TW: Dead Man Walking

[alixtii]

That was awesome. And not just because of The Archetypal Omniscient Little Girl, either. Or the Gwen/Owen moments (why does S2 have so little Gwen/Owen?). There was no part of that episode which was not amazingly excellent.

(N.B.: Feel free to try to harsh my squee. I love critical discussion and there's no real danger of you convincing me this episode wasn't absolutely amazing.)

Comments

[phantomas.livejournal.com]

*delurks*

I thought it was pretty awesome, too :)

Although, I am irked by the excessiveness of the Gwen/Owen moment - she's got Rhys at home, spends half the episodes declaring her love for Jack...I wanted more more for Tosh, myself :D

The Archetypal Omniscient Little Girl

LOL, well said. She (the archetype) was in Angel, right? LoM first season, and...? It feels as there are more, but I can't think right now.

Anyway, yes, cracking episode :D

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, the Archetypal Little Girl from Angel that I was thinking of Mesektet, member of the Ra-Tet, aka the White Room Girl, aka the woman in my icon. She appears in (off the top of my head) two episodes: the season 4 episode where she is killed by the Beast so he can put out the sun, and the season 3 episode where Angel goes to her trying to find Conner. I'm not sure who you're thinking of, but there may well be more than one Archetypal Little Girl in the Buffyverse. (There were the blind child seers in that episode with Lindsey, but they didn't have any real screen time as I remember.)

Fantastic will-to-power is for me a specifically childish type of wish fulfillment, so powerful children in fantasty (e.g., the Childlike Empress) ping powerfully for me. It's one of my narrative kinks, definitely.

I think it was a pretty awesome episode for Tosh, too.

[soundingsea.livejournal.com]

First thing I thought when I saw the little girl was how much you'd like her omniscient Jack-warning shtik. :)

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

You were not wrong.

[booster17.livejournal.com]

It struck me after the show that the little girl has to be Faith, the one from the last time around.

Also, Owen is unkillable while Jack resurrects. There is a definite difference between the two.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

The Archetypal Omniscient Little Girl

Yep, soon as I saw her I thought alixtii will have been in heaven. (Past tense cos you were actually ahead of me when I watched.)

Tell me, what is it you like about the archetype? And how much does the older than she looks creepiness factor (Mesektet, Faith) have to be included - do you also like the inadvertently wise but unknowing ingénue? The later is probably commoner of course, but the former is a much more powerful type.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Because inside me there is a little kid that wants to be a superhero? So adults having superpowers is awesome and all, but they already have certain types of power and autonomy, but a little girl with omniscience is really will-to-powery. It's the juxtaposition between their apparant authority and autonomy and the reality, the fact that she is defered to by adults in a society which would ordinarily render her powerless, which is so will-to-powery.

I think.

do you also like the inadvertently wise but unknowing ingénue?

I think so? Can you give me examples of this archetype?

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Ah, that makes perfect sense. So if the little girl is also making use of the means of power that real little girls do have - everything from pester power to the protective desires they evoke - does that actually reduce your interest or enhance it? If it reduces that might be why you are so drawn to the 'creepy' ones like Mesektet, since they are about as far from evoking our protective side as can be imagined.

Can you give me examples of this archetype?
Well I suppose the archetype is Alice in Wonderland, and Carroll was of course a genius so there is nothing simplistic about her. But more bluntly it is every little waif of a match-girl who touched the heart of the black villain, or the lisping moppet whose innocent question 'are 'ou looking at the birdies?' stopped the suicide from jumping off a cliff. Little Nell is perhaps one of the clearer examples. Frequently they are intensely irritating (I'm with Oscar Wilde on that one), but the very existence of the trope tells us something about how we regard children, and little girls especially.

Have you ever read Men in Wonderland by Catherine Robson? She is exploring the idea that Victorian gentlemen were obsessed with little girls as a means of legitimising inclinations that were otherwise forbidden to them - what we would these days call getting in touch with their feminine side. And it was only gradually as society became more 'masculine' by losing its Victorian reverence for the feminine that the obsession with little girls was replaced by an obsession with little boys. Some exciting ideas I feel.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think there needs to be a--not intentionality, exactly, because the Childlike Empress isn't exactly a power-hungry tyrant--but a self-knowledge about the power they weild for it to count as will-to-powery to me? So I think the sort of examples you give to me can function that way, but don't have to (as you say, there's nothing simplistic about Alice--I am rather fond of dark revisionings of the Alices). And the types of power you mention--"everything from pester power to the protective desires they evoke"--can be will-to-powery, but not if they're merely functioning passively. They have to be deployed if not with the intent to manipulate, then at least with the knowledge (perhaps sorrowful knowledge) they will function that way. (Just as Faith--if we assume that's who she was--knew what Jack would do, but wasn't happy about it. Note that she didn't tell him how to get out of it, either, though.)

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Also, I think there is an element to Mesektet and Faith which evokes a protective desire.