Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Headscratchers/Season 7: Difference between revisions

*** I agree, I also cheered when Warren suddenly lost his skin. Anyway, OP, did you even see the episode "The Killer In Me"? Willow felt horrible guilt for killing Warren, which she said plenty of times. Xander and the others did kind of try to justify it with "he deserved it", and well, he DID kind of deserve it. What Willow did wasn't justice, and it was evil, but it can't even be lumped in the same category as what Warren did out of malice and spite, killing both Tara and Katrina, and almost killing Buffy. It's pretty clear that Willow never forgot what she had done, and she felt guilt about it for the rest of series. Anya is another strange case because she was a vengeance demon. It was her JOB to murder or brutally maim men. The only murders she does on the show after she becomes a main character are the frat boys. She feels horrible and ends up resurrecting them all, meaning to sacrifice herself (it's not her fault that Halfrek was sacrificed instead, she didn't think D'Hoffryn would do that, and she lost her powers again). And Buffy was entirely prepared to kill her, as shown in the fight between them, it's not like Anya would have gotten away with it while her friends acted like nothing happened.

**** Did ''you'' watch that episode? Willow was only claiming to feel guilty about killing Warren to avoid confronting the actual guilt she felt over being attracted to Kennedy and thus symbolically killing Tara, which is why she changed into Warren (because she'd "killed" Tara all over again). And so long as we're rationalizing crimes, both of Warren's murders were accidents: Tara was hit by a stray bullet and Katrina got hit too hard on the head during the struggle. No matter how much of a misogynistic jerk Warren is, voluntary manslaughter doesn't rise to the same moral level as prolonged torture and premeditated murder. He did try premeditated murder on Buffy, but the show treats that as a bizarrely mild transgression too (even if we're writing off vampires since they don't have souls, Faith's a human being who tried to kill Buffy ''numerous'' times). And I've ''already said'' that Anya at least felt remorse and reversed her actions at what she expected to be the cost of her own life, and Faith at least voluntarily went to jail for several years, that Willow's the only who never really showed regret or faced any fallout for what she did. Am I going to have keep repeating myself every single time a new Willow fan comes along, ignores everything I've already written and restates the same arguments all over again? I've ''already said'' that Willow is my favorite character and it's the lack of follow-through on her S6 storyline that I'm protesting, so ''stop accusing me of ignorance about the show or bias against the character.'' Why is it that in every JBM page I visit, fans just attack each other instead of sharing any sense of comradary or at least civility over the fact that they're fellow fans? Why is saying that Willow's S6 actions were too consequence-free, and that that seems to be a pattern with the Scoobies, such a personal affront, especially when Joss ''himself'' is perfectly willing to poke fun at this very thing with lines like "when our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them!"

** I disagree that Willow was only feigning guilt. Sure, she felt guilty about being in a relationship with Kennedy since it felt like betraying Tara's memory, but she also also clearly felt guilty about killing Warren. And you could technically say that Warren's actual crimes were accidents, but these accidents occurred while he was doing horrible, monstrous crimes in the first place. He might not have meant to kill Katrina, but he definitely knew that he was trying to rape her, and the stray shot that killed Tara came from a premeditated attempt to shoot Buffy, which would be flat-out first degree murder, not voluntary manslaughter. And chill out, no one's attacking you, we're just saying that we disagree with you. Willow didn't get off consequence-free. She spent months in Britain learning how to control her magic without going off the deep end (maybe that sounds like a free magical vacation, but she was severely shaken up over the events that happened, and she had to learn how to deal with her powers without being corrupted again), and the level of trust between her friends went down. In "Same Time Same Place", when flayed corpses start appearing, Willow is the first suspect of the Scoobies. Why didn't that trust go down any more than that? Because Willow had spent the last 6 years proving her extreme loyalty to her friends, saving the world multiple times. She did an unspeakable, horrible thing killing Warren, but that doesn't undo all the good she's done before that, such as resouling Angelus, draining Glory to save Tara and weaken the hellgod for Buffy, fuse everyone's souls to defeat Adam, and save the world from apocalypse on many occasions. I'm not saying that because she's a good guy she should be able to get away with the occasional murder, but how exactly should one punish one of the world's most powerful witches for a crime caused when driven literally insane by grief? Send to her jail, where she can't help her friends save the world at all, or rehabilitate her and make sure she stays on the side of good? And alienating Willow wouldn't have made sense; like I said, her friends are insanely loyal to her just as she is to them. They all love her and they're not going to start treating her like crap after all these years for going off the deep end after her girlfriend is murdered. Xander saved the day by showing his love for her, he's not gonna just start acting weird around her and admonishing her; even if she deserved it, it wouldn't be in character for any of the Scoobies (except maybe Anya). So I disagree that Willow didn't suffer any consequences, and I also disagree that she should've suffered more.

* The fact of the matter is, regardless of what society thinks, punishment, in and of itself, is fucking stupid. It serves no purpose. When you jail someone, punishment is not the purpose. Ceasing the potential to repeat the crime is the purpose, either through isolation or rehabilitation, preferably both. Willow could just as easily murdered everyone inside a jail. Rehabilitation and acceptance were the only realistic things to do there. Anya's a vengeance demon, it's literally her job. It's outside normal laws. As it stands, her crimes are all reversed. Faith has been rehabilitated. She's still kind of fucked up, but there's nothing there to suggest the potential for damage that was the reason she "needed punishment" in the first place. Also, you say that you think most of the world thinks punishment is an end to itself? America, maybe. The developing world, maybe. Everywhere else? God no. The rest of the world is smart enough to treat people like people.