fray-adjacent

Song: "Furnace Room Lullaby" by Neko Case
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (entire series)
Character: Buffy
Download: 74 mb mp4

This is my second fanvid and the first that I’ve felt had anything substantive to say. 

(password: Deeds)

As I have been trying to understand dialectics I have also become obsessed with applying it to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and in particular to Buffy’s character development.  She struggles with the conflict between “Buffy Buffy” — a “normal girl”, a cheerleader, a middle class suburban teen — and “Slayer Buffy”.  Numerous moments on the show bring that conflict to near breaking point, and the consequence of this conflict is synthesis — by the end of the series she is just Buffy.  The aptly-named two-parter season finale, “Becoming”, is a prime example.

 

Vidding is helping me to understand this better, and helping me understand Buffy as a character better.  It doesn’t hurt that “Furnace Room Lullaby” seems like it was written for Buffy.  (Though one could argue it is just as well written for River, which is interesting.) I hope to write an essay about this eventually.

Lyrics:

All night, all I hear, all I hear’s your heart
How come, how come

I twisted you over and under to take you
The coals went so wild as they swallowed the rest
I twisted you under and under to break you
I just couldn’t breathe with your throne on my chest

Chorus:
All night, all I hear, all I hear’s your heart
How come, how come
So far under the bed
Into the beams you’ve gone
I’ve gone, you’ve gone

I’m wrapped in the depths of these deeds that have made me
I can’t bring a sound from my head though I try
I can’t seem to find my way up from the basement
A demon holds my place on earth ’till I die

Chorus