Magic and Soul

What once was fun, sexy, and romantic has become painful, violent addiction in "Wrecked", a 2001 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is the episode where Buffy and Spike finally have sex and Willow's compulsion to use magic becomes a full blown After School Special.

Willow's Magic Addiction is a sterling example of how bad allegory can be. Willow meets a dealer, she starts losing track of time when she gets high--in this case, literally getting stuck to the ceiling.

She loses her sense of priorities and gets Dawn in danger just to get a fix. It all ends with a car crash and a summoned demon. Magic, which just last year was the symbol of Willow's bond with Tara, has now just become drugs. Tara no longer has anything positive to say for magic, she's basically a different character. Wouldn't this all work better if they'd made Willow literally a drug addict? Yes, it would.

However, I quite like the Buffy/Spike plot. I heard the network insisted on the pairing but I think this actually works to the show's benefit. You can sense the writers trying to justify it as they go and they struggle as much as Buffy does--which makes her dialogue much more natural. Life isn't often a neat and tidy allegory, people do things that fly in the face of their self-perception, things that contradict how other people perceive them. Though, actually, it's not so out of character for Buffy who for several seasons has been built up as having a carnal side, and as having increasing trouble forming and maintaining emotional attachments.

It's also another interesting route for the show's premise of vampires not having souls. We can't help sympathising with Spike a little, even when he's being a jerk. It's almost like the concept is propaganda designed to make the Slayer more comfortable with genocide.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1703

A watching ghost arranged a sheet to walk.
By just a beard the being was spotted late.
For here the restless dead at times may talk.
Such pretty spectres want a special gate.
Another place displays her face for me.
Projected thoughts or maybe flesh and bone.
The forest hides beneath the fossil tree.
A treasure's safe beneath the mossy stone.
"The Devil's Way"'s a song of darkened frames.
Disordered art was pushed at ev'ry side.
In hasty blood, his claw records the names.
A budget movie set's a place to hide.
Another bug absorbs the sugar sky.
Another wing's tattooed with how to fly.