Buffy the Vampire Slayer season #9 - issue 6

[sherkahn]

Ooooh boy. BleedingCool has the article about Buffy Summers making a serious big move with her life. Most of you have written this version of Buffy off a while back, this may push more of you out of orbit further. The link has the preview panels and related article for issue #6 of Season 9.



Buffy will have an abortion.

Complicating things further, she's not sure who the person who "staked" her is.


I'll leave the rest of the discussion for you all, but at this point, I'm off the Buffy ship. Not because of the decision, no, I'm pro, but because I didn't think we needed to take this character her, especially since she's come back from the dead.

Comments

[kusonaga]

I don't know what to say, honestly. Just... why?

[whitesycamore]

Wait, did Buffy get pregnant in the normal way? Because it doesn't sound like it, what with Andrew and the non/infrequent shower-ers on the list. I'm assuming this is some kind of mystical pregnancy.

I think most of this season has been pure crap, but this doesn't put me off the character at all. It's way better than Cordelia effectively dying in childbirth, at any rate.

Not because of the decision, no, I'm pro, but because I didn't think we needed to take this character her, especially since she's come back from the dead.

I really don't understand what the significance of Buffy coming back from the dead is in this context.

[sherkahn]

I really don't understand what the significance of Buffy coming back from the dead is in this context.

There is a quote from a poem that sums it up, but I can't find it.
"The dead wish for only one thing... not to be."

For someone who has been given a true second chance at life after being dead for a while, Buffy sure as heck isn't about protecting life in all forms. Her loved ones went through a lot of trouble to give her a chance at life, I'm amazed she doesn't want to pass that on. She's a killer, sure, why not, but I would have gone more along the lines of Uma Thurman's the Bride. And I would counter her moral and philosophical decision (for herself) with Roy Batty's final epiphany.

[greenmask]

In the other panels in the linked article she says she can't hold her drink well enough to remember who the father is.

Which.. I side-eye as a thing that a creator makes a character say. But it does not rule out magickal pregnancy.

[aeka]

Wait, did Buffy get pregnant in the normal way? Because it doesn't sound like it, what with Andrew and the non/infrequent shower-ers on the list. I'm assuming this is some kind of mystical pregnancy.

I was thinking that too...or rather I was thinking it was Angel's with the whole epic air sex that they had last season that led to the birth of the universe.

[superfangirl1]

Buffy doesn't know about Angel and Darla special powers to be Connor birth?

[runespoor]

In this post, judging women's choices.

That's what I'm getting from the "what's worse."

[whitesycamore]

You know what? It's not just you who's getting that.

[filthysize]

I... agree.

Granted I'm not the biggest Buffy fan around, so I don't know what should or shouldn't happen to the character, but I'm not exactly sure why this is inappropriate? From what I know, the characters of the show have been used to explore some difficult social issues before. Is abortion just one of those issues that Buffy should be impervious to?

Nothing in the panels presented seem tasteless to me. In fact, she gives a pretty wise argument as to why she doesn't want to keep the baby. Maybe I'm just not getting it.

[greenmask]

Hey, I haven't said this for ages!

MOTTO

[mrstatham]

Bleh. I actually liked some of the earlier Season 8 stuff, especially the story with Fray guesting, but I think this is going to be handled with about as much grace as Breaking Dawn handled the vampire-baby subplot. And as for how well Breaking Dawn handled the vamp-baby, well.. Anyone who's seen Doug Walker's review of the film will know what I'm getting at.

[q99]

Yea, I liked the early Season comics, then, bluh.

[whitesycamore]

Dying and then coming back? An acceptable place to take the character.

Having an abortion, just as 30% of US women will do at some point in their lives? Not a place she needs to go. Not something relevant to the real lives of readers.

Well ok then.

[benicio127]

Excellent commentary from the ever wise Ms. Sycamore ;)

[greenmask]

"staked"

Penis-in-vagina intercourse! It's a kind of stabbing!

I disapprove of this pun.

[shadowpsykie]

I would like to prefice this by saying that i am neither pro-choice nor pro-abortion. I do believe that the child has a right to live, so i would hope that the expectant mother would look through all the options, adoption being a viable choice. But i also believe that there are circumstances in which abortion is warranted and even needed.

I do however believe that it is ultimately the woman's choice what to do with her own body. I have had friends who have thought they were pregnant and pondered this decision, i gave them my various opinions, and told them that regardless of thier decision i would be there for them.

that said, well... just because she decides to have an abortion, does not mean she will go through with it. (i for one hopes she keeps it because that would be a story that hasn't been told yet) but ultimately the decision is hers.

many women have decided to have abortions only to at the last moment decide against it. some go through with it and forever have regrets. some women go through with it and don't regret it at all because it was the right choice for them. its different for every woman.

so far from the panels i have seen, it seems to be very respectful of all sides of the argument. and the panels where she asks Spike to go with her, both knowing that it is hightly possible that he is the father, was VERY touching. You could see the vulnerability in her eyes, and the sadness in his. it hurts him too (the possible father) but knowing spike, i think he will go with her, for her and be there for her after it, at least i hope.

side bar.... what if the "baby" is actually a new magic seed?

