue or experience. It becomes part of a person and then part of everything they encounter.

Buffy's inexperience in the new world of college (thankyou Beer_Nut) seeped into her fighting, she seemed young and inexperienced. Her lack of confidence (as pointed out by Billiehunter) also had a visable affect on her actions as did everything she was experiencing.

As for her fight with Kathy,at first, she was lacking in the area of a soul, at least a little. To me this would explain some of the less than magnificent battling she did. Isn't (in the Buffyverse) a soul the thing that makes a person a person, someone who can connect and relate to others and at least gives them the ability to do the right thing? Well, in my opinion, it would be pretty damn hard to be very motivated without one (or without a half or whatever) of thoes puppies.
 
KINDRED said:
As for her fight with Kathy,at first, she was lacking in the area of a soul, at least a little. To me this would explain some of the less than magnificent battling she did. Isn't (in the Buffyverse) a soul the thing that makes a person a person, someone who can connect and relate to others and at least gives them the ability to do the right thing? Well, in my opinion, it would be pretty damn hard to be very motivated without one (or without a half or whatever) of thoes puppies.
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I agree with most of your points except for the one above. I don't think a soul has anything to do with a person's fighting ability as we see in Angelus and Soulless Spike. I believe both of these characters were just as powerful without their Souls.
 
I think that she really wasn't too focused on slaying and fighting off "the forces of darness" because there was a lot going on in her personal life.
I think the biggest thing was college. That's a huge transfer and everything. And she really wasn't adjusting too well to it. So her mind was probably elsewhere, worrying and all.
 
Cordy_Chase said:
I agree with most of your points except for the one above. I don't think a soul has anything to do with a person's fighting ability as we see in Angelus and Soulless Spike. I believe both of these characters were just as powerful without their Souls.
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I understand what you're saying and even kind of agree. But I think that a demon's, a souless being's, motivations and drives come from a different place than a good person's, a good person like Buffy. As a human, her soul connects her to the others and gives her ties to the world, reasons to believe in "the right thing". I think my thought was more, for someone who usually has a soul, the absence of one must be just a little disconcerting.
 
What about someone like Faith who in season 3 has a soul, but chooses for the most part to ignore it. In the Whedonverse, a soul is that which enables you to know right from wrong and want to choose right...that's in my own words and stuff, but I think its a pretty general definition on how it is perceived in the show.
 
See, that's why I think that Buffy is ultimately the more powerful of the two and is able to defeat Faith. She fights for the right reasons, from the right place.

Buffy's missing of her soul and Faith's pretending to not have one, not quite the same thing, but still, like I said, must begin to have an affect on a person, to make them slightly off kilter.... unstable?

But anyway, I believe that in the end, when Faith decided to embrace the fact that she had power and the capability to do good with that power, she also fully embraced herself, soul, demons and all and that this is why she was a better slayer than in the begining; she was fighting for a valid reason that connected her to others.

Again with the crazy, eh?
 
I agree with Kazby and BillieHunter. She was in a totally different place. She was no longer in the confortable High school. Everything was changing and that kind of put her confidence down and affected her fighting. She was so used to being able to go to Giles and he usually could tell her what to do, but she really didn't have that anymore.
 
Re:

Cordy_Chase said:
Was it just me or did Buffy seem weak in the beginning of Season 4, especially fighting Sunday and Kathy. I mean there was nothing really special about Sunday.
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Yeah, I can see how you'd see that. She was unsure of herself throughout the entire first eppie because she was living in an entirely new atmosphere. I think her slayer abilities suffered from her lack of confidence. She had no man, she wasn't especially close to her mother those days, Giles rejected her, and Willow and Oz were off in their own little world. Not to mention Xander was gone, and her teachers were yelling at her. She went from Big Bad Senior to Puny Little Freshman and I think she let it interfere with her slaying. She got her fire back eventually. :nuts:
 
season 4

not really... it was to show how she felt, out of her depth with college.she was intimidated. then she found her feet, then kicked ass🙂
 
I've noticed that shes a lot weaker in Seasons 1, 4 and 6. She was strong in Season 1 but she really didn't become the SuperSlayer until after PG. There has always been that speculation that she received more power from this event.

And I think she was weaker in Season 4 because she didn't know her environment. Buffy's strongest power has always been the use of her surrondings and in Season 4, she didn't know them yet and wasn't comfy in them yet either.

As for Season 6, its explainable. She even tells us she thinks so to in the first song in OMWF. But thats mainly because she was torn out of heaven and had so much on her mind.

As for her strongest times, I'm going with Season 5, because even without the troll hammer she gave Glory a run for her money and Season 7, she was getting the upperhand on Caleb in DG until Spike pulled her away and also the addition of the scythe (which was meant for HER, I don't think it meant Slayer in general, I think it meant Buffy, but thats another discussion.)
 
i didn't actually think she was weak...she was just a little off guard from all the changes and stuff...you know, new school, so many changes, Etc.
:thought:
 
Kindred said:
See, that's why I think that Buffy is ultimately the more powerful of the two and is able to defeat Faith. She fights for the right reasons, from the right place.

Buffy's missing of her soul and Faith's pretending to not have one, not quite the same thing, but still, like I said, must begin to have an affect on a person, to make them slightly off kilter.... unstable?

But anyway, I believe that in the end, when Faith decided to embrace the fact that she had power and the capability to do good with that power, she also fully embraced herself, soul, demons and all and that this is why she was a better slayer than in the begining; she was fighting for a valid reason that connected her to others.

Again with the crazy, eh?
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Just to jump back to this point. It's been ages since I watched this ep. But the way I took it was that Kathy was draining Buffy of her energy. Her soul was representing her power and...'drive'...for lack of a better word. Usually the lack of a soul in the Buffyverse makes a person evil but as far as I can remember Buffy never went evil.

It wasn't one of my fave eps and I've probably only seen it a few times...so I've probably got it wrong 😉

But Buffy's fighting seems to reflect her emotional state. She's usually a confident individual but at college she seemed out of her depth and that effected her slaying.
 
buffy was weak in the beginning and during most of season 4 because it was a "rebound" year for her. she just broke up with the love of her life, left the security provided by high school, lost the strong bond between her friends , her watcher and herself as they all drifted apart, moved out of her mother's house. you forget that these were the things that made buffy *buffy* - her ties to the real world, like spike said. at that time, her ties were joyce, giles, angel, willow, xander and oz. and in restless we were shown the hard way how she was left practically all along and the journey of season 4 began. it was up to buffy to rediscover herself, to find herself in the new world, in the nmew circumstances. and in "primeval" (the real finale) it all came to a wrap - when she defeated the big bad with the help of her friends, in spite of everything that had happened.
 
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