Put yourself in the position of Joyce Summers, the understatedly hot mother of the title character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After your divorce, you have custody of your only child, a 16-year-old girl, who has recently been expelled from her high school after some … delinquent behavior. You also have a problem getting a job until you hear of a business opportunity in a new city. It’s a dream job in your field, and the stars seem aligned in your favor: you easily get the financing you need to start the business, you get the house you want at an incredibly low price, and the new school is happy to take your child. Morever, your daughter quickly becomes friends with the hunky male librarian (or hot female librarian, if you’re a straight male or lesbian) who seems very trustworthy and almost becomes a co-parent with you. You’re more than a little attracted to the librarian, but you try to keep that to yourself because you don’t want to risk screwing things up for your daughter.
But not all is hunky-dory. There’s a surprisingly high death rate in this town – tons of mysterious deaths. Weird things happen on a regular basis that no one seems to want to admit happened after the fact. Your daughter is frequently involved in these events. Eventually you discover that your child is the latest in a long line of Vampire Slayers, and that the hot or hunky librarian has been training her to fight the forces of darkness – never telling you.
What’s your reaction? Bear in mind that we’re assuming that vampires and demons actually exist in this scenario, and that your daughter is uniquely qualified to fight them; she saves lives on a weekly basis, and there are several occasions in which the entire town, state, or continent would have fallen to the Dark Ones if not for her intervention.
Bearing in mind that I don’t actually have a kid of my own currently, so I don’t have firsthand feelings to draw on:
If she’s the only one who can? Fuck yeah, my kid’s a superhero!
ETA: More seriously, and more philosophically, it would be good to find out that my kid had already found her talent and is using it to make a difference. It’s dangerous, sure, but generally speaking, those who can should help those who can’t.
“Anyway you can earn some money doing this so I can retire to be your manager? I mean all of the actors and actresses can support their parents why can’t the savior of the world?”
For a minute, I read the thread title as “Your daughter is IN Slayer…”
I don’t know if she could bang her head that hard or play a credible rendition of Dead Skin Mask…;)
Oh - and if my daughter was the Slayer, we have the type of relationship where I would know about it. That’s what’s always been a bit of a disconnect with Joyce (and yeah, Kristine Sutherland was MILFy in her way) - if she was the type of mom who could handle her daughter being the Slayer, she’s the type of mom who would already know her daughter was the Slayer because they have that type of communication in place. If Joyce really was a “my daughter tells me nothing and I have no sense of what she does or why she burned down that school” there is no way she could process Slayer-hood…
The question, boys & girls, is “What is your reaction to the Watcher who has been endangering your baby’s life without your knowledge or consent?”
Wordman, it’s been a while since I saw any pre-season-five Buffy, but did not Giles specifically and regularly encourage Buffy to keep the truth from her mother?
That sounds about right - but remember, Joyce and Buffy already had a strained relationship…
…so yeah, I didn’t answer your question. If I just found out AND I was already concerned about whether my teenage daughter was walking on the wild side - I’d totally freak. It would take some doing to move past the superficial appearance of the situation and onto the unique powers and Watcher relationship involved - if ever…
The last paragraph kind of veered off and I responded to that instead. My bad.
Sexy female librarian? Well, clearly we can’t have someone I don’t know that well guiding my child into harm’s way. Dinner at 8?
Yeah, I’m being a bit blase, but I’ve been steeped in this kind of fiction for so long that I think I’d be fairly mentally capable of accepting it as reality.
They showed Buffy having a close relationship with her dad in season 1, but from season 2 forward he didn’t give a shit. I’m thinking maybe the watchers did some kind of brain mojo on him that made him stop caring about her.
If I am convinced that the Slayer stuff is true, and that my child is effectively superhuman, Watcher-boy gets to keep his teeth, and won’t be found in a ditch somewhere. If I’m not convinced, he doesn’t and will.
I have a book that was published in the UK as an accompaniment to the TV series. It has plot summaries of each episode as well as snarky commentary. One of highlights of the book, is the Denial: Thy Name is Joyce section. It tries to highlight in each episode where Joyce chooses to deny that there is something amiss about her daughter and her extracurricular activities.
IIRC, in the episode where Joyce finds out, she still tries to deny it.
If I was a mother, I would probably try to deny the fact that my daughter was putting herself in mortal danger every time she walked out the door (and maybe start a movement called MOO: Mothers Opposed to the Occult).
In all seriousness, I guess you would just have to trust that the relationship that is one of a mentor/mentee.
I’d not care about the superhuman issue (except that it does seem to assure that the Watcher isn’t going to be able to sexually molest her by violent means). Slayers aren’t THAT super-human; it would be the consent issue, and the taking my kid into violent life when she is still a kid issue, that irritated me.
By the way, remember that we’re assuming that the Watcher in question is opposite sex from the poster, so you’re not dealing with this; rather, someone like this.
Personally, I see a fundamental disconnect between Buffy world and real world (apart from, you know, the whole vampires and demons thing). In the real world, no cause is ever that righteous. I would be looking on with horror, knowing that my daughter has gotten in with a crowd that kills a heck of a lot of stuff, including people (or at least, people analogs).
While I see the same disconnect, I don’t think you should just say “apart from the vampires & demons.” I mean, the prime difference between our world and the Buffyverse is that there are categorically evil entities, no?
I concur. We live in a world of laws - even if vampires and so on are stronger than most people, we see a number of times in the series that well-trained or well-equipped but otherwise ordinary people are perfectly capable of dealing with them. If sentient monsters are committing violent crimes in Sunnydale - well, that’s why we arm our police. If their weapons are inadequate, that’s what SWAT is for. Or (Ford forbid) the military. There is no justification for hobbyist vigilantism against the undead menace.
The way I see it, the Slayer is going to be a target for the Forces of Darkness, regardless. If my daughter were the Slayer, I wouldn’t be happy about that to begin with, but I would also want her to be as well-trained as superhumanly possible, so she’ll be able to deal with that risk. If anything, I’d be mad at her and the Watcher for not letting me know earlier because me not knowing could interfere with her training.
And I don’t see the relevance of the Watcher being sexy and of my preferred sex, beyond the fact that everything’s better with sexy librarians.
Your reaction to the Watcher is pretty much the point, amigo.
That is, of course, not ENTIRELY true. Have you ever tried to do research with a sexy librarian only meters away? Very distracting. Cost me an A in Civil War back in '90.
