What’s up with the dream?

There are a couple of places in the Divine Comedy where Dante dreams. The one which interests me the most is the dream of the Siren.

Just to get you primed, keep in mind that Dante dreams immediately after encountering Lilah and her goons, which I fairly blatantly paralleled with Inf X, the Gates of Dis (I stole both plot and text). However, in my version, I tried to tie Lilah to regal Medusa, the Stone Lady, and not the furies.

Segue cut to the dream, where Dante sees three women, Slayers. Primal forces of vengeance, justice, equilibrium. Death is what they avenge. Death is their art. Their own deaths are their final gifts to the world. Here I’m fairly influence by Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, where the Kindly Ones/Furies were depicted as aspects of the Fates (mother, maiden, crone). 

Although, as I think about it, all Slayers are maidens (young women), mothers (protectors of  humanity), and crones (they die and become founts of knowledge for those that come after).

Well, for that matter, I also quoted Gaiman’s Death on life, “You only get one.”

Each Slayer is not only an aspect of the female triptych, but are descended from the one that came before in a long unbroken line. Except now, where Faith is little sister, child and shadow self to Buffy, who is herself currently going through her own dark tea time of the soul after her second death.

I’d like to contrast this matrilineal line (three Slayers, one of whom is on her third life) with the Watchers, who are largely depicted as patrilineal in the series. And if the comic is be taken as cannon, the Watchers cast the spell which created the Slayer. Eve from Adam’s rib? Or perhaps Lilith, mother of demons, who came from the first split? In as much as part of the Slayer is a primal force out of Watcher control, perhaps both.

Spike and Giles appear not only as riff on the ever wondrous Restless, the big daddy of all dream episodes, but as play on some of the father/son, saved/unsaved relationships, which are all over the Commedia. Yes, I meant it to be a humorous quote that Spike’s first words are “Baby want a nap.” 

However, Spike, noticeably, claims no children in BtVS. Yeah, yeah, he’s made other vampires. But no children that he teaches and cares for. He cares for his mother as his child/lover, “Mother will be expecting me,” however his line ends with him. He’s the youngest. 

Spike, in dreams and Tubula Rasa at least, is Giles’ son. Just as Buffy is Giles daughter. At the same time, Angel (who has a soul and is therefore “redeemable”) is Spike’s yoda and sire. Angel, who is now a biological parent to Connor. 

Spike, as Virgil states, is also positioned as Buffy’s other, like Faith. Which briefly, and somewhat OT, makes me wonder that Faith (Buffy’s other other) so quickly caught onto Spike’s desire for Buffy in S4. 

Randomly, both Giles and the first Slayer/Spirit Guide are sources of knowledge for Buffy. Both are elsewhere in S6.

And just to throw in some obvious symbolism. Buffy, who feels dead inside, is sitting in front of a fire, longing for a life with more ice-capades (a return to innocence, a time when she had a connection to her father. Also, with the fire and ice). The first Slayer hands Buffy, who is the hand, a card with a key on it. Roll significant music.

Actually, after that kind of tangled mess, Dante had to wake up to,  “There may be trouble ahead.”