Contentious Issue in "Forever"?

[haha228]

So I was on a Buffy rewatch and I hit the episode Forever, just after The Body where Willow and Tara attempt to help Dawn deal with her grief.

It's clear from this episode that Willow and Tara have extremely different views on magic and its rules and this is brought into sharp contrast when Willow attempts to dissuade Dawn with the danger of such spells and Tara cuts her off with a brusque "That's not the point!".

This issue was never resolved on the show, but what do you Kittens think would've happened down the line? It seems to be quite a sticking point and I don't see it dissolving without some major conflict.

[Hemiola]

Well, to some extent, this is what the following season (known on this Board as "Season Sucks" ) was about.

[haha228]

I've watched everything through previously. Yes, but even then, the issue that drove them apart was violation of personal boundaries, not the philosophical differences. That was never addressed between them and I'm bringing this up because it's possibly quite destabilizing to the relationship. It's not a "you need to stop leaving your toothbrush there" kind of issue that can be fixed by an act of will, it's basically an intrinsic character trait. Willow seems rather mechanistic and apt to question, whereas Tara was raised in obedience to tradition. There's definitely potential for serious problems, no?

[Dana5140]

Potential yes, likelihood no. I do not think I would characterize Tara as having been raised in "obedience" for tradition, but more like "respect" for tradition. Tara did not follow the old ways because she was forced to by a domineering mother, for example, but because it was a more natural method of invoking magic that deeply respected its origins, roots and power. For Willow, magic was a tool that allowed her to impose her will on the world; for Tara, magic was part of the world and could be used for good purposes. It is from that differing sets of beliefs that the problems between them arose, with Willow using magic to remake the world after she herself did something wrong (have a fight with Tara? well, just use magic to make Tara forget it ever happened). After Willow fell into addiction (boy, again, I hate saying those words), she began to understand what she had done wrong and worked to restore Tara's faith in her ability to use magic properly; Tara herself never lost her faith in Willow. My feeling- they would have worked this all out in the end, but never got a chance to.

[DaddyCatALSO]

Well, it seems like two facets of one crystal; one reason (just one among several) that Willow was willing to go on to a disrespect of Tara's personal boundaries was because she saw magic mechanistically.

[AmbersSecretAdmirer]

It did sadden me that the seeds of the principled difference between Willow and Tara with regards to magic was not truly gotten into after that episode. I'm sure the writers will claim that Season Sux was the continuation but it really isn't.

What it was more than anything, was that Tara saw magic and its use as a question of spirituality and religious reverence and respect for the forces of nature and their balance. Willow saw magic has a science project to be experimented and tinkered with to achieve maximum results. One saw magic in terms of wisdom and emotion, the other in cool, mathematical terms. Had these ideas been fully discussed and used as the basis for Season 6, it would have been a very different, and better, season.

Would Willow & Tara have stayed together given their fundamental difference over the nature of magic and its boundaries? Not unless one changed and accommodated the other's view. One aspect that could have been shown would have been the notion of messing with nature to the point of destruction. Ultimately Tara's viewpoint would have to win out and Willow would grow as a person and Tara's confidence would also grow. Character growth and positive development. But sadly, its a Joss show so no chance of that.

[DaddyCatALSO]

Well, Off-Topic Willow has sort of grown that way.

With Tara it has always been basically part of an outright religious belief, I think; For Willow, like the other Scoobies, and for most characters on series TV, that has never been a big dimension of their lives. So the starting points were very different.

[haha228]

It's often that I see viewpoints that project Willow forward as eventually coming around to Wicca, but I wonder, is the reverse as plausible? We are presented with a Willow that's screwed up a lot of things and this kind of poisons the well right off the bat, but Tara is willing to bend the rules for Buffy, someone that she's close to and in spirit at least, a cherished family member.

[AmbersSecretAdmirer]

Hi haha, would Tara have changed her views? I'm not sure. Whilst she was always prepared to skirt an issue her spiritual beliefs, her purity of belief for want of a better term, is not something I can see ever changing to such a radical extent that she would denounce and leave aside core principles. And given that she got her training and principles from her Mother, a woman we get the distinct feeling Tara loved and admired utterly, I find it hard to think she would turn so far as to desecrate the principles her Mother held dear. So as much as in the realm of fiction anything is undoubtedly possible if scripted and writen well, it doesn't strike me as probable.

No I think ultimately, and some of what happened on Buffy backed this up, is that Willow would come to an epiphany and see that having power and using that power do not go immediately hand in hand. Having the ability to do something doesn't give you the right to do it, only the ability. Wisdom and an understanding of the world is needed and that is what Tara was growing into the role of. In the absence of Giles for much of season 6, she was the mother figure and I really wish they had done more with the character in that regard as it was a fascinating area to me, seeing the maturing of what was not so long ago a shy and reticent young woman.

[Dana5140]

Tara was the moral compass of the Buffyverse. She was human, yes, which is why she was not perfect- she did, after all, sabotage a spell with Willow and not tell her everything important about herself, but once that passed, and once she knew she was accepted and loved, she always tried to do the right thing. This was not the case for virtually everyone else- including Willow.

[haha228]

Tara was the moral compass of the Buffyverse. She was human, yes, which is why she was not perfect- she did, after all, sabotage a spell with Willow and not tell her everything important about herself, but once that passed, and once she knew she was accepted and loved, she always tried to do the right thing. This was not the case for virtually everyone else- including Willow.

This is true, she did try to adhere to her moral compass harder and in the instances that we see, this compass largely points in the same direction as ours. Willow's adherence is, without question quite a bit more fuzzy and apt to lapse whenever self esteem comes into the question. With that said, while having the ability and being right in using it may be separate things, they need not be at odds. For example, Buffy's resurrection might contravene Tara's principles, but as we're shown after Buffy's death, things in Sunnydale are going to hell at a pretty fast pace and they were hanging on by their fingernails.

Is purity of belief a virtue? What does it mean? If principles contravene morality, which do you see Tara setting aside?

[Dana5140]

Good question. I tried to write a paper that alluded to Tara as Green Tara, compassionate savioress of the world in Tibetan Buddhism. In that reincarnation, Green Tara would take on the suffering of women living in the world. So, I think my answer is, Tara would do everything she could to ease the suffering of others, even if that meant she might have to contravene norms of morality to do so. This is wht Tara did in the resurrection of Buffy, right? In part, it was to ease the suffering of the Scoobies, including her love, Willow. And it was to ease the suffering of Buffy, whom they thought was in hell.