Dawn's Keyness and the Art of Speculation

[maggie2]

My poll about Dawn's keyness has provoked some vigorous discussion, so I just wanted to state my own position about how her keyness might (or might not) relate to season 8.  It is simply this.  That a season named Twilight began with the character named Dawn as a giant has always seemed to me like a strong suggestion that Dawn is going to matter.  We've since had enough references to her latent keyness for that to be available for the story as it unfolds.  #25 describes Dawn's status as a doll in a way that to me is highly resonant with her status as a key.   #25 also contains lines that would foreshadow Dawn's death (possibly even at Buffy's hand) if that's what turns out to happen.

This is not a prediction.  It's just reading the tea leaves to see what possible directions the story could go.  There are literary markers in the text that would make a story about Dawn's keyness seem rich and well-foreshadowed.  What that story would be I have no idea.  I'm not a creative writer.  Maybe it will be cool.  Maybe it'll be lame.  Maybe it won't happen at all.  I don't know.  All I'm doing is pointing to some details available to serve a literary function if the story goes a certain way.  It's just some speculation. 

Over on Buffy forums, King of Cretins replied that we'd need pages of exposition to explain how Dawn is still a key and available to be used in this story.  That was the main impetus for the poll.  Along the way there have been complaints that it would be bad writing if the story went this way.  Since my argument just was that there are literary markers available for use if the story goes that way, I obviously don't think a story going in this direction would necessarily involve lame out of the blue writing.  But it could still turn out to be a craptastic story.  I have no idea what Joss will do in his last arc, much less how well he's going to do it.

End of my part of the mountain made out of a very, very small molehill.

Comments

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I think they're doing a bit more textual work than that. In Twilight we see Dawn having to remind people that she was a giant/centaur/doll. Along with the key references I think that holds a place in the text for the scoobies having buried keyness the way they're on the way to burying giant/centaur/doll. And since Dawn's keyness didn't matter in season 5 in terms of who she was (a little girl) I don't see that it needs more development here. The whatever of whatever she can do will be developed in the last arc (if the story even goes this way) and we can hop up and down about whether that whatever makes sense. Given the way the seasons are going, smart money would say 'not', but I'm more hopeful than that, and in any case I see no reason for all the shouting now.

Anyway, we disagree, but that's where I'm coming from.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

It's the Key coming to the foreground after years of the writers deliberately ignoring it and obscuring its presence, all while coinciding with her death. Direct causality isn't the question.