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Date Posted: 10:25:41 10/27/05 Thu
Author: Sunshine
Subject: Re: Two points make a line, but do they make a paradigm?
In reply to: Sophist 's message, "Two points make a line, but do they make a paradigm?" on 12:48:29 10/26/05 Wed

To return to the original discussion, I would like to summarize my current positions:

Hmm. I don't know that 2 examples qualifies as "a long history of abuse", especially since she didn't follow through on either one.
I do believe there existed a history of Willow abusing magic to avoid dealing with life problems. There are the two instances I cited plus Something Blue plus early season 6 problems with Tara. I think these all predated the addiction plot and could have been used to motivate Willow’s descent. IMO, they didn’t go this route due to the problem of how to bring Willow back into the fold. An addiction metaphor enabled an easier and cleaner absolution of Willow’s actions. Whether one wants to characterize it as a “long” history of abuse seems not too important but it was three years previous so I will stick with long.

…but I don't recall any established theme that magic involves a price.
“There are always consequences” – clearly an overstatement. Sometimes there are, sometimes there aren’t, sometimes it is indeterminate. Exactly what is meant by consequences is open to debate: In BBB, the spell doesn’t work as planned and bad things happen, in Family, Tara’s spell works as designed but almost gets the Scoobies killed by invisible demons, in Bargaining, the spell also works as designed but it apparently disrupts the Slayer line and opens the door for the First to make its move. In my mind, only the resurrection spell has consequences on the metaphysical level as a direct cause and effect reaction to the magic (the conservation of something or equal and opposite reaction idea). The first two types of consequences are more a result of bad technique or poor planning and are the type or every day consequences we experience in real life, not some underlying principle of magic. Given all that, I retract my position that it was a “well established paradigm” as it was neither well established nor a paradigm. Teach me to accept anything that Spike says on face value.

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