Scott Allie appears to have very little to do with writing the comics, he just gets to watch the process but I don’t think he’s wrong to say that how Buffy arrived at her current state needs any more explaining than we’ve already had. I think part of the problem is a difference in perception of just how compromised she is right now. Scott describes it as “a little corrupt.” Most of the people commenting here seem to want to see it her as a hopelessly compromised Godfather type figure. Personally I’m with Allie on this.
All those examples of earlier rule-bending made sense in the wake of an on-coming apocalypse. Was there a big apocalypse that demanded that Buffy form her own band of vigilantes into an army?
In The Chain the Slayer army averted an apocalyptic invasion of the human world by Yamanh’s demon hordes. This time they didn’t have an amulet and while they might have defeated Yamanh’s army in hand to hand combat the losses would have been enormous. Buffy does have some legitimate sources of funding (she says so in the first issue of TOYL) but if they weren’t enough to acquire the level of technological re-enforcement she needed in this emergency I don’t believe the Buffy we’ve known would balk at stealing from the rich to save the lives of her poor Slayers (and ultimately those of the rich as well).
The world has changed. In A Beautiful Sunset Buffy, while questioning whether they are doing any good, points out that while they have been fighting more demons it just seems that there are more demons to fight and even speculates that this might be a reaction to the existence of multiple Slayers. As I see the old order may have been corrupt and based on the effective enslavement of one girl in every genration but it had reached some kind of equilibrium (where demons went about their business and the human population tolerated the death rates and pretended the problem just didn’t exist). Now we have the balance shifting. Giant demon attacks are frequent enough to keep Buffy busy 24/7 in After These Messages. Some of that may be due to being able to finally see what’s going on worldwide but either way the problem is order of magnitudes greater than it used to be when all she had to deal with was Sunnydale. Vampires are commandeering subs, the war is escalating and Twilight is playing both sides against the middle but it’s that very middle which may be the determining factor. It’s not just the plain people of Tokyo getting trampled and turned it’s the so-called crack elements, the slug things and the talking trees. These are magical creatures but not demons as such, a new factor that Twilight may not have reckoned with his plans to wipe out magic, babies and bathwater both. Also replace the word magic with aggression and he begins to sound like the Alliance.
But I digress (and overrun the word limit on comments). My main point is that not only was there a major apocalypse but also a constant onslaught of minor ones, which require more than the old hand to hand tactics to keep at bay. TBC
no subject
All those examples of earlier rule-bending made sense in the wake of an on-coming apocalypse. Was there a big apocalypse that demanded that Buffy form her own band of vigilantes into an army?
In The Chain the Slayer army averted an apocalyptic invasion of the human world by Yamanh’s demon hordes. This time they didn’t have an amulet and while they might have defeated Yamanh’s army in hand to hand combat the losses would have been enormous. Buffy does have some legitimate sources of funding (she says so in the first issue of TOYL) but if they weren’t enough to acquire the level of technological re-enforcement she needed in this emergency I don’t believe the Buffy we’ve known would balk at stealing from the rich to save the lives of her poor Slayers (and ultimately those of the rich as well).
The world has changed. In A Beautiful Sunset Buffy, while questioning whether they are doing any good, points out that while they have been fighting more demons it just seems that there are more demons to fight and even speculates that this might be a reaction to the existence of multiple Slayers. As I see the old order may have been corrupt and based on the effective enslavement of one girl in every genration but it had reached some kind of equilibrium (where demons went about their business and the human population tolerated the death rates and pretended the problem just didn’t exist). Now we have the balance shifting. Giant demon attacks are frequent enough to keep Buffy busy 24/7 in After These Messages. Some of that may be due to being able to finally see what’s going on worldwide but either way the problem is order of magnitudes greater than it used to be when all she had to deal with was Sunnydale. Vampires are commandeering subs, the war is escalating and Twilight is playing both sides against the middle but it’s that very middle which may be the determining factor. It’s not just the plain people of Tokyo getting trampled and turned it’s the so-called crack elements, the slug things and the talking trees. These are magical creatures but not demons as such, a new factor that Twilight may not have reckoned with his plans to wipe out magic, babies and bathwater both. Also replace the word magic with aggression and he begins to sound like the Alliance.
But I digress (and overrun the word limit on comments). My main point is that not only was there a major apocalypse but also a constant onslaught of minor ones, which require more than the old hand to hand tactics to keep at bay. TBC