Characters who are drawn to danger: Buffy Summers

Sep 10, 2011 21:13

There's a "danger" square in this Kink Bingo line. One of my ideas was to do a vid for Claire Forlani's character in Meet Joe Black, as she found herself drawn to a man who turned out to be Death. I had a song picked out that would have worked well. (No, it wasn't "Don't Fear the Reaper.") But the more I thought about it, the less I liked it for this square. The character wasn't in love with Death and all the danger he represented; she thought he was a guy she met in a coffee shop, and when she finally realized who he really was, she drew back, disturbed, refusing to believe the truth. The
kink_wiki explicitly states that characters don't have to be attracted to the danger in order to fulfill the requirements, but I started to lean toward a different fandom where that was actually the case: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Specifically, Buffy herself.

(Yes, Faith is, too. Maybe more intensely so. She can have her own essay sometime.)

I started to edit a vid today about Buffy set to the same song in lieu of Meet Joe Black. The theme turned out to be more "yay, suicide" and/or "Buffy's life really sucks" than "yay, danger," though, so instead we're going to talk.

To put it simply: Buffy is drawn to dangerous situations and dangerous people. It stems from her calling as the Slayer; it's her job, her duty, to seek out and kill demons and put a stop to the evil machinations of various troublemakers. That means going out every night and kicking ass. It means facing villains who might be more powerful than she is even with her supernatural strength.

One of the first times that happens-when she learns the Master is prophesied to kill her on Prom Night-she breaks down in angry tears, saying, "I don't want to die." But then she steels herself instead of running away, says goodbye to her friends, takes up her crossbow and heads underground to meet her fate. The Master beckons, she approaches, and the prophecy is fulfilled. She doesn't balk.

That's an example of facing danger out of responsibility. As the seasons progress, she learns to enjoy the fighting; to seek it out even when she doesn't need to, even to get off on it. She has fun. Everyone who knows the show has surely seen her throwing witticisms at vampires as she throws punches, enjoying what Spike calls "the dance." I remember in the fifth season opener, she's lying awake in bed next to Riley. She slips out, goes to the cemetery, fights and stakes a vampire, and then is relaxed enough to go to sleep. If memory serves, Spike and Faith both make comments about how she finds fighting and Slaying sexually arousing.

Or we could talk about danger in the form of Buffy's lovers. In the first couple of seasons, she's drawn to Angel-mysterious, dangerous, alluring. As a vampire whose soul isn't as securely tethered as it first seems, he could kill her-almost does, a couple of times-and she's supposed to kill his kind, yet she finds herself falling in love with him. She is so drawn to him despite (or perhaps because of) the danger he poses to her and to others that she sees him secretly, against the wishes of her Watcher and her mother. They flirt with even greater danger when they continue to see each other even after they learn that he could turn evil again if they have sex. Until he decides it's safer to move to another city, that is.

She's drawn to Dracula, arguably one of the strongest and most dangerous vampires still around, when he shows up in Sunnydale. She thinks the situation is under control, but he's able to put her under his thrall successfully enough to drink from her throat and convince her to drink from his wrist before she recovers herself and sends him packing.

And in the last couple of seasons, she sleeps with Spike, the vampire who tried to kill her multiple times before he got fang-neutered. (Interestingly, it's not until he discovers a loophole in the Initiative chip in his brain that allows him to hurt Buffy that they have sex. Their first kiss comes in the middle of an intense physical fight the likes of which they weren't able to have since he was chipped two seasons earlier.) If you could put it that gently when they literally bring down a house and wreck his crypt. He's the only one around whose strength rivals hers-who can hurt her. She admits to using him so she can feel something. This is a few episodes after she has returned from the dead a second time, when she needs highly stimulating circumstances to feel alive.

So sometimes Buffy seeks out danger because she needs it to feel. Sometimes it's because she finds it (or its embodiment) attractive. Sometimes it's part of her job ("It's what I do," she tells a young man in an alley). And sometimes it's to save people; especially if it's to save her friends. The ultimate example is the fifth season finale, when her sister's blood opens a magical portal that starts spewing demons and dragons and sinkhole-causing lightning across Sunnydale. Rather than allowing her sister to die to close the portal, Buffy sacrifices herself for the sake of her friends, her remaining family, and the rest of the town. It's the same calling that drew her to the Master in season one, but this time she jumps off the platform and into the portal with a visible sense of satisfaction-even, when she falls through the crackling energy, a look of bliss.

It makes you wonder. Spike says once that "every Slayer has a death wish"-that they go out every night to deliver death and end up wondering what it's like, end up "a little in love with it." The First Slayer tells Buffy that "death is your gift," leaving it open to interpretation whether that's the death she deals out or her own life. Season six and the end of season five have heavy themes of depression. Does she become involved with Angel, Spike and/or Dracula because they have the power to take (her) life? Does she leap into the portal because she's selfless, or because she's curious, because she wants to? What does it mean that when Willow and the team resurrect her, all she wants to do is go back to where she was? I haven't read the comic book sequels to the show, but from what I understand, even after dozens or hundreds of Slayers are activated around the world in the series finale, rather than enjoying an ordinary girl's life Buffy still leads a team to fight the forces of darkness.

Buffy lives danger. She lives in the dark, fighting dark creatures. After a while, it becomes part of her. She doesn't know how to live without it. Being around her exposes others to danger; some stick around, and some won't. Some pay the price for their association. Buffy pays it more than once. But she never walks away from danger. Whether it's because she wants to or because she needs to, she always walks toward it.

…Still going to work on that vid.

Written for my Kink Bingo "danger" square.

kink bingo, btvs, meta

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