Re: the queer metaphors, "in the closet" that's in the show all the way back to WTTH but it first becomes really explicit, played comedically, in The Witch, when Buffy under a spell blurts out "vampires" and Joyce says "What?"
Oh, I didn't even catch that! I guess to me it didn't read as quite as obvious as "have you tried not being a Slayer". :P But yeah. Definitely a missed opportunity here. Now I am itching for a re-write AU fic.
I took tarot lessons from a wiccan high priestess in college; at the time it was more empowering than therapy: reading feminist theology, modern paganism, the very notion of the Divine as something female? Powerful stuff in a culture in which "God" is always male, and female is sinful, other, a temptation, dirty etc.
Ohh, that is really interesting! I completely believe you. Personally I am hardly spiritual at all, so I doubt it's something I could identify with, but I do get what you mean -- combating a male-centric, misogynist spirituality with a female-empowering one is something I consider important, since the vast majority of people do consider themselves spiritual in some way and faith/spirituality is a very basic human need.
But it feels like the sort of exceptionalism that the show claims to question with Chosen and the Slayer spell but can't help support anyway. In truth, that scene in Hush is meant to mirror Cordy and the Cordettes mocking Willow in WTTH when buffy meets her; so I'm sure they weren't thinking the implications through, again.
Yeah, it just completely doesn't work out at all, since in WTTH it's Cordy looking down on Willow and in Hush it's Willow being implied to have some sort of superiority over the other women of the Wicca group because she uses Real Magic which is Meaningful instead of wasting her time with silly things like bake sales, omg. Which seems to be saying the opposite of what Chosen attempts (and for some fans, fails) to say in giving a higher value to individual power rather than the action of doing something together from which many people benefit -- though I suppose bake sales do have this vibe of "let's offer something everybody likes and hope they give us money for something we wanna do that's valuable to us"; i.e. a certain degree of making oneself dependent on the goodwill of the general public. I can sort of see the value in both sides -- I think it's good to try and attain things in a friendly manner by offering something nice in return, but I also understand people who say "sometimes playing nice isn't enough, and expecting us to play nice all the time can be oppressive".
... I sure am reading a lot into bake sales. Do I make sense here at all?
2/2
Oh, I didn't even catch that! I guess to me it didn't read as quite as obvious as "have you tried not being a Slayer". :P But yeah. Definitely a missed opportunity here.
Now I am itching for a re-write AU fic.I took tarot lessons from a wiccan high priestess in college; at the time it was more empowering than therapy: reading feminist theology, modern paganism, the very notion of the Divine as something female? Powerful stuff in a culture in which "God" is always male, and female is sinful, other, a temptation, dirty etc.
Ohh, that is really interesting! I completely believe you. Personally I am hardly spiritual at all, so I doubt it's something I could identify with, but I do get what you mean -- combating a male-centric, misogynist spirituality with a female-empowering one is something I consider important, since the vast majority of people do consider themselves spiritual in some way and faith/spirituality is a very basic human need.
But it feels like the sort of exceptionalism that the show claims to question with Chosen and the Slayer spell but can't help support anyway. In truth, that scene in Hush is meant to mirror Cordy and the Cordettes mocking Willow in WTTH when buffy meets her; so I'm sure they weren't thinking the implications through, again.
Yeah, it just completely doesn't work out at all, since in WTTH it's Cordy looking down on Willow and in Hush it's Willow being implied to have some sort of superiority over the other women of the Wicca group because she uses Real Magic which is Meaningful instead of wasting her time with silly things like bake sales, omg. Which seems to be saying the opposite of what Chosen attempts (and for some fans, fails) to say in giving a higher value to individual power rather than the action of doing something together from which many people benefit -- though I suppose bake sales do have this vibe of "let's offer something everybody likes and hope they give us money for something we wanna do that's valuable to us"; i.e. a certain degree of making oneself dependent on the goodwill of the general public. I can sort of see the value in both sides -- I think it's good to try and attain things in a friendly manner by offering something nice in return, but I also understand people who say "sometimes playing nice isn't enough, and expecting us to play nice all the time can be oppressive".
... I sure am reading a lot into bake sales. Do I make sense here at all?