It's the weekend for thinky-thoughts, I suppose. Hey, tomorrow Dead Week starts up at school and I'll be back to studying for finals. Promise!

I rewatched Potential and was reminded of my main issue with the metaphor in S7.

Years ago, when I watched Chosen for the first time, I enjoyed the ending. But the empowerment spell left me feeling empty. I mean, sure, it's inspiring to see all these girls get powered up and all. Yeah. But my immediate thought was, "Huh? What about the chicks who aren't potentials? Don't they get to be strong?"

I felt a little like I did after I read the first Harry Potter book and realized I was too old to get a Hogwarts owl.

That's why I took on my tag name of "The One Who Isn't Chosen" on LJ. It's from Xander's conversation with Dawn at the end of Potential.

Fact is, this still bothers me.

In Potential Andrew makes a meta-comment on the metaphor: "Well, it's almost like this metaphor for womanhood, isn't it? The sort of flowering that happens when a girl realizes that she's part of a fertile heritage stretching back to Eve, and - "

That's great. And that worked for the six years up till now when they're making the metaphor literal. In doing so, it begs the question of where the girls who aren't potentials fit in. Potential doesn't really answer that satisfactorily. Well...not to me.

Are these the girls who just don't get to be powerful? But the Slayer metaphor is about female power full stop. So then would the non-potentials just...not be women? Women who have to rely on other women to fight for them?

I don't know. It bothers me. I'm trying to work it in to the overall metaphor, but I'm just left with a handful of empowered women...and then the women who aren't chosen who don't get to be empowered. Even though I love, love, love the empowered women, a part of me still feels sad when I think about the ones left behind, so to speak. I want them to be strong, too.

"They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn't chosen. To live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody's watching me. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You're not special. You're extraordinary."

Edit: Just a bit of a footnote, I'm not discussing the empowerment spell here. I have meta in the works on it, and I don't feel like getting into the topic before I'm done with it. This post is just about how the non-potentials fit into the feminist metaphor of S7. Eye on the prize, folks.