Again, one of my favourite Willow backstory fanwanks; growing up in a family like that and with a limited social circle, she learned a lot about the importance of being a good person, but less about the how.
So much yes. You know, on Whedonesque I once argued that Willow could almost be said to lack a moral compass. That's not quite right; she genuinely wants to be good, and I don't think there's anything fake about that. But she is very divorced from any sense of how, or any instinctual understanding (ala Buffy) of what good actually is.
One of the great things about her arc is the way Willow's ability to make moral distinctions actually changes very little between season 1 and season 6. It's just that the personal signposts of what constitutes bad behaviour is FOR HER change completely. In Lie to Me, Willow is convinced she's a terrible, terrible person for telling one lie. She's wondering if making a move on Oz at all makes her a slut. Buffy et al. talk her out of holding herself to such a ludicrous standard. And so c. Doppelgangland she becomes convinced that she can still be good while letting her standards slip. By season 6, she's convinced she's still a good person when she's erasing Tara's memories. In both cases, she has a bit of an essentialist definition--good people do good things, and bad people do bad things--it just gets flipped from "I do bad things, ergo I'm a bad person" to "I am a good person, therefore the things I do are good." (Of course, this also leads to "Cordy/Faith/Anya does bad things, therefore she is a bad person.")
This is, naturally, not all bad--Willow really does need to ease up on herself from season 2. And she does do a lot of good up to season five. But....
Great point about Willow's Sheila-esque ability to turn the conversation topic around. It's most obvious in "Tough Love" but it's there a lot.
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Date: 2010-09-18 01:34 am (UTC)Again, one of my favourite Willow backstory fanwanks; growing up in a family like that and with a limited social circle, she learned a lot about the importance of being a good person, but less about the how.
So much yes. You know, on Whedonesque I once argued that Willow could almost be said to lack a moral compass. That's not quite right; she genuinely wants to be good, and I don't think there's anything fake about that. But she is very divorced from any sense of how, or any instinctual understanding (ala Buffy) of what good actually is.
One of the great things about her arc is the way Willow's ability to make moral distinctions actually changes very little between season 1 and season 6. It's just that the personal signposts of what constitutes bad behaviour is FOR HER change completely. In Lie to Me, Willow is convinced she's a terrible, terrible person for telling one lie. She's wondering if making a move on Oz at all makes her a slut. Buffy et al. talk her out of holding herself to such a ludicrous standard. And so c. Doppelgangland she becomes convinced that she can still be good while letting her standards slip. By season 6, she's convinced she's still a good person when she's erasing Tara's memories. In both cases, she has a bit of an essentialist definition--good people do good things, and bad people do bad things--it just gets flipped from "I do bad things, ergo I'm a bad person" to "I am a good person, therefore the things I do are good." (Of course, this also leads to "Cordy/Faith/Anya does bad things, therefore she is a bad person.")
This is, naturally, not all bad--Willow really does need to ease up on herself from season 2. And she does do a lot of good up to season five. But....
Great point about Willow's Sheila-esque ability to turn the conversation topic around. It's most obvious in "Tough Love" but it's there a lot.
And yes on the monster-metaphor!