Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series)

by Gilene Yeffeth

  In each of these alternate universes, at least one person realizes that reality has been manipulated, that something is “wrong.” In “The Wish” (3-9) Cordelia, as maker of the wish, and Anyanka, as granter of it, know the world has changed. Adam, the Initiative’s demonic cyborg, recognizes in Jonathan’s reshaped universe: “None of this is real. The world has been changed. It’s intriguing, but it’s wrong” (“Superstar,” 4-17). Why does Adam alone remain unaffected by Jonathan’s spell? His explanation—“I’m aware. I know every molecule of myself and everything around me”—is unconvincing. Perhaps some aspect of his unique status as a demon-machine hybrid renders him immune to magic, at least of this kind. This possibility, however, only provides a rationale for the commentator role he fills as the audience’s representative within the story, aware (like the viewers) of both realities, original and transformed. In my opinion, the audience does not need a character to perform this function, since, just as with the arrival of Dawn, we can hardly avoid noticing the transformation of reality.

  As for the overarching shift in the dominant reality, the rewriting of Buffyverse history catalyzed by the advent of Dawn, certain people recognize her as “not real.” This recognition comes from the brain-damaged and the mentally ill, including Joyce Summers when her brain tumor grows out of control. An impaired mental state, apparently, confers resistance to the magic used by the monks who transformed the Key into Buffy’s sister and altered everyone’s perception accordingly. Unlike Adam’s immunity to Jonathan’s spell, which remains unexplained and leads nowhere, this recurring theme of mental derangement illuminates the issue of perception versus reality. The few people who know the “truth” in each of these alternate realities represent a minority view. Those who deny Dawn’s reality are literally insane. Anyone who, in “Superstar” (4-17), spoke up to insist that Jonathan did not star in The Matrix or invent the Internet would be dismissed as delusional. In “Normal Again” (6-17), Buffy’s belief in demons and her own Slayer destiny marks her as mentally ill in the alternate reality, but in the dominant reality of the Buffyverse we know, her growing belief that Sunnydale and her friends do not exist manifests itself as a mental breakdown. If “reality” can be defined in postmodern style as “consensus reality,” those who contradict the consensus by denying the Master’s control of Sunnydale, Jonathan’s heroic achievements, or Dawn’s relationship to Buffy must be victims of delusion.

  What evidence do we have for and against the objective existence of each of these parallel worlds? If every possible change in the course of events can cause a separate timeline to branch off and develop according to the logic of its own history, an infinite number of alternate worlds can come into existence, each objectively “real” in its own dimension. This concept appears, of course, in many science fiction novels, such as Robert Heinlein’s Number of the Beast, in which even imaginary universes—every one ever conceived—have concrete existence on their own dimensional planes. It first appears that the bizarro realm of “The Wish” (3-9) is only an altered Sunnydale warped by Anyanka’s magical response to Cordelia’s desire. As Larry succinctly evaluates the situation, “The entire world sucks because some dead ditz made a wish?” The premise seems to be that the bizarro world simply replaces the dominant reality. Anyanka’s assertion to Giles, “This is the real world now” echoes bizarro-world Buffy’s flat declaration, “World is what it is. We fight. We die.” “Doppelgangland” (3-16), however, complicates this assumption. Anya appeals to her demonic patron to “fold the fabric of time.” Yet, when Willow joins Anya in the abortive spell and glimpses the bizarro realm, she says, “That wasn’t just some temporal fold, that was some weird Hell place.” This remark gives the first hint that the alternate reality has an objective existence in a parallel dimension alongside the dominant reality as we know it. Vamp Willow’s physical arrival in dominant-world Sunnydale, in my opinion, confirms this hint. The tangible existence in the “real world” of a character from another timeline suggests that both worlds exist simultaneously.

  Dialogue from the episode seems to confirm this interpretation. For example, Anya says to Vamp Willow, “You know this isn’t your world, right?” Vamp Willow replies, “No, this is a dumb world. In my world, there are people in chains, and we can ride them like ponies.” Later she tells dominant-world Willow, “Your little schoolfriend Anya said that you’re the one that brought me here. She said that you could get me back to my world” (“Doppelgangland,” 3-16). Whether Cordelia’s wish created the bizarro realm or simply accessed a dimension that already existed, it seems clear that this realm now has an independent existence, as a locale from which Vamp Willow can be summoned and to which she can be returned. While the “real” Willow’s spell must have reached into the bizarro world’s past in order to extract Vamp Willow before her death, this point need not prove fatal to the objective reality of the other realm. Time may flow differently in the two worlds, as in many fantasies of cross-dimensional travel (such as C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series) and in the third-season Buffy episode “Anne” (3-1). Note the implications of Vamp Willow’s mission statement to her vampire lackeys: “This world’s no fun anymore. We’re going to make it the way it was” (“Doppelgangland,” 3-16). To her, the bizarro dimension is the “real” world, while what we think of as the dominant reality is an alternate (and inferior) timeline. Reality in the Buffyverse depends on one’s point of view. Whether Cordelia’s wish created a new universe, as Jonathan in a sense did in “Superstar” (4-17), or only allowed access to a previously existing realm, that dimensional plane now has objective existence.

  When Jonathan uses an augmentation spell to make himself into a “paragon” in “Superstar” (4-17), reality reshapes itself to fit his transformed status, rewriting past history. For example, now everyone remembers that Buffy gave Jonathan the “Class Protector” award, rather than vice versa. As discussed above, what consensus reality accepts as the truth about the past is essentially the truth. Subject to the magical alteration of past and present, however, the established story line continues with respect to the hunt for Adam and the tension between Riley and Buffy. The changes effected by the spell have been seamlessly integrated into the preexisting reality, just as, in the dominant timeline, reality has changed only as far as necessary to integrate Dawn’s past into the remembered past. To Anya, the world created by Jonathan’s spell is real, and any alternative seems wildly implausible: “You could even make a freaky world where Jonathan’s some kind of not-perfect mouth breather.” When the Scoobies begin to suspect the truth, Riley ventures the question, “So if this is the world he created, what’s the real world like?” Willow, who expresses fear of the changes that will result from reversing Jonathan’s spell, says after the dominant reality has been restored, “I can’t believe we believed it.” “It seemed so real,” Riley confirms, to which Buffy responds, “Well, in that world, it was real.” Buffy’s comment reinforces the point that “reality” can be subjective.

  Unlike “The Wish” (3-19), “Superstar” (4-17) involves some overlap between the two versions of reality. After the spell is broken, the inhabitants of Sunnydale do not instantly forget Jonathan’s world. “I think some people are kind of angry,” he notes. He mentions that “the twins moved out,” implying that the two young women are still living with him when the reversal occurs. (Since his luxurious home obviously ceases to exist when the dominant reality is restored, do the twins suddenly find themselves in Jonathan’s “normal” residence, perhaps the basement seen in season six?) We notice that some events that occurred in Jonathan’s world have become part of the dominant reality’s past. For instance, when Buffy tells Jonathan that he “can’t keep trying to make everything work out all at once, with some huge gesture,” he reminds her that he gave her similar advice about her relationship with Riley, advice she then puts into practice (“Superstar”). We may conclude that the alternate world of “Superstar,” unlike the world of “The Wish,” does not exist independently alongside
the dominant reality, but while Jonathan’s spell remained in force, that world was as “real” for its duration as the dominant timeline is in the series’ present.

  What about the alternate world of “Normal Again” (6-17)? On the surface, Buffy’s experiences in the mental ward appear to be delusions evoked by the demon’s venom. Do we see any evidence that these experiences are actually glimpses into a parallel timeline that split off from the dominant reality at the point of Buffy’s brief commitment to a mental hospital years earlier? Perhaps we are seeing, as Spike puts it, “Alternative realities. Where we’re all little figments of Buffy’s funny-farm delusion.” Buffy wonders, “What if I never left that clinic?” and her “delusions” show her probable fate if she had remained a mental patient. The final scene of the episode suggests that she has seen an actual alternate reality rather than the phantoms of her own mind. Note that in the closing scene, set in the institution, we see Buffy in a catatonic state. Since she has no awareness of her surroundings, that scene cannot be presented from her point of view. Without Buffy as viewpoint character, we must assume the action is being shown from an omniscient perspective, as objectively real. The placement of this scene at the close of the episode reinforces this assumption. The institutional psychiatrist in the alternate timeline has, so to speak, the last word. This alternate world, unlike that of “Superstar” (4-17), occupies a completely separate and independent dimension from the dominant reality. Whatever the “intent” of the writers, we can evaluate only the events we see in the episode as filmed, and what we see in the final scene of “Normal Again” (6-17) is a separate, self-consistent world.

  In this episode several lines of dialogue draw deliberate attention to the fictionality of the dominant-world Buffyverse. For instance, Xander protests, “What? You think this world isn’t real just because of all the vampires and demons and ex-vengeance demons and the sister that used to be a big ball of universe-destroying energy?” (“Normal Again,” 6-17). The doctor in the mental ward reminds us of the retroactive alteration of the dominant reality by the introduction of Dawn: “Buffy inserted Dawn into her delusion, actually rewriting the history of it to accommodate a need for a familial bond.” “Rewriting,” of course, precisely defines what the program’s creators did when they “inserted Dawn.” When Buffy comes around to the belief that her life as a mental patient is a fact and the dominant timeline a delusion, she echoes Xander’s comment: “’Cause what’s more real? A sick girl in an institution . . . Or some kind of supergirl—chosen to fight demons and—save the world?” From our vantage point as television viewers inhabiting our own primary reality, of course, the former seems more credible. In terms of plausibility, the Buffyverse is to the mundane “real” world of the television audience as Jonathan’s world is to the Buffyverse dominant timeline. To add “The Wish” (3-9) to the analogy, in the hierarchy of plausibility the bizarro dimension stands somewhere between the dominant timeline and Jonathan’s world. The metafictional references in “Normal Again” draw attention to the malleability of the “real” throughout the series. To propose an extreme instance, what if Willow had carried out her threat against Dawn in “Two to Go” (6-21)? If Willow’s power caused Dawn to revert to pure energy, would the monks’ spell reverse itself and restore the dominant timeline to the condition it would have reached at that point if Dawn had never existed?

  The advent of Dawn at the beginning of season five and the glimpse of Buffy’s own alternate life in “Normal Again” (6-17)—as it would have unfolded in a mundane world like our own, in which demons, vampires, and Slayers are purely imaginary—reveal how malleable, fluid, even fragile, this dominant reality is. The parallel worlds in “The Wish” (3-9) and “Superstar” (4-17) also draw attention to this fluidity. So do less durable windows into alternate timelines, such as Xander’s view of his supposed future in “Hell’s Bells” (6-16). Although this precognitive glimpse turns out to be a deception perpetrated by a malicious entity, it is certainly a possible future, one path Xander’s life with Anya might follow. Another temporary alteration of the timeline occurs in the Angel crossover episode “I Will Remember You” (1-8), in which the Oracles agree to erase the previous twenty-four hours, allowing only Angel to retain the memory of that brief fragment of alternate history. The bits of metafictional dialogue in “Normal Again,” by foregrounding the fictional status of the Buffyverse as a whole, further emphasize the fluidity and fragility of the “real.” In short, the theme of alternate realities lurks at the central core of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The general of the Knights of Byzantium predicts that if the Key is activated, “The walls separating realities will crumble” (“Spiral” 5-20). To a greater or lesser extent, however, the erosion of this wall has already occurred many times.

  Marked for life by reading Dracula at the age of twelve, Margaret L. Carter specializes in the literature of fantasy and the supernatural, particularly vampires. She received degrees in English from the College of William and Mary, the University of Hawaii, and the University of California. Her nonfiction works include Dracula: The Vampire and the Critics, The Vampire In Literature: A Critical Bibliography, and Different Blood: The Vampire as Alien. She is also the author of a werewolf novel, Shadow of the Beast, and three vampire novels, Dark Changeling (2000 Eppie Award winner in horror), Sealed In Blood, and Crimson Dreams. With her husband, retired Navy captain Leslie Roy Carter, she coauthored a fantasy novel Wild Sorceress. She has recently ventured into erotic romance with three vampire novellas, “Night Flight,” “Tall, Dark, and Deadly,” and “Virgin Blood” from Ellora’s Cave (www.ellorascave.com). Visit her website, www.margaretlcarter.com.

  Lawrence Watt-Evans

  MATCHMAKING ON

  THE HELLMOUTH

  Pop quiz: Who is the ideal mate for Buffy?

  a)Angel

  b)Riley

  c)Spike

  d)Clem

  e)None of the above

  Actually, it’s someone you would never guess, as proven by this essay by Hugo Award–winner Lawrence Watt-Evans.

  AS THE CHOSEN ONE, the Slayer, Buffy Summers is doomed to spend her life battling monsters. Is she doomed to loneliness, as well? Must she go through life unpartnered? Sure, she has her friends, but let’s face it, so far her love life has been a disaster—every relationship has failed spectacularly. Only three ever really even got off the ground, and all of them crashed and burned. Angel’s curse pretty much destroyed any chance for long-term happiness there, she and Riley never managed a solid emotional connection, and Spike—well, that was messy, wasn’t it?

  So who’s out there who might be a fit lifemate for the Slayer, the Chosen One?

  First off, I think we can immediately eliminate any ordinary, untrained human being. Those around Buffy are inevitably going to encounter the creatures of the night—demons, vampires, evil gods, the entire panoply. We got a look at this all the way back in the first season, with Owen in “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date” (1-5), and again with Scott in the third season, and even Parker in the fourth. Anyone in Buffy’s life is going to get involved in her Slaying, and a normal man’s life expectancy in such a situation, Xander notwithstanding, is not likely to be very great. Bringing a new arrival up to speed, teaching him to cope with the menaces Buffy faces, would be risky and time-consuming, to say the least. Furthermore, an ordinary mortal boyfriend’s presence is likely to endanger Buffy, as well, as she finds herself worrying about defending her man at times when she really doesn’t need any distractions.

  But wait, you may say—what about Xander himself? He’s somehow managed to survive seven years facing the darkness; he clearly has something going for him.

  True enough, Xander has proved himself in the field of battle, but let’s face it, often he survived only because Buffy deliberately shut him out of whatever was going on. That sort of exclusion is one thing for a friend; it’s something else entirely for a lover.

  Besides, there’s all that history. There was a time when Xander and B
uffy might have happened, but that time is long past. They’ve lived too close to each other for too long. They know far too much about each other’s exes—can you honestly think that Xander would not mention Spike in some unfortunate fashion during the inevitable lovers’ spats that crop up in any relationship? That wouldn’t exactly go over well with a touchy Buffy, would it?

  And it seems pretty clear that Buffy likes a little darkness, a little violence, in her men. Every relationship that’s gone anywhere at all has been with someone holding back a dark power or secret of some kind—Angel suppressing Angelus, Riley, the drug-enhanced secret government agent, Spike, with only the chip preventing him from being a monster. Some might argue that this string was merely bad luck, but her behavior makes this unlikely; Spike, probably the series character with the greatest insight into people’s motives, has certainly told her that she’s drawn to the dark, and her denials, never very convincing, eventually ran out entirely. Her relationship with Riley, let us note, seems to have begun to collapse almost as soon as he was free from Professor Walsh’s drugs and persuasion, while learning that Angel was a vampire only increased her lust for him. Her affair with Spike only took off when she discovered that he could fight her again.

  Perhaps it’s because of her own internal darkness, the fact that by her very nature as a Slayer she is as much a destroyer as a protector, or maybe it’s just an extreme form of the common female interest in bad boys, but whatever the reason, she is indeed attracted by men with dark secrets and hidden power. Much as she may hate to admit it, she’s drawn to that danger, that possibility of the loss of control, and Xander doesn’t have it. Oh, he has a temper, he can hold a grudge, but that’s not the same thing. Buffy wants someone who tests the boundaries, who risks unleashing his own darkness and Xander doesn’t fit that profile—and given his abject terror of becoming his father, he wouldn’t want it, even if Buffy was part of the package.