Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3: Choosing Your Future
The moral case for making sure you choose the right future and the things you need to get them.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
It's a question we all get asked sooner or later. You have to choose something to do with your life and commit to it in a pretty long term way. Parents and other adults will insist upon an answer to the question or at least they want you to think it through and have some idea who you want to be. This places a lot of pressure on young people to make choices which are going to affect the rest of their lives. They will look back on these moments as central to who they are and how it lead them to become the person they are now. Even if you end up choosing something different from what was the initial answer to the question was, you can still remember the choices you made, even if you have trouble remembering who you were at the time you did so.
Previously in this space, we looked at what it means to accept responsibility for things you might not have much control over. Then we looked at living with the consequences of your choices and how difficult that can be. However, once you've done these things, you still have to make some kind of choice. You have to be able to go on with your life regardless of these decisions. You have to make choices and in doing so you either limit or expand the number of choices you can make going forward. If you make the right choices, whatever those might be, you can end up in a good place. If you make the wrong ones however, only bad things are likely to happen.
“You made some bad choices Buffy, you just might have to live with some consequences.”
Up until this point, Buffy has had mostly bad choices to choose from. Choose to accept her destiny as a slayer and fight the demons and vampires around her, or don't and live with the fact that this means people will end up dying. Not only that but she has to go on knowing that those who die are a direct result of her actions. There isn't really an upside to such a reality in any meaningful sense. What we see in season 3 though is the fact that it doesn't only have to be bad choices. That she can choose better even within her somewhat limited options. She may be a slayer but this doesn't mean she can't do things like try to become homecoming queen, have a decent prom and perhaps leave her responsibilities as a slayer to someone like Faith.
This is part of the problem with having to make such hard choices. They make you into a somewhat cynical person, believing that there really isn't anything better than the world they currently live in. Just an endless series of terrible choices where only terrible outcomes are available. Whether it's having to choose between the person you love and the safety of the world, having to decide between participating in school or living completely outside the system or perhaps even keeping your family safe or letting them go by leaving town. All of these can seem like a future full of pain and suffering.
“I'm here because I'm worried about you two, in general. I don't have to tell you that you and Buffy are from different worlds. She's had to deal with a lot, grow up fast. Sometimes even I forget that she's still just a girl. She's just starting out in life. But I think we both know that there are some hard choices ahead, if she can't make them, you're going to have to. I know you care about her, I just hope you care about her enough.”
While in the past, she had to make compromises in order to have some kind of normality along with her work as a slayer, that may not in fact always be the case. Or at the very least, she comes to believe this over the course of the third season. Opportunities present themselves to Buffy like Scott Hope as a way to get over Angel and find someone new. The fact that she ran away from home doesn't mean she can't still get an education and potentially succeed because people like her mother and Giles work to make that a reality.
This is part of the problem with choosing a better future. If you don't have someone who is willing to advocate for you, things are going to become much harder. In contrast to the support of people like Willow and Xander can provide for Buffy and her role as the slayer, support from her parental figures is an incredibly powerful thing. As part of her need to accept responsibility, Buffy needed someone her own age to rely on. While before she could downplay the importance of the adults in her life, with really only Giles providing any kind of positive role model. Someone who can show Buffy that she doesn't have to see growing up as nothing but pain and suffering. Now she needs something different.
“Your affection for your charge has rendered you incapable of clear and impartial judgment. You have a father's love for the child. And that is useless to the cause.”
Or at least not the only one who understands the full tragedy which is Buffy's life. It isn't until season 3 that her mother Joyce can truly grapple with who her daughter really is and the responsibilities that have been placed upon her. Although obviously Giles still is the type of person who has to come down on Buffy for her desire to avoid responsibility, she does learn that he's sometimes right about the things he wants her to do. Which allows her to look up to him and provide a sense of stability.
After all that she's been through up until this point and had her entire life fall apart, she needs more than just Giles to look down on her when she goes too far. Much as Buffy might want them to, Xander and Willow along with Cordelia and Oz can't stand up for her the way she needs. They can't save her from the fact that she ran away from home. They can't fix the fact that she was expelled from school. She needs that more than anything from people like Giles and her mom. This is a big part of what makes someone able to have a better future. Knowing that there are people around you who would actually stand up for you when you're at your lowest moment.
“What is hell but the total absence of hope? The substance, the tactile proof of despair.”
As a result, it becomes clear to Buffy that she doesn't always have to choose between bad things. That there are good choices she can make. People she can count on to help her through the consequences of her actions not to mention the actions of other people. She doesn't have to choose the never ending torment that is her relationship with Angel, given what would happen if they did truly express their love for each other in the most obvious way possible. She can be with other people if she wants. She doesn't have to see her life as a tragedy waiting to happen ultimately ending in her brutal and painful death. There are other ways of being.
Faith is probably the best example of this. Her joy of living and willingness to embrace aspects of herself which Buffy hasn't been able to up to this point is very attractive to her, both figuratively and literally. While Kendra presented a contrast in the heavy weight she's carrying, Faith presents the opposite way of thinking. The idea that she doesn't have to feel that the world would end if she doesn't take every single moment of her life completely seriously. She can be something more. Of course, like everything in life, it's far from clear that simply embracing all the benefits makes things better.
“Oh yeah, give me the speech again please. Faith, we're still your friends, we can help you. It's not too late.”
“It's way too late. You know it didn't have to be this way, but you made your choice. I know you had a tough life, I know that some people think you had a lot of bad breaks. Well boo hoo, poor you. You know, you had a lot more in your life than some people. I mean you had friends like Buffy, now you have no one. You were a slayer and now you're nothing. You're just a big selfish worthless waste.”
Her outlook is in some sense a result of not having the kinds of institutional support that Buffy does. She doesn't have the loving parents or even a dutiful Watcher like Giles who would go to pretty much any lengths to give her what she needs. To the point of being willing to die. Faith is completely alone, or at least feels that way. Even those who she comes to rely on, whether it's the Watcher she did have or Gwen Post and eventually Buffy and her friends themselves, aren't as reliable as she needs them to be. Which naturally means that when she does get herself into some serious trouble, she's not able to trust that the people around her will back her up. She can't be sure Buffy and Angel and everyone else who wants to help her won't turn on her. Some of them do in fact turn on her, namely Wesley, and that can only end badly.
“Faith you don't get it. You killed a man.”
“No, you don't get it... I don't care.”
Which isn't to say that Faith can't make good decisions and have a better life in the end. Only that in order to get there, it's going to take a lot more effort. In order for her life to have some kind of meaning and purpose, she has to do more. Especially since she knows the benefits of making the wrong decisions. That people who do the wrong thing can enjoy themselves while doing it. An obvious temptation exists to slide back into old patterns. To be willing to do the easy thing rather than the right thing. Even though Buffy has made her fair share of bad decisions and it's lead her to consider a darker path, she's ultimately chosen the better path. Doing so is in large part thanks to the support she has around her. The fact that Xander and Willow have been able to push back when she needed it.
Through Faith, we see that if you love it all too much, things can end terribly and you'll end up limiting so many of your potential choices. Particularly when the things you do attract the attention of law enforcement whether it's stealing or actually killing someone. Obviously these things exist on a spectrum of potential downsides. But once you find yourself getting away with the small things, it's much easier to consider that you might be able to get away with bigger things. So long as there's no one around who might be willing to say that they shouldn't, there really isn't any reason to stop.
You have to be willing to choose the kinds of things which won't destroy your life and the people around you. The people in your life who care enough to show you a better way. An ideal to strive for, hopefully it's right in front of you where you can see it clearly. Someone who can show you that your life can be fun even if you do have to shoulder great responsibility and know that it can have bad consequences. Something which Buffy ultimately comes to when she realizes how painful a life based purely on your own enjoyment can lead you down the wrong path can be.
In rejecting Faith's way of thinking, Buffy has her life choices open up before her. But we'll get to that when we get into season 4. You can also read about family responsibility in season 5.
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