From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #46 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Saturday, February 26 2000 Volume 02 : Number 046 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/fights ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/re faithdreams ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 00:38:13 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/fights I had a sudden urge to listen to Beethoven piano sonatas tonight (heaven knows why), so I went to the library and scooped up four CDs' worth (11 sonatas including the last five and a few of the famous middle ones). In all the musical genres I'm a late Beethoven listener, not only the piano sonatas but also the late string quartets (some of the greatest ever written) and the 9th Symphony (at least until the banal finale). (The 5th Symphony, like the Moonlight Sonata, is a masterpiece most people only know the very first few bars of.) Anyway...I'm sitting here listening to the very last piano sonata and looking at the three single-spaced pages of stuff on =Buffy= which I wrote during a slow day at work today. As follows. Do people think that Faith has a physical advantage over Buffy? I don't. It's true that Faith is physically bigger, but remember Angel telling Spike in "Innocence" that Buffy is "stronger than any Slayer you've ever faced," which implies she's unusually strong even for a Slayer. (Which she'd need to be because she's relatively small). It seems to me, in fact, that she and Faith, physically, are pretty well-matched. We can pretend to be boxing judges and go through their bouts to date and see what we can see: 1. "Revelations" Fairly long fight, physically a draw, pretty much; no conclusion because they were distracted from it by Mrs. Poste and the Glove. Faith may have come off slightly the worse for wear of the two. (Also note: their relationship never quite recovered from this fight.) 2. "Enemies" Quite short, merely a skirmish in fact, ending in a standoff with each holding a sharp implement to the other's throat. Faith then verbally jabs at an already-distraught Buffy to gain an opening to make her escape. 3. "Graduation Day" I Very long fight. We have to give Buffy a TKO in this one: she manages, literally =mano a mano= (arm-to-arm-to-arm-to-arm) to inflict a serious stab wound on Faith. And if Faith had had to run away (as opposed to making tha rather spectacular diving escape), she wouldn't have been able to; and Buffy =would= have killed her. (Note that it isn't =quite= accurate to say, as some characters have, that Buffy "put Faith in a coma"--the fall put her in a coma.) 4. "This Year's Girl" (3rd quarter) Medium-length fight. Also pretty much a draw: Willow gets in one blow at the end, and when Faith turns towards her, Buffy mumps between them and pushes Faith away, after which Buffy stands back figuring the arriving cops are going to be able to deal with Faith. (Fat chance.) 5. "This Year's Girl" (4th quarter) Longish fight. I suppose you can give Faith the win on points here, but here's the twist: it's =Buffy's body= that delivers the knockout blow. So a win apiece and three draws. (And more to come, I'm betting.) The thing that surprised me, looking at the fights one by one, was the following: forget what I said about Buffy tending to cede first move to Faith, because in most of these fights, =Buffy was the aggressor=: 1) she forcibly prevented Faith from staking Angel; 2) she formulated the "psych" to flush out Faith's allegiances, etc., and went for her when Faith moved to escape (though Faith went for her as well); 3. she hunted Faith down, and interrupted the verbal sparring to take the first swing; 4) the one exception--she really did wait as long as possible, and only responded in kind when Faith swung first; 5) she crashed through the window, tackled Faith, and knocked her down with a punch ("Hi, Mom!"). Generally speaking, both of them are strong enough, and good enough fighters, to gain temporary advantage at any moment, at which point the decision can be made to either re-engage, or flee. It doesn't seem to me to be a victory for Faith to get herself free and run away. If we postulate that fighting skills and strength are roughly even, here's how I'd handicap the other factors: Buffy is smarter, thinks better on her feet, has a more secure situation (she doesn't =need= to run away; it's "her town," as Faith grudgingly acknolwedges), and has backup at hand. On Faith's side is utter ruthlessness (she would kill Buffy without a qualm if she could) and Buffy's lack of same (note that Buffy's win came the one time she really was prepared to kill Faith). ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 00:45:12 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/re faithdreams So let's talk about Faith's dream-trilogy, shall we? I'm assuming, for the sake of argument (so argue, if you must) that the Buffy/Faith dream in "Graduation Day" II is Buffy's, and that in it Buffy appoints dream-Faith as her "spirit guide" to tell her something she unconsciously knows (as she did with Angel in the dream about Jenny Calendar in "Innocence"). I'm also assuming (though they didn't make it crystal-clear about the first dream) that the three dreams in "This Year's Girl" are Faith's, and that the dream-Buffy is equally a projection of Faith's and not some kind of message from Buffy herself. I.e. none of these are shared dreams (the ones in "Amends" being a unique case). I'll also remind the assembled multitude that dream-logic, like myth-logic, is not like waking logic: a single signifier may have multiple signifieds, multiple signifiers may have a single signified, things can metamorphose into other things in a flash, even into their opposites, etc. DREAM I It seems clear to me that this is the sequel, or rather the Faith-alternative, to Buffy's dream in "Graduation Day" II: it's very much the same serene mood, to start out with, the same sense that both Slayers feel a deep (unconscious--we're in the unconscious) bond to one another. It's interesting to note that in Buffy's dream she's visiting Faith's (shattered) room, while in Faith's dream she's visiting Buffy's (very tidy) room. I think the whole bed-making routine represents Faith's fundamental desire to be a part of Buffy's very cosy (as Faith sees it) domestic situation, and to work with Buffy. But it's not part of her experience ("I wouldn't know"), and Buffy's "I forgot" takes on an extra dimension with Faith's answer "I noticed"; this sounds the theme Faith later picks up in the campus encounter, about being forgotten off in the hospital. There's an undercurrent of resentment--in the midst of the surface serenity--at Buffy's privilege, and at Buffy's taking it for granted. Then there's the further disturbing element of Buffy's feeling she has to leave--that even this idyll is being taken away from Faith. I feel pretty sure that "little sis" refers to Faith herself; remember that Buffy refers to Faith as her "little sister" all the way back in "Faith, Hope, and Trick," and Faith refers to Buffy (in "GD") as "dressed up in big sister's clothes." Taken this way, it's the first hint that Faith is due to arrive--to wake up, to be a part of Buffy's life again. And then the dream tumbles into horror with the blood, the knife, Buffy's cold menace--and the knell of treachery is sounded. Faith feels not only condescended to, and snubbed, but betrayed. Contrast this with =roughly= the same elements in Buffy's dream: the sisterly visit, the bond-feeling, the sharing ("take what you need"), Buffy's sense of something she needs to do, the knife--but with what a different attitude! Buffy in her dream is acutely aware of how terrible a thing it was she did to Faith, her bond-sister, and regrets it deeply. She clearly feels sympathy and compassion for Faith. Which contrasts strongly with Faith's feeling, throughout =her= dreams, that Buffy is a cold and methodical killer, and that Faith is helpless to oppose her. (Whereas our own instant reaction would be to look at them in the opposite manner.) OK. If I'm claiming Buffy and Faith had the "same" dream, why am I so sure they weren't =sharing= the dream? First of all, because it isn't the same dream. It features the same elements, but obviously arranged and colored in two entirely different ways. I also think there are possible alternative explanations. The characteristic Slayer dreams have to come from =somewhere= else; and whether you decide to stick to the "collective unconscious" or postulate intervention from the Powers that Be/"a higher power guiding us," they're getting the same "message"--but not at the same time, nor in the same "inner theater." Shall we speculate, for a moment, why Faith is waking up now (rather than earlier or later)? Everything in the dream(s) can be taken to refer to the situation as of the time Faith went into the coma or just afterwards; note that Faith was (understandably) surprised to discover that eight months had passed, the crisis she expected to take part in was well past, and everything else had changed. Is it simply that it took even her Slayer physiology that long to heal? Her conscious mind has been disabled all this time, and her statement later on about how she "kept having this dream" suggests that her unconscious was nonetheless busy. Or does the sense of duration only refer to a short period of anticipation before she returned to consciousness? The dreams constitute a kind of "wakeup call," a sense of urgency that =she= has something to do; and note how, just like Buffy's dreams, they contain references to things she could not possibly have had real-world knowledge of, things that happened after she went into the coma (Buffy killing the Mayor, particularly). DREAM II I have to give credit to a coworker of mine who pointed out the Biblical imagery in this dream (and the next). But there's more to it than that. First of all, the thunder and the threat of rain: this I think refers to the end of the third dream, so let's take, ahem, a rain check on it for now. The basic situation is a Garden of Eden scenario: the Mayor and Faith enjoying another idyll. (The typical mythological blurring of father/daughter/lovers--remember that Eve was born of Adam's rib.) On a purely Biblical level, the little incident with the snake represents the rejection of the temptation that would expel them from the Garden ("nothing's going to spoil our time together"), but of course the snake is more than that: it represents the Mayor himself in his demon transmogrification (and his dismissing the snake is just putting off the transformation for a time), the equation on a symbolic level being a triangular/circular snake = devil = demon and back around. But the snake =also= represents Buffy--the disturber of the peace, or maybe the Avenging Angel (who with his fiery sword expelled Adam and Eve from Eden); and it's a plausible piece of dream-logic that the snake actually =turned into= Buffy. On the closer-to-real-world level, Buffy killing the Mayor represents just that (and note the knife in the gut which matches her wounding of Faith). And I think this represents =both= Faith's anxiety that Buffy would find a way to kill the Mayor =and= a "message from beyond" that it had actually happened. So in these first two parts we see Faith's longing for a stable, idyllic situation twice frustrated: one with Buffy and the other with the Mayor, and both destroyed by Buffy. DREAM III This is the recapitulation and coda of the previous two parts (it's really one long dream in three sections), and of the real world events they shadow: Buffy, knife in hand (and let's remember that the knife was the gift to Faith from the Mayor, and was later appropriated by Buffy), inexorably pursues the fleeing Faith. Faith falls into a grave, which (like Freud's cigar) is simply a grave: Buffy took her life, as Faith says later. The grave could also be said to represent unconsciousness (Faith's), and the unconscious, and we see Buffy pursuing Faith even into the grave. Now there's an odd twist of dream-logic that Faith falls into the grave, Buffy deliberately jumps into the grave...but only Faith emerges. Deirdre speculates that this is an anticipation of Buffy "turning into" Faith, and vice versa; it's an attractive idea. In any case, Faith rising from the grave (echoes of vampires, and Lazarus and Jesus) clearly presages her imminent awakening, return to consciousness; and in some way the rain represents her change of state (as does the rainstorm the night Buffy and Angel made love represent the fact that everything changed there, too). It also culminates the threat of rain in the second dream, which means in retrospect we can see that even as the second dream opens she knows it's starting to be time to wake up. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #46 ****************************