Well from last issue.

[mambalev]

That is where I thought they were going. After the whole Fairy thing.

Though Darla tried to get rid of Connor. That didn't work.

Meh Angel and Faith is the better series anyway.

[practicalcat]

Slight side bar here too -- what's the difference between being "pro-choice" and "believing that it's ultimately the woman's choice"? I keep encountering this statement and ones like it, and I don't quite get the distinction. Being pro-choice means believing it's the woman's right to choose what to do with her body. Hence the "choice" part of pro-choice.

Mod note

[greenmask]

Okay you know what, I'm going to ask that you change "what's worse" to "what's more".

Re: Mod note

[sherkahn]

Changed.

[stubbleupdate]

I literally just finished reading an article on how Your favourite character might not always agree with you and then I find this discussion.

[greenmask]

Hah. Good link!

*Terrified of sounding like an idiot*

[espanolbot]

Hmm. I wonder how I can say this without it being phrased wrong...

See, I understand that Buffy was, at least initially, about using the whole "growing up shown through supernatural stuff" metaphor thing... BUT... from the point of view of a pro-choice, pro-feminist guy, isn't their view of women's sexuality somewhat askew?

S'like, they show women can have sex and enjoy it without getting preachy, that's good, but they also seem to add a lot of baggage to the deal that comes off as either kind either preachy or exploitative, if that makes sense.

For some example, way way back when Buffy first slept with Angel, leading to him coming evil, apparently as a metaphor for how guy's personalities change completely, often for the worse, from the perspective of a girl once they've lost their virginity. That I kind of see... kinda... but that interpretation seems both unfair to guys AND seems to be trying to punish Buffy for having sex at the same time.

Same with Dawn when she finally lost her virginity, she got afflicted with a similar thing that might have been a metaphor for STDs or something. I don't know. It just comes off as the writers seemingly wanting the characters to have sex, but wanting to attach some kind of negative lesson onto it in some way.

Though that seems to be a thing even in comics too, with sex being treated as either a bad thing or something that comes with a massive pricetag on the end that seems to be there purely to punish folk. For example, Conner and Cassie Sandsmark sleeping together in Infinite Crisis only for him to die and resulting in Cassie's personality being derailed as it became solely about Conner for the next few years of her run in Teen Titans, 52 etc. Or Bart Allen kicking the bucket several issues after having sex for the first time in Countdown. Or Mia Dearsden being used as PSA about HIV, or Steph Brown as one for teen pregnancies (and why abortion isn't an option girls! XP).

Pretty much the only times younger superheros manage to sleep with someone without Weighty Pricetag happening to them is the implied one between Cass Cain and Tim Drake at the end of Gates of Gotham, or the more overt one between Supergirl at that college guy that she liked at the end of her original series, and BOTH these instances have mostly likely been erased by the reboot anyways!

SO, moving on from the Weighty Pricetag for sex, we go into the depiction of bisexuality in Buffy's new comic with her sleeping with that other Slayer way back near the start of this run. Fair enough, I get that even nominally straight people can be attracted to people of the same sex, even if they've shown no inclination of that before (one of my favourite LGTB characters is Robin deSanto, who has been defined in-universe as "straight but with an exception"), but the way that it seemed to be handled, both by the way that it was marketed and how it was treated in-story, that it came off more as a cheap way to drum up publicity for the book by showing Buffy in bed with another woman, only for everyone to immediately move on from it afterwards as if it didn't happen (except for the girl that Buffy slept with, but she seems to have faded into the background or something, so that's unlikely to be brought up again).

So with that in mind... doesn't it seem, at least at a glance, kind of weird how glib they seem to be about this whole "yeah, I'm pregnant and I don't know who the dad is" thing? It seems to be a tad like the Buffy goes Bi thing, a grab for more readers by skirting around something that would take the characters too far out of their comfort zone if handled in more depth.

And another thing, enough with the mystical pregnancies! Two was two too many in Angel alone!

Re: *Terrified of sounding like an idiot*

[greenmask]

This is a good comment and I take your fear and replace it with bubbles.

[fifthie]

This would maybe be enough to reheat my Buffy-cares if S8 hadn't turned them all to ash.

[fifthie]

I'd like it better if instead of wordpiling over it she was just like "yeah don't wanna be pregnant, ABORTIN DIS, boosh hey willow throw me an ain't-pregnant-no-more high-five".

[akodo_rokku]

Saying you're going to have an abortion is not the same thing as having an abortion, so USA Today's coverage of this makes me giggle. As far as my interest in this, I only care where the more interesting story is, so I hope she has the kid.

[shadowpsykie]

i think you expressed my thoughts better than i did in so fewer words...

[weber_dubois22]

Personally, I'm not seeing the point in making her pregnant, then have her get an abortion unless Whedon was really inspired by the pregnancy/abortion issue in The Walking Dead (or this is just another result in the long line of "Buffy not suffering = Buffy not interesting/Buffy suffering = Buffy Interesting" template of his).

[super_fly]

Considering how other pregnancies have turned out in this universe (just ask Cordelia - oh right, you can't) I think exercising her right to choose seems fairly sensible.