Re: Willow, I just don't want to get boxed in too much; over the hiatus (which is still mostly going on -- I just have some more time some days than others) that I feel a bit anxious when I am put in too rigid a self-definition, and I feel a bit like there's a lot about Willow's arc I haven't actually decided on/figured out, and so, I dunno. I don't want to be the expert, except when I do, so, it's a complicated thing.
I owe huge amounts to gabrielleabelle, stormwreath (who doesn't post often, but whose old Willow posts inspired a lot of thinky-thoughts), beer-good-foamy, Maggie (though she's not a fan of Willow's per se, she does have a lot of insight in some areas), and ceciliaj re: Willow, so I also just want to make sure that no one thinks I'm doing this alone.
Annnnnnnyway.
When I can, I try to give the show/writers as much credit as possible, mostly for selfish reasons -- which is that I just enjoy things more that way. I do think that some of the jolt in Hell's Bells is intentional. There's a poster named One Bit Shy (not on LJ, on a newsgroup; elisi linked to him years ago and I found him through her old links) who has a magnificent take on HB, and one of the major points he makes is that had Stuart Burns not showed up and not showed Xander that horrible vision of the future, Xander *would* have gone through with the wedding. That vision was horrible because it rang totally true for Xander, but it was also something he had repressed/not thought about at all.
I do think that there is some taming going on with Xander and Anya, and that is part of the problem with their relationship. It's a problem on two levels: 1) that Xander doesn't quite respect Anya, and 2) that Anya doesn't entirely deserve respect -- i.e. deep down she still is unashamed of being a murderer, and is mostly clinging to Xander as a liferaft. She does love him, and he does love her, but they are also kind of using each other as a way to define themselves, so somewhat out of fear. And that means they are eventually going to turn on each other, unless they come to each other with a bit less of that fear. I think that there is enough setup for that, and there are big hints that Xander is increasingly despondent and depressed in s6 (not just the blindness to his friends' woes, but also the commented-on-in-text sudden weight gain, which may have been more about the actor but still plays well in-story) and Anya increasingly anxious.
Anya's murderous past is something that I think the gang deliberately blind themselves to, partly, I think, because there is a slightly feminist bent to the characters, and punishing bad men in the past is something that they don't take quite as seriously a charge as murdering young women (as Angel and Spike are wont to brag about). But Stuart Burns, philanderer or no, didn't deserve to go be tortured forever, nor did women deserve to have their words twisted into something that would eventually kill them (as happens with Cordy and nearly happens with that woman in Selfless whom Willow saves from the spider). I guess the question is, when you don't think murdering people for infidelity is bad thing, do you need 'taming'? Is Anyanka a feminist character?
Poor Anya, though -- though there is an instance there of something very common in Whedonland, which is that characters do everything "right" except that deep down they are doing it for the wrong reasons, and the text "punishes" them (though really it's not a punishment, I think, so much as a storytelling device) in order to reveal shadings that weren't there. Anya spends the next episode she is in after Hell's Bells trying to get Xander's friends to wish him dead so she can kill him. She still hasn't come to terms with her past as a vengeance demon -- and she needs to be apart from Xander in order to do that, because as long as the only reason she's not returning to vengeance is because she has Xander there to stop her, well, it's a problem I think.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-11-17 02:07 am (UTC)I owe huge amounts to gabrielleabelle, stormwreath (who doesn't post often, but whose old Willow posts inspired a lot of thinky-thoughts), beer-good-foamy, Maggie (though she's not a fan of Willow's per se, she does have a lot of insight in some areas), and ceciliaj re: Willow, so I also just want to make sure that no one thinks I'm doing this alone.
Annnnnnnyway.
When I can, I try to give the show/writers as much credit as possible, mostly for selfish reasons -- which is that I just enjoy things more that way. I do think that some of the jolt in Hell's Bells is intentional. There's a poster named One Bit Shy (not on LJ, on a newsgroup; elisi linked to him years ago and I found him through her old links) who has a magnificent take on HB, and one of the major points he makes is that had Stuart Burns not showed up and not showed Xander that horrible vision of the future, Xander *would* have gone through with the wedding. That vision was horrible because it rang totally true for Xander, but it was also something he had repressed/not thought about at all.
I do think that there is some taming going on with Xander and Anya, and that is part of the problem with their relationship. It's a problem on two levels: 1) that Xander doesn't quite respect Anya, and 2) that Anya doesn't entirely deserve respect -- i.e. deep down she still is unashamed of being a murderer, and is mostly clinging to Xander as a liferaft. She does love him, and he does love her, but they are also kind of using each other as a way to define themselves, so somewhat out of fear. And that means they are eventually going to turn on each other, unless they come to each other with a bit less of that fear. I think that there is enough setup for that, and there are big hints that Xander is increasingly despondent and depressed in s6 (not just the blindness to his friends' woes, but also the commented-on-in-text sudden weight gain, which may have been more about the actor but still plays well in-story) and Anya increasingly anxious.
Anya's murderous past is something that I think the gang deliberately blind themselves to, partly, I think, because there is a slightly feminist bent to the characters, and punishing bad men in the past is something that they don't take quite as seriously a charge as murdering young women (as Angel and Spike are wont to brag about). But Stuart Burns, philanderer or no, didn't deserve to go be tortured forever, nor did women deserve to have their words twisted into something that would eventually kill them (as happens with Cordy and nearly happens with that woman in Selfless whom Willow saves from the spider). I guess the question is, when you don't think murdering people for infidelity is bad thing, do you need 'taming'? Is Anyanka a feminist character?
Poor Anya, though -- though there is an instance there of something very common in Whedonland, which is that characters do everything "right" except that deep down they are doing it for the wrong reasons, and the text "punishes" them (though really it's not a punishment, I think, so much as a storytelling device) in order to reveal shadings that weren't there. Anya spends the next episode she is in after Hell's Bells trying to get Xander's friends to wish him dead so she can kill him. She still hasn't come to terms with her past as a vengeance demon -- and she needs to be apart from Xander in order to do that, because as long as the only reason she's not returning to vengeance is because she has Xander there to stop her, well, it's a problem I think.