155 replies to this topic

[DeeeDee]

I've been thinking it would've been more interesting to have seen Dawn mature in Season 6 and grow into her own person a little more. There was some of that in S7 (although IMO not enough) and I liked some of it (her different interactions with various characters). I think that it would've been interesting to see her growth as opposed to her sister that season and wouldn't have made her so useless throughout the season IMO. Maybe they could've explored her reaction to the fake memories and Buffy's sacrifice. Or even done something with the whole Key thing or reactions to Willow in S7, just to give her something to do in general.

I did like her bond with Tara, especially after Joyce's death.

[Set]

I once theorized that with Buffy's death, the spell that created Dawn was starting to unravel. (After all, Dawn was 'made from [Buffy]' so if Buffy ceases to be, whither Dawn? Typical Buffy plan. 'You're made from me, so to save you, I'm going to kill myself...')

If that were the case, the forces that bound the Key into her material form might have begun casting about for something to maintain themselves. And in season six and seven, we begin to see Dawn exhibiting characteristics of Giles, Xander and Willow, while those characters all seem to *lose* those same characteristics. Slowly but surely, it seemed that Dawn was consuming the other Scoobies alive, leaving them hollow shells of themselves, while she wandered around casting spells, using computers, doing research, helping fix windows, etc. Meanwhile, Giles, Willow and Xander seem to be losing those same skills, being less able to research, or use the computer, or cast spells, and otherwise behaving dispirited and lifeless.

But no. Apparently Dawn wasn't magically made from Buffy after all, since after Buffy died she kept on trucking, in complete defiance of magical laws of sympathy and contagion (which, to be fair, I'd warrant Marti Noxon has never heard of, since her idea of 'magic' is creating scantily-clad cage dancers with a wave of your hand).

[Driade]

Aww, Set, now you made me sad about yet another could-have-been-cool-and-interesting-for-last-seasons plot development. I don't really need more of those. I have lots already.

Anyway. I can live with Dawn not disintegrating after Buffy's death, but I never understood why the whole fake memories thing wasn't solved. For Pete's sack, they could incorporate the loss of fake memories into the consequences of Tabula Rasa spell, and it would have perfectly served as a reasonable cause for Dawn's-angst-of-season-6, which existed anyway, only, you know, with much less reasonable cause.

Fake memories is my only complain about BtVS which I'm never, ever going to drop. They're also the reason why I could never really adjust to Dawn's character, no matter how they tried to make me like her in season 7.

[janedoe4]

How much impact would losing the false memories of Dawn really have, though? The point of the fals memories was to conceal the fact that she was really the Key, but once everybody figured it out but decided she was still important and part of the family, would it really matter whether they "remembered" her first day of preschool or not?

[DeeeDee]

If the monks could harness that amount of power and erect the amount of change that they did, why couldn't they wield that power or get rid of it or Glory altogether?

I think had ME matured the character in S6 & 7 even more I could've really grown to like Dawn. For a lot of the last couple of seasons it felt like she never had an individual personality of her own, and I could've actually dug her being a composite of parts of each of the Scoobies personalities to some degree.

I also wondered why they never explored her relationship with Willow even more since that seemed like interesting territory on both sides too.

[croaker]

How much impact would losing the false memories of Dawn really have, though? The point of the fals memories was to conceal the fact that she was really the Key, but once everybody figured it out but decided she was still important and part of the family, would it really matter whether they "remembered" her first day of preschool or not?

There is a great deal of disagreement on that point. I believe the mere intelectual knowledge that the memories are false does not counter the emotional weight of the false memories. Something exemplified by Buffy's "memory" of Dawn being brought home from the hospital being one of the memories she loops when Dawn's kidnapping breaks her in WoTW.

Knowing the memories were false did not erase them and restore the true memories. I have argued (ad naseum) that Buffy et al were unable to freely choose to accept Dawn as long as they had the false memories.

Are the memories about Dawn truely false?

BUFFY
My memories... my mom's?

MONK
We built them.

NPLH transcript.

Personally I don't think the monks are particularly trustworthy narrators, but I can't think of any evidence to support the notion that the monks inserted Dawn into the timestream in the past rather than in BvD.

[Driade]

I believe the mere intelectual knowledge that the memories are false does not counter the emotional weight of the false memories.

Yes, that's it in a nutshell. Thank you for expressing it in a more coherent way than I ever could. :)

Aside from the plot device, the whole fake memories thing basically served as an analogy to adoption, but I found the analogy quite flawed, because literally fake memories do not exactly equal to the memories the adopted child might consider as "fake" in light of finding out about his/her adoption. Dawn found out that she was "not real", but she didn't feel it. I fail to understand how such a thing is possible to feel when you still have the memories. Whereas if the fake memories were erased and real ones retained, it could have been treated it as an analogy of never-to-be-cured amnesia, which, IMO, would have worked better. And restore the BtVS canon of the first four years in its place.

