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Date Posted: 08:41:42 10/27/05 Thu
Author: Sophist
Subject: Cause and consequence
In reply to: manwitch 's message, "And just to clarify the point about Spike's statement..." on 04:48:33 10/27/05 Thu

I'm sympathetic to your interpretation of Spike's words in Afterlife. However, I see several issues with it that I'd like to suggest.

First, I'm not sure that Buffy's sense of wrongness in S6 was caused by Willow's spell so much as by her removal from heaven. IOW, the spell itself didn't cause Buffy to feel wrong; had the spell removed her from hell she'd have been very grateful. In this sense, the flaw in the resurrection was not the use of magic to accomplish it, but the false pride and abuse of power which allowed the SG to believe it was somehow the right thing to do. This interpretation, IMO, makes perfect sense if we see Willow's problems in S6 as related to abuse of power -- in any such case, the fundamental problem is hubris; the specific power abused is merely instrumental.

Second, there are still too many counterexamples from S1-5 (and even S7, as you note) to fit this neatly into an overall theme of the show. It's just too ad hoc.

Third, I would quibble with some of your examples from previous seasons as consistent with the revised interpretation. In Dopplegangland, the spell caster was Anya. She intended evil. Willow did go along, but she was deceived into doing so and actually interrupted the spell when she realized it (putting her hand out caused the pixie powder to hit her and thus to return VampWillow instead of the amulet). In Becoming, what Giles actually says to Willow is "W-Willow... channeling... such potent magicks through yourself, it could open a door that you may not be able to close." That's not really the same theme. As I said, these are quibbles.

There certainly was a theme early on that Willow lacked sufficient control over magic, that her spells went awry too often. If you believe you have control but don't, that's dangerous. Willow-afflicted-with-hubris could have been developed out of this, or from other points of departure I've suggested above. Ultimately, I'm not objecting to where they took Willow, but to how they got there.

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