A Need-to-Know Basis

[hannah]

I was thinking about how in my kidfic, Spike and Buffy aren’t ever telling Joe a lot of details about their lives before he came along, like his mother dying twice. And that got me thinking.

How many people - for a given value of "people" - on God's green earth - discounting those off it - actually knew Buffy died in "The Gift"?

- Buffy herself
- Spike
- Dawn
- Willow
- Xander
- Giles
- Tara - dead as of the last scene in "Not Fade Away", and not a vampire-style dead, either; really and fully dead
- Anya - also dead
- Angel
- Cordelia - dead
- Wesley - dead
- Gunn
- Lorne
- Fred - dead enough to just say dead
- Glory's minions

We can presume Faith knew, either through Slayer dreams or someone having the good grace to tell her. We can also presume that Glory's minions are themselves dead, ideally with Spike hunting them down and killing them over the summer after season 5 as a suitably violent form of grief and mourning - and if there's fic of this, please let me know because I'd love to read it. But to the best of my knowledge, there's no lines of dialogue to cite or moments that point to textual on-screen evidence.

And that's it. Not a whole lot of people. Enough to keep it on a need-to-know basis, with the likely outcome being that it's decided nobody needs to know.

It's something which could be found out, whether consulting people not from God's green earth, oracles, other Slayers currently active as of "Chosen" that might find out through shared Slayer dreams, asking the living people on the list some very persuasive questions - and in the end, as of "Not Fade Away", it's still a short list.

Similarly, there's not a whole lot of people who ever knew Dawn was the Key:

- Dawn
- Buffy
- Joyce - dead
- Giles
- Willow
- Xander
- Tara - dead again
- Anya - still dead
- Spike
- The Monks of the Order of Dagon - dead
- Ben - dead
- Glory - dead
- Glory's minions, which are still presumed dead

Again, it's enough people to fit around a dinner table.

How many people are completely aware of what Spike did to earn his soul?

- Spike
- The Lurking Cave Lurker Demon What Lurks In The Cave, or Lurky for short*

A lot of people know Spike has a soul, and a few of them are aware of the general circumstances, but nobody's yet told anyone anything about the details of what happened in that cave.

*It's been hypothesized Lurky's name is Lloyd, based on D'Hoffryn's dialogue: "The flaying of Warren Meers? Oh, truly inspired. That was water cooler vengeance. Lloyd has a sketch of it on his wall." To which I say: I don't buy it. Lurky isn't a Vengeance Demon of D'Hoffryn's stripe. He seems to be pretty secure to stay lurking in his cave and doesn't seem the type for water cooler conversation, however literal or metaphoric that water cooler might be.

Who knows for certain Spike assaulted Buffy in the bathroom?

- Buffy, who was there
- Spike, who did it
- Xander, who found Buffy and put the pieces together
- Dawn, because Xander told her

Spike alluded to the vague concept of what he did to Clem without mentioning any specifics. Willow seemed to have some idea, but