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Rather random entry heh, but something on tumblr recently made me wonder what everyone else's view of Joyce on Buffy was? I always felt like the writers thought that she was coming across as this really great mother and that she and Buffy were so close, but eh to me she always seemed to act like she was just waiting for Buffy to throw some more trouble in her path and that Buffy was such a chore to handle, but I'm not sure that was really justified? I.e telling Buffy not to get kicked out on her first day starting at a new school, or in an episode like Bad Eggs when she is constantly grounding Buffy and trying to catch her out, even without any conclusive proof that Buffy had done anything wrong. And in School Hard she apparently immediately swallowed every word that Synder said to her about Buffy (Joyce was acting very pissed and "in the car now" after his little talk with her) even though Buffy had been doing everything she could to help out at parents teacher night, as well as covering for Sheila's lack of participation at the same time, yet she clearly knew that Joyce wouldn't believe her if she explained that Synder was someone who just had it in for her

And it wasn't like Buffy was ever an openly defiant and hostile teenager, she was never rude and snapping at her mother from what I recall, yet Joyce seemed to constantly be on the alert before Buffy had even done anything wrong. I guess I felt like past events in LA had left Joyce stuck on a very unfair view of Buffy as this wayward teen who was constantly bringing drama into Joyce's life, even though we rarely saw much evidence of seasons 1 and 2 Buffy actually being that rebellious or out of control, even from Joyce's perspective of not knowing that Buffy was the slayer. At worst she caught Buffy fully dressed late at night in Bad Eggs and suspected her of sneaking out late (although she was actually just talking with Willow on the phone and dealing with her wayward egg heh). And c'mon, even if Buffy had been sneaking out to meet up with her friends, it's not like it's unknown for teenagers to do that occasionally! It would hardly made Buffy this nightmare teenager that's impossible to deal with, but you wouldn't know it from some of Joyce's reactions to what Buffy ~puts her through~

Buffy was hardly associating with gangs and giving the impression that she was about to go off the rails, for a start being best friends with the shy and studious Willow (whom Joyce certainly seemed to like) was pretty far removed from her life of hanging out with shallow popular kids in the Becoming flashback. Yet Joyce still often seemed to act like she was just waiting for Buffy to throw some trouble her way again? Not really the actions of a supportive mother who is committed to giving her daughter a second chance IMO

And this might be controversial, but I also thought that she expected too much of Buffy when she was sick. Buffy at barely 19 was in no way old enough to take care of a sick and mentally unstable Joyce in Listening To Fear, the doctors themselves said that she should be in the hospital under their care. I understand Joyce preferring to be in her own bed of course, but it was unfair to put Buffy in that position IMO, it really annoyed me when she immediately breathed a sigh of relief when the doctor's said that she could only go home if Buffy would agree to it. I felt like Joyce just piled everything on Buffy at that time because she knew that Buffy wouldn't say no, but then Listening To Fear ultimately resulted in Buffy completely breaking down and clearly unable to cope with Joyce's illness.

Nor should Joyce have left Buffy as the guardian of her 14/15 year old sister IMO. Joyce presumably knew that Hank was a dead loss as a guardian, but she must have had other relatives that she could have considered (Aunt Arlene gets brought up several times throughout the series?), or possibly even a friend that she could have asked? Hmm actually I don't know if Hank should automatically be considered out of the running either, yeah the show put him at more and more of a distance over the years, but he was never your typical total deadbeat Dad either. In Bargaining we're told that the Scoobies had been using the Buffybot to convince Hank that things are fine with Buffy and Dawn, so at the very least they must have suspected that he would have come back into the picture for Dawn otherwise? I mean idk, it was better for Dawn's sense of stability if she could remain with her sister of course, but was it really what was best for Buffy? Joyce kind of put her in an impossible position by asking her to promise to take care of Dawn and "love her like I love you", aka be Dawn's mother figure, even though Buffy was Dawn's sister and only separated by her in age by 5 years

Probably Buffy would have insisted on looking after Dawn anyway and doing her best for her, but then Joyce automatically asking Buffy to be the one to take care of Dawn didn't give her a lot of choice, and that did result in Buffy having to drop out of college in Tough Love and struggle to find the money to take care of them both in season 6 through working minimum wage jobs. Normally in other fictional stories of being brought up by siblings (like Party Of Five) they were muddling along as best they could only because the parents died unexpectedly with no plans in place for guardianship, but on Bts it did seem like Joyce's sole plan was to expect Buffy to step into her place as mother to Dawn? I'm not saying it's wrong even for Joyce to want Buffy and Dawn to stay together, but it's so strange to me that she didn't seem to have made any plans to put any other support network in place for Buffy, even though Buffy herself was barely out of high school and had been hoping to work towards a college degree at the time.

There didn't seem to be much middle ground between high school Buffy being treated by Joyce as this wayward kid who keeps bringing drama into her life, or later on as this old before her time adult who needed to sacrifice her own dreams for her little sister

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Plus the kids on "Party of Five" went up to what, 25, 30? Old enough that the eldest had a real job, anyway.

It's been years since I watched it now, but I'm fairly sure that Charlie the guardian had finished college and was around 25 years old? And it was still portrayed as a REAL struggle for him to suddenly have to take on the responsibility of bringing up his younger siblings. Buffy only turned 19 in A New Man from season 4 (her birthday episode was always just past the middle of the season), so she must have barely been out of her teens when she had to give up her college plans to raise Dawn in season 5 :/

And maybe the "love her as I love her" was partly monk-influenced?

Hmm that makes sense actually, and would also fit with everyone being so protective when it came to insisting that Dawn needs babysitting at 14, but man it sucks for Buffy even more if Joyce expecting her to take on the responsibility for Dawn was all because of a bunch of monks playing with their memories!

Edited 2015-05-08 13:15 (UTC)

when it came to insisting that Dawn needs babysitting at 14,

It didn't help that the way it was written, she actually *did* need a babysitter at that age.

True *g* And Spike, as well as Willow/Tara, were still babysitting her when she was 15 in season 6

Even in S7 she was shooting holes in the walls. I know it's meant to be funny, but still.

It always bugged me the writers wanted to have it both ways. Dawn is too young to be left alone, yet she's supposed to be included in Buffy's private life. It all goes to that 'Buffy can't win' thing they were doing in the latter years.

I really think the monks did a number on all of them. In fact, one of my theories is that part of why everybody's increasingly scary in later seasons is that the monks had to suppress their instincts about what's right and wrong. Buffy, for example, is the Slayer. She has a spidey sense about supernatural weirdness. And then all of a sudden she has a sister she never had before? In order for that to convince her, the monks at the very least had to mess with her emotions, which may be part of why she feels all out of touch with them and needs to go on a quest in S5. People know when something's not right, when something is fake, and the monks had to turn that sense off.

Indeed, you can take Willow's magic-abuse of Tara as going back to the monks. Yes, Willow always had trouble with misusing magic, and yes, she probably would have wanted to erase memories anyway... but maybe it was the monks who took her out of touch with the bone-deep sense that it would be wrong. Or Giles, maybe he left Buffy because... etc.

I haven't argued this before, because people take it as Dawn-bashing -- but really, Dawn had nothing to do with it, and was as much a victim as anyone of what the monks did.

Yeah it's strange that the show seemed to portray what the monks did as more or less acceptable, the characters certainly seemed to completely accept Dawn's presense without any issue once the initial shock wore off anyway, but if it were me I would feel majorly violated at having my actual memories being rewritten. Your memories are such a personal thing to have some else mess with, but the show never really went there with any of the characters even wanting to get their real memories back

Edited 2015-05-09 21:33 (UTC)

Yeah, Buffy had about ten seconds of, "How dare you," and then it was over.

And quite aside from messing with people's memories and instincts, what Willow does to Tara (erasing her memories) is exactly what the monks did to all of them. No wonder she thinks it's ok, it's an accepted practice! (And maybe the monks made that the case, too.)

It's a violation when Jonathan does it, but not the monks. Just like the Slayerification spell was a violation when done by African shamans, but not by a white witch. (So much fail there.)

Yep, and Tara is deeply upset at Willow playing with just *one* of her memories, specifically calling it a violation and a reminder of what Glory did to her, yet the writers apparently never consider that the monks rewriting everyone's memories of their entire life history should have been an issue for the characters too??

Within the 'verse, one could say maybe it was because accepting it was part of the monks' spell. (Thus the whole 'messing with crucial instincts' theory of mine.)

In terms of the show, I think it was because it was Necessary for the Plot. (But as knifgeedge's East of the Sun, West of the Moon showed, you can have S5 without Dawn, really easily.)