(in unrelated news i'm thinking about replacing my sherlock icons, mostly because i don't actually like the show all that much anymore, but i'm not sure what i'd replace them with. and, like, would i have to go back and change out the times i used it or what)
(also some of these pro-feminism things scheduled hit differently now)
This was another dream from last Wednesday, and it takes the ‘dead Slayer ghost’ idea and runs with it in a more coherent way.
The First Slayer was actually played by Kendra’s actress and actually can speak normally.
They do something so most Slayers chosen—most Potentials—are the ones they’ve already taken away from their families. So they can warn them not to trust The First (in case she does break through)—yes, they specifically call her the First—and prevent them from hearing her. Buffy wasn’t supposed to be Chosen, but she specifically did something.
Most die because it’s a dangerous job, but also, the Council is purposefully crippling them. The First Slayer tries to warn them with prophetic dreams but they’ve been told not to listen even if they see anything.
Buffy gets these prophetic dreams. Buffy gets training from her counterpart, at first asking Giles why, she doesn’t seem that bad, and then lies to him. “One of my best friends is dead.”
They also talk about other things, like school. The First Slayer likes to try to appear as the wise mentor, but actually has no clue what to do with this school thing, so a lot off it is getting her to relax and not feel like she has to try so hard to be a leader, mentor, or respected. The fact that she can even disagree on certain subjects (like a love life), without, as Buffy says, ‘losing her cred’.
There’s a really cool bit of them training to use a sword with a 360 degree camera shot, The First Slayer doing the movement and Buffy following (kind of like that shot with Nero and Vergil from the pachinko game or whatever it was, only with warm brown tones instead of blues).
The Shamans had things under control. The Watchers ‘couldn’t take that chance’. What really happened was that one of them was a ‘traitor’, set up a ritual of thousands of years of female pain and betrayal (it had to be unnatural; worse than childbirth) in order to bring back one of the Ancients. They’re not still alive, but their ancestors still are—it’s what they set up with the nepotism, i.e. ‘our family lines vow to make sure the Slayers are always there to stop the evil’.
Oh! And The First Slayer misses her friends with which she also fought evil, and they all had the axe, but the Watcher’s Council has been systematically hunting down and destroying the other axes as ‘sources of evil’, so only the really well hidden one is left. And Buffy gets the axe and gets the idea to awaken all the Potentials, and The First Slayer is like, ‘what are you planning’, and she’s like, ‘you’ll see.’ Only I’m sure it doesn’t actually end there—they have a ritual to stop, and the Potentials that were found and trained against them would actually probably fight them.
So you’ve got the Myth Arc with The First Slayer from the very first episode to the last, and you’ve also got the Monster of the Week episodes, and you’ve got the Season Ender villains. You’ve got an in-universe explanation for the metatextual idea that ‘women have to suffer to get power’, because we have now explained Joss. You have women supporting each other, you have women buying into the patriarchy and tearing each other down (i.e. the awakened Potentials that are on the Watchers’ side), some who can be talked to, some who can’t. You have allies, like Giles, who took a while to be convinced (because who wants to believe they’ve been working for an evil institution for forever?). Something has to be done with Xander to tie into this theme better; I don’t know if you make him trans or what. Probably.
And it’s also an ongoing mystery, that Myth Arc. How deep does that rot go? Which family was involved? What were they planning? How do we stop that?
I have many names.
Shaman is one. The rest have been taken from me, stripped as I begged. I could curse them in revenge, but that is no longer in my power.
She-Who-Hunts-Evil, She-Who-Stalks-the-Night, She is the Slayer.
I have many daughters, and I try to talk to them, try to break through, but they have done something and they will not hear me. Until one.
And together, we will root out this evil, we will find it and kill it. After all, that is what we do. Because we are Slayers.
