Invisible girl question

[Chasing Cordy]

In a season seven episode, there is another girl that almost becomes invisible, but Buffy walks up to her and says something and she comes back into being.
Why wasn't it like that for Marcie?
Buffy clearly was interested in her and wanted to help. Shouldn't Marcie have come back into view just a bit?

Just a thought...

[What happened to good TV?]

Well this was just as the girl was disappearing. (Because she felt she wasnt noticed. Of course Buffys slap showed someone notived! Marcie had been invisible for a LONG time before Buffy came along, so that'd be why she wasnt all slightly visible-invisible girl.

Well thats my understanding anyways

[Black Eye Guy]

The ceases are very different, as WHTGTV said the other girl had not become fully invisible yet, Marcie was totally lost to it, Both physically and mentally, she was so malice and evil, there was no going back for her!

[Carousel Girl8]

Yeah I guess its like an illness if you catch it in time you can cure it but Marcie had been invisible for too long.

[Araminta Tyler]

Exactly. Enough said...so I didn't really make a point there. Hm. Oh well anyway, I agree with you.

[Another Apocalypse?]

You could really compare being invisible to a sort of cancer really. Find it, acknowledge it and treat it early, then there's a great chance of recovery, but for Marcie, she'd had it for so long, that she was completely enveloped by it, with no hope of return.

[Randy Giles]

I kinda thought the Invisible Girl episode was interesting...that the people around you, ignoring you, could cause something supernatural to happen to you! lol

[HeaTk]

^ lol
ya just had to add the token whistle.

[FaithFan2005]

I think this episode is very god.I too was not popular but had friends in high school,it makes you think.

[Angel's vision]

It was rather sinister that she was selected at this "school" ..*shudders*

I did feel for her but she chose to be bad so it is a pity she never sought redemption. She had been invisible too long for it to stop.

[MLLamble]

I think that once you're totally invisible, you stay invisible. Also, Marcie was only noticed because of the bad things she was doing, not because of who she was. Also, maybe she wanted to stay invisible so that she could get revenge.(?) That leads to the question, though, why didn't a Vengeance Demon find her?

[Blondie Bear]

Interesting note on this: I finished reading The Physics of the Buffyverse by Jennifer Ouellette a few months ago. If anyone needs to learn physics, this is a great place to start--it was VERY understandable. Anyway, she says that Marcie should have become visible as soon as she touched anyone or when people started noticing what she was doing, because invisible things can't interact with the physical world (if they do, they start interacting with the light spectrum again and hence become visible), and by the Buffyverse rules, when they realized what was going on, they were paying attention again and she shouldn't be invisible anymore.

There's also a whole section on why vampires should still reflect in mirrors in this book, too, but that's for another thread. :biggrin2:

[Edmund Blackadder]

Interesting note on this: I finished reading The Physics of the Buffyverse by Jennifer Ouellette a few months ago. If anyone needs to learn physics, this is a great place to start--it was VERY understandable. Anyway, she says that Marcie should have become visible as soon as she touched anyone or when people started noticing what she was doing, because invisible things can't interact with the physical world (if they do, they start interacting with the light spectrum again and hence become visible), and by the Buffyverse rules, when they realized what was going on, they were paying attention again and she shouldn't be invisible anymore.

There's also a whole section on why vampires should still reflect in mirrors in this book, too, but that's for another thread. :biggrin2:


Yes, and want to know the response to that?

This is a ficticious world set in the realm of the supernatural, it doesn't have to tally with real world stuff just be believable and explained in a way that marries it perfectly with said supernatural world and a viewers imagination.

[Blondie Bear]

Yes, and want to know the response to that?

This is a ficticious world set in the realm of the supernatural, it doesn't have to tally with real world stuff just be believable and explained in a way that marries it perfectly with said supernatural world and a viewers imagination.

I understand that. The OP was asking why Marcie didn't become visible when people started noticing her again, and I gave the physics-based reason why she should have. In no way was I saying that the show sucks or something just because they bend the rules of physics; that's what makes the show interesting. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of the things that happen in the Buffyverse tally perfectly with physics, with just a slight twist here or there to make it magic. It's part of what Samuel Coleridge called the "willing suspension of disbelief"--you have to have enough believable stuff there so that when you bend the rules slightly, the audience stays with you and believes that, too.

[Jules]

Doesn't the girl in season 7 disappear anyway once Buffy walks away (my knowledge of season 7 is less focused than that of season 1-3).

I always just got the assumption that Marcie was past help. She'd gone unnoticed for too long so the effects were permanent.

[Buffybot]

Well, if you notice: When they show how Marcie felt ignored, she had been "starting" to turn invisable too. Raising her hand in class, the teacher not calling on her (ever) she lowers her hand and it starts to disappear. If someone had slapped her then, she would have been fine too :)

[Joyce Summers]

If someone had slapped her then, she would have been fine too

Slapping her after she went invisible might have been a good idea too. You know with the whole psycho looney thing she had going on. Like Anya said 'sometimes in the movies when they go crazy they slap 'em'.

[Fake Shemp]

i thought marcie was too far gone by then and felt that buffy's words were insincere

[Slayerfest 99]

I don't think so, but we don't know 'cause after Buffy knocked Marcie down the government came in and took her away, so we don't know if she could have been "interventioned" or something like that.

[disco biscuit]

You know what I didn't get? How Marcy was COMPLETELY ignored. If she had parents or siblings, then at least SOMEONE had to notice her, right?

[Blondie Bear]

I don't think it mattered if she WAS completely ignored as long as she FELT completely ignored. Like Buffy says in S7, "There's this thing that happens on the Hellmouth where the way a thing feels is the way it is."

[Joyce Summers]

Exactly what BB said. Marcie felt ignored, she wasn't exactly completely ignored. Her parents would have paid attention to her but that wasn't the attention she wanted- she wanted the populars to like her and pay attention to her so it was there lack of, that made her feel ignored enough to become invisible.
But she was a very shy girl (so she wasn't overly noticed by teachers and classmates) who had some weird wicked obsession with being one of the populars and when they rejected and ignored her, she, I think, felt like it was end of the worldy and she fell into a 'Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, think I'll go and eat worms' mood which in Hellmouth-World translates into 'Turn invisible'.