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

*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.

Re: *Terrified of sounding like an idiot*

[shadowpsykie]

ummm okay...

at the risk of maybe sounding too simplistic about this, or Pollyana about it... but i think that what they are trying to say is that "Sex has consequences" and the reason why it comes off as... harsher is because the world they live in is crancked up to 11. instead of the boy "changing" boy loses his soul... the mean teacher in school you think is evil... actually is. the girl in school you swear put a curse on you, guess what? she DID!

I am of the belief that sex dose have consequences, its never simple and often messy and complicated....

buffy had sex with riley for two years and no bad stuff happened (well for them)

Willow and Terra also had sex with few consequeces for years.... (well you know until she was shot, but that was a forgone conclusion)

also, didn't dawn get her magical whammy because she cheated on her boyfriend (so its not so much "sex is bad" as "Cheating is bad")

that said the way i look at it is that the over all idea is good, but like all human works there are going to be faults (and i know that despite my eternal whedon love, some of his works do have flaws. but i don't think that they are intentional). i think... in this case, its mostly the ideas he has having poor execution, or not playing out the way he wanted/intended...

Re: *Terrified of sounding like an idiot*

[espanolbot]

I don't know, I think that there's something of a difference between "sex has consequences" and "You had sex, so you must be punished!".