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Date Posted: 09:44:29 07/24/06 Mon
Author: Darby
Subject: Re: Adult flaws
In reply to: Celebaelin 's message, "Adult flaws" on 08:57:05 07/24/06 Mon

I'll preface this by saying this is absolutely just my own take on this...

I see youthful flaws as drawing from 2 sources: the sorts of emotional immaturities that children have, and a lack of perspective, especially concerning consequences.

Adult flaws involve an inherent understanding of the ethics and possible consequences, but a lack of concern. For me, that's the nature of evil, and there aren't a lot of adults, fictional or real, with large doses of those flaws. Ken Lay would qualify. That's why the Mayor qualifies. Angelus qualifies, but most vampires, as metaphors for arrested adolescents, don't - I think that's why Angelus is so different from most of the other Whedon vampires (and why it seemed incredibly artificial to have him kill no one when he convinced his crew to release Angelus to fight the Beast).

You could easily say that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was, by its very nature, a look at the many and varied flaws of adolescence, and seemed to have veered off course when they deviated from that. I'm not sure I would say that; maybe I would.

I would add the assertion that although Joss would maddeningly deviate from his own established mythology to serve a story, he was much more careful to track everything the characters said and did and try to remain true to all that had been built inside them. I look at Dark Willow and see the girl who knew how to hack government entities before she ever learned about vampires. In Hell's Bells I see the Xander who couldn't convince his obviously keen brain to deal with math, now faced with the possible patterns he'd drawn from his parents (examples of adult flaws, I'd think) and similarly unconvinced that he could deal. Buffy was the only one that I think they failed on - to get to the strategy of Chosen, which was in character, she spent a whole season dumbed down and empathy-deficient.

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Replies:

  • Re: Adult flaws -- dlgood, 12:07:37 07/24/06 Mon
  • In the context of the comparison... -- Celebaelin, 13:55:24 07/24/06 Mon
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