As it was, IMO the writers failed to address the fact that fake memories wasn't only Dawn's problem. They were implanted into everyone elses heads as well, but somehow Scoobies were pretty okay with the news that they remembered at least a few years incorrectly. And they didn't even begin to speculate about a possibility to, you know, find out what really happened in their lives during all that time. So, the way I saw it, technically fake memories pretty much threw out four years of characterization out of the window and also failed to be a convincing excuse for... well, anything.

And I should probably stop right here, 'cause I sense season 5 biterness coming and that's not really the place for it.

Edited by Driade, Mar 6, 2004 @ 7:39 PM.

[janedoe4]

Well I think Dawn's false memories, at least some of them, were an essential part of her being human and couldn't be removed without essentially reverting her back to a non-human ball of energy. She had to remember how to tie her shoes, even if she never really learned it when she was 6 because she never was 6, you know? She had to retain some sense of self and identity, which memories conscious and subconscious play a big role in. Everyone else's false memories are the bigger problem here, I think. Why doesn't anyone seem to wonder what was actually happening in their lives all those years? What was Joyce actually doing on the day she remembers giving birth to Dawn? If I were Joyce, I'd be pretty freaked out by that thought.

[DeeeDee]

The amount of power that the monks had still kind of unsettles me though. They're roughly the equivalent of God. It bothers me that they can basically fundamentally change the show but not dispatch Glory IMO OMMV.

[Lil Miss Muffet]

I found the analogy quite flawed, because literally fake memories do not exactly equal to the memories the adopted child might consider as "fake" in light of finding out about his/her adoption.

Heh - I dunno - personally, I think Dawn's metaphor is structured the same way a lot of BtVS metaphors are structured. As such, I don't necessarily think it's flawed. I think a huge facet of the show is taking a real-world emotional issue and dressing it up in magnified, supernatural clothing. I find that metaphors in BtVS often take figurative emotional issues and shape them into larger and more literal problems. To throw out a few examples...

IMO, the notion of the Slayer is pretty much a metaphor for being an outsider. A real-world girl who's an outcast might *feel* like she's a freak. Where as our girl Buffy is quite *literally* a freak. The show cleverly magnifies the issue for the sake of exploring it. Buffy's scenario serves as a larger-than-life reflection of an actual issue.

Another example - Marcie the Invisible Girl - she serves as a metaphor for being ignored. A real-world girl who goes unnoticed might *feel* as though she's invisible. Where as in the show, Marcie is quite *literally* invisible. Once again, it's a real-world emotional issue amped up and made more forceful.

Which brings us to Dawn's scenario - which is a metaphor for adoption. A real-world girl who finds out she's adopted might *feel* as though she's been living a lie. Where as in the show, Dawn was quite *literally* living a lie. Yet again, the show has taken an actual emotional issue, and has made it larger, more literal, and more potent.

So I don't necessarily see Dawn's scenario as a flawed analogy. If anything, I see it as indicative of what BtVS always does - i.e., the way the show takes an actual emotional issue, and expands it so that it's more literal, more potent, and more tragic. I mean - if the metaphors mapped exactly onto their real-world counterparts?... well then they'd no longer be metaphors.

So I dunno - I guess my perspective differs from yours.

Edited by Lil Miss Muffet, Mar 6, 2004 @ 11:18 PM.

[DeeeDee]

I also wish that Kristine had been around more in S5 because the introduction of Dawn should've played a fundamental role in Joyce's character development/storyline as well as Buffy's IMO. For the simple fact that she now had a second child from out of nowhere if only to begin with.

I know Joyce seemed to get the hang of Buffy's Slaying to a degree but the arrival of Dawn seemed like something that should've been dealt with in much greater depth on her behalf as well IMO.

Edited by DeeeDee, Mar 7, 2004 @ 9:11 AM.

[Victoria M.]

What was Joyce actually doing on the day she remembers giving birth to Dawn?

I don't think memories work quite like that, even ones that haven't been tampered with. There are a number of things that I remember very vividly from my past, and I may even have a date that I associate with them, but I can't remember everything about that day. After a while significant memories detach themselves from their surroundings and exist in sort of isolation. It's entirely possible that Joyce retains her actual memories of the day she thinks she gave birth to Dawn, but doesn't realise that they happened on that particular day (if she ever accesses them at all, because they're likely to be pretty mundane memories). I think it's made clear, when Buffy says that even though Dawn was always around, it's only recently that she's become such a pain, that the monks basically tacked Dawn-memories onto the real ones. Buffy remembers all her patrols, all her fights (with the caveat that most memories fade over time and are only retrieved following a specific trigger) but she also thinks she remembers that Dawn was around then, she just didn't impact on her life much. The implication is that the monks didn't actually wipe or tamper with any existing memories, they just added Dawn onto them. And given that the human memory really doesn't work with dates and timelines - you need a journal to keep all that sort of thing straight - then there's no problem with inserting new memories of eg. giving birth, without wiping the memory of what really happened on that day. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of Dawn's memories only exist in the pages of the Dawnmeister chronicles. Certainly when I go back and read my old diaries I am constantly amazed at how much of that stuff I'd forgotten, or can't properly remember even with the prompting of the diary entries. In the same way I often can't recall how people from my childhood looked without the prompting of photos.

