I always saw the feminism in BtVS as deliberate because of the many subversively feminist MotW eps, but I also think the show failed in several areas. I got the impression that it started to rest on its laurels and started to get sloppier instead of going deeper.
(Even if I do love her as her self-assured S7 incarnation.
I have a thing for HBICs, ice queens, and tightly wound characters so early Buffy is too well-adjusted to be my usual type.
Though I also wonder what it says that when Buffy does become the Final Girl - like in the Wish - she actually dies. Because that seems like an unnecessary corollary, and seems to me to say that female survival can only be shifted/inverted, rather than equally spread out... I might be too attached to Wishverse!Buffy.)
I figured that the mass slayer spell was the solution to spreading out the survival rate of girls. Since slayers were supposed to be "one girl in all the world" that meant they were alone, the exception, the token heroine. The Chinese slayer dies alone, Nikki Wood dies alone, Kendra dies alone, Wishverse!Buffy dies alone, Buffy dies twice and gets resurrected by her friends. ...And it would have been brilliant if slayer empowerment wasn't done through mystical rape. So yeah, I agree that the female empowerment metaphor was dodgy.
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(Even if I do love her as her self-assured S7 incarnation.
I have a thing for HBICs, ice queens, and tightly wound characters so early Buffy is too well-adjusted to be my usual type.
Though I also wonder what it says that when Buffy does become the Final Girl - like in the Wish - she actually dies. Because that seems like an unnecessary corollary, and seems to me to say that female survival can only be shifted/inverted, rather than equally spread out... I might be too attached to Wishverse!Buffy.)
I figured that the mass slayer spell was the solution to spreading out the survival rate of girls. Since slayers were supposed to be "one girl in all the world" that meant they were alone, the exception, the token heroine. The Chinese slayer dies alone, Nikki Wood dies alone, Kendra dies alone, Wishverse!Buffy dies alone, Buffy dies twice and gets resurrected by her friends. ...And it would have been brilliant if slayer empowerment wasn't done through mystical rape. So yeah, I agree that the female empowerment metaphor was dodgy.