Day Twenty: Female Character Meme

Day Twenty: Favorite female antagonist: Faith Lehane




Come on, did you seriously think she wouldn’t be in this list? Even before her turn to the dark side, Faith was clearly cast in the antagonist role. She was everything Buffy disapproved of (but secretly craved). Where Buffy was starting to be weighed down by her responsibilities and the Chosen One role, Faith threw herself into it. In addition, she was sexual, blunt (at times downright crass) and not particularly interested in being tied to anybody else, whether friends, authority figures or lovers (Faith’s “Get some and get gone” approach was far removed from Buffy perpetual Angel angst). Of course, things were much more complicated than the seemed, and Faith was as envious of Buffy for belonging as Buffy was of Faith for being so free.

Part of what makes a good antagonist is their dynamic with the “hero”, and to say Faith got under Buffy’s skin would be an understatement-to the point where the show took the metaphor to its literal conclusion in S4. Faith’s naked hunger for all things Buffy, be it her downfall, her life, her approval or just her was the driving force behind her stint into villainy (and seriously, the femslash was *off the charts*).

While I’ll always be about the B/F, I loved every single step of Faith’s journey. Whether she was torturing Wes (and pushing buttons I didn’t even know *had*), dancing like the world depended on it, hitting rock bottom or giving Connor a deserved ass whooping, from the moment she swaggered into my screen, I was basically Faith’s bitch for life. And yes, I’m aware that some of that may have been due to Eliza’s overwhelming hotness, but who cares? I enjoyed every second of it.

( Days 1-30 )

Day Twenty-One: Female Character Meme

Day Twenty-One: Favorite female character screwed over by canon: Cordelia Chase



There was a depressingly high number of contenders for this spot (“the entire female cast of BSG” was but one of the possible answers), but I decided to interpret “screwed over” on both an intratextual and extratextual level. Because the writers had so thoroughly destroyed every single thing that made the character who she was, that by the time she came to her unpleasant end, it was an actual relief to see her written out of the show.

It's especially sad because of the squandered potential. Now, I loved Cordelia as far back as her relatively simplistic Queen C BtVS season 1 personna. I know a lot of people in fandom have issues with the Mean Girl-ness of her, but honestly, even her cruelest put-downs were thoroughly enjoyable to me because of the wittiness and delivery (and even back then, there were hints she was more than the typical Popular Girl-it was S1 Cordelia who drove her car into Sunnydale High, in her own crazy Grandtheft Auto With Demons game). As fond as I am of the Scooby Gang Dynamic, there was something refreshing about a character who refused to be drawn into their Buffy-centric worldview, and who dealt with Apocalypses and things that go bump in the night with the same casual annoyance that she displayed for a bad fashion choice. The scene that epitomizes high school Cordelia for me is in the aftermath of the Slayerfest misunderstanding, where Cordelia faces off with the cowboy vampire in the library. Alone and without the ghost of a chance in a physical fight, Cordelia manages to scare off that vampire by not only convincing him she is a Slayer, but that she is the alpha Slayer that he would be a fool to even consider trifling with.

As fun and infinitely quotable as Sunnydale!Cordelia was, I didn't fall in love with the character until her move to Angel. The first two seasons of the show did amazing things with the character, tempering her unshakable confidence with a cynical world-weariness, giving her both a burden and a purpose in her dedication to help the helpless (more so once she got the visions) and for the first time having her build really meaningful and deep relationships with the rest of the cast. Her growth was an organic extension of the character's potential.

Until it wasn't. I think where things went wrong is that the writers started writing her not as person, but rather as some ideal that Angel strove towards, and reduced all her story and motivation to supporting Angel, helping Angel along his journey, and loving Angel. Ironically, I shipped them pretty hard in the first two seasons, until they decided to turn her into a cipher, and then every shippy scene and references to “champion” produced much groaning and eye-rolling. It especially bugged because of the nasty subtext that all those inexplicable changes were part of somehow making Cordelia "worthy" of Angel, which, excuse me while I go get my vomit bucket. I do think Charisma realised how made of crack her storylines were (the pseudo-familial scenes with baby Connor, the sexing of teenage Connor, the freaking Saintification and the Beast clusterfuck, UGH!), because she seemed to be operating on autopilot for the last seasons, and all the spark and joy was sucked out of her performance.

Plenty of Whedonverse characters had less then stellar character developments, but what was done to Cordy was an abomination. R.I.P., real!Cordelia. We'll always have those five seasons of snark.

( Days 1-30 )