[DeeeDee]

I've been wondering about something. After S5 is or isn't Dawn still "The Key"?

[Bishop2]

Yes, Dawn still is the Key. The Key's special dimension destroying powers only work once a century so she's got a lot of mystical energy and nothing to do with it.

There is, however, a throwaway line from Dawn in S6 in which she says "I'm not the Key anymore." Not that she would actually know, of course.

However, the writers have said in interviews (back when S6 premiered) that Dawn is no longer the Key. There's nothing to back this up in the show itself other than Dawn's self-proclamation. Another sign of how the writers started to prefer to tell us the story through interviews rather than through the actual show. I'm just going to assume she IS the Key. Regardless of their claims, your version is better.

[DeeeDee]

I had thought Dawn retained her "keyness" especially when her sudden ability to translate Sumerian popped up which I thought was just some facet of her "specialness" (for lack of a better term). It also doesn't make sense (IMO) that if she had something extra (the key power/magic) that apparently was her sole reason for existing, that it would disappear all of the sudden at the beginning of S6.

Edited by DeeeDee, Mar 12, 2004 @ 2:54 PM.

[Scade]

I figure if Dawn still had mystical energies from her Keyness, then Willow probably would have drained her to create the magic portal in Get It Done.

I remember the last time I watched the episode, I noted that Dawn seemed to be knocked out at the time. This might have interfered with Willow's power sucking.

[Set]

I had thought Dawn retained her "keyness" especially when her sudden ability to translate Sumerian popped up which I thought was just some facet of her "specialness" (for lack of a better term).

And yet the book was translating itself magically, it wasn't, I thought, anything special that Dawn was doing. Kennedy could have been reading it for all it mattered, since it was the books magic doing it.

As for the Key bit, it was bizarre how they utterly forgot about that, or dismissed it with Dawn's words, 'I'm not the Key anymore, or, if I am, I don't open anything.' I would have preferred if some sort of development had come from that, as long as they were keeping the character around.

It was the worst of both worlds. Dawn was still around, and the only thing that could have made her interesting and worth keeping around was dropped like a dead hedgehog. Meanwhile, interesting characters are either killed, or sidelined until the actors leave the show out of boredom.

I really would have liked if they had addressed the fake memories thing as well. Tabula Rasa and the Tara mindwipage would have been good places to bring that up. Tara's freakout over Willow altering her memories *should* have had some sort of powerful resonance with Dawn, since that's all her past is, fake memories inserted into her friends and family's minds. If Tara is all upset about the one, does it follow that she'd blindly accept Dawn's existence?

[DeeeDee]

If Tara is all upset about the one, does it follow that she'd blindly accept Dawn's existence?

I think that would've been a really interesting POV to have been explored with the bond that was shown between Tara-Dawn. I'd have thought there might be some conflict in Tara's feelings on the matter and it could've given AB some good material to work with.

But Set did Dawn learn Sumerian, before or after reading from the book? Otherwise where did the ability of her to translate languages come from all of the sudden?

[janedoe4]

IIRC, Dawn was translating haltingly but reasonably with the help of some reference books. Then the book started translating itself, making her reading much smoother prompting Xander (I think) to ask, "When did you get so good at Sumerian?" But there was no change in her ability, it was the book itself. She did have some aptitude for language since she was able to translate it reasonably with conventional studying (in contrast to, say, me and my high school Spanish homework), but nothing supernatural. I think.

[DeeeDee]

I liked the Buffy-Dawn relationship. They struck a fine line between mutually antagonistic & comforting each other. SMG & MT really came across as sisters IMO.

[jensgirl]

I've recently discovered this show in reruns on FX and I'm only familiar with season four. Yesterday, season five started and Dawn was introduced and I'm royally confused. Where the bloody 'ell did she come from? Can someone take pity upon me and clear the mystery up?

[jensgirl]

Keep watching, it will be cleared up in the next few episodes. Your supposed to be confused.

D'oh. I was afraid of that. Wait . . . I already know the spoilerage about Dawn being the key and all - is that what I'm supposed to wait to find out? I want to know if I missed something along the lines of an explanation for Buffy having a long lost sister.

OT: Can you tell that I have, like, absolutely no patience?

[janedoe4]

If you know about Dawn being the Key, you know most of it. They do explain how she turned up as Buffy's sister, though.

[valny]

Where the bloody 'ell did she come from?

I think that was a lot of people's reaction(like mine) who have just seen certain episodes or seasons out of order. That explaination episode of Dawn's that everyone talked about will be on Thursday 5pmEST and again on Friday 8amEST.

jensgirl: I love seeing new people discovering the show. If you want, you could do what quite a few newcomers have done and post some of your opinions of each episode in each of the Seasons thread. We always love reading what newbies think of each episode,character,arcs,seasons, etc. janedoe4 has done it, very well I might add.

Edited by valny, Apr 28, 2004 @ 8:07 PM.

[jensgirl]

Thanks for the invite,valny. I must admit that I'm a little imtimidated to post because I feel like such a loser for not tuning in when the show actually aired. Once again, I'm crazy late to the party.