Hey there,
As previously mentioned in some of my other posts I am doing a dissertation on Buffy and I really need help finding key quotes said by Buffy herself about the theme of loneliness and isolation in the show. Quotes can be from any episode so please help me, it would be much appreciated.
😄
"You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it's not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own.
The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone.
If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening. She turns to face him."
- Earshot season 3.
"You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the slayer is always cut off. There's no mystical guidebook. No all-knowing council. Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law."
- Selfless season 7.
Faith: "OK. The point. Me, by myself all the time. I'm looking at you, everything you have, and, I don't know, jealous. Then there I am. Everybody's looking to me, trusting me to lead them, and I've never felt so alone in my entire life."
Buffy: "Yeah."
Faith: "And that's you every day, isn't it?"
Buffy: "I love my friends. I'm very grateful for them. But that's the price. Being a slayer."
One that comes to mind is what she says to Spike in "Afterlife:"
"It's okay. I can be alone with you here."
And of course, she tells him this before she confides in him about being pulled out of Heaven. There are many ways to interpret this, but my take is that she's saying she feels comfortable enough around Spike to just sit there quietly and not feel the need to talk.
"You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the slayer is always cut off. There's no mystical guidebook. No all-knowing council. Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law."
- Selfless season 7.
Faith: "OK. The point. Me, by myself all the time. I'm looking at you, everything you have, and, I don't know, jealous. Then there I am. Everybody's looking to me, trusting me to lead them, and I've never felt so alone in my entire life."
Buffy: "Yeah."
Faith: "And that's you every day, isn't it?"
Buffy: "I love my friends. I'm very grateful for them. But that's the price. Being a slayer."
It might be worth comparing/contrasting to Buffy in season 6 about not being above the law in regards to Warren (despite that he was magic, and arguably so was his technology).
And, especially, this (one of the reasons I thought Buffy and Faith sort of switched places), Faith saying this to Buffy in season 3:
"But that's not it. That's not what bothers you so much. What bugs you is you know I'm right. You know in your gut we don't need the law. We *are* the law."
If I could take season 7 more seriously, I'd love for them to have revisited this.
Post automatically merged:
There's also this from Conversations with Dead People (one of the few eps I loved in that season), which could be added to the s3 conversation where Buffy tells Faith she's hurting herself and not better than others, where Faith says of course they are:
BUFFY
I have all this power. I didn't ask for it. I don't deserve it. It's like... I wanted to be punished. I wanted to hurt like I thought I deserved. I sorta think?you know, this is, um, complicated. If you'd rather just f*ght...
HOLDEN
(leans back) Tell me.
BUFFY
I feel like I'm worse than anyone. Honestly, I'm beneath them. My friends, my boyfriends. I feel like I'm not worthy of their love. 'Cause even though they love me, it doesn't mean anything 'cause their opinions don't matter. They don't know. They haven't been through what I've been through. They're not the slayer. I am. Sometimes I feel?(sighs) this is awful?I feel like I'm better than them. Superior.
HOLDEN
Until you can't win. And I thought I was diabolical?or, at least I plan to be. You do have a superiority complex. And you've got an inferiority complex about it. (laughs) Kudos.
BUFFY
It doesn't make any sense.
HOLDEN
(sits forward) Oh, it makes every kind of sense. And it all adds up to you feeling alone. But, Buffy, everybody feels alone. Everybody is, until you die. Speaking of...(stands) you ready for our little death match?
I expect the above would go good with Spike saying all Slayer's have a death wish (though just because that's how he sees it doesn't mean that's how it is, though plenty of people in disaster situations did give up and kill themselves fast, and I could easily imagine the same psychology at work in Slayers, though not necessarily all of them)
Yeah it's like how Faith was something of a marker/thermometer to Wesley in season 4, she highlighted how much he'd evolved in his moral code into darker shades since he last saw her. I think it was similar that Faith was a marker to show how Buffy had changed. In the times that Buffy is the law, she's more separate from everyone else than ever which is why she doesn't like to admit she's the law or act like she's the law. Having lost a lot of innocence by season 7, Buffy can better stand to admit that she's the law more often times than she wants to be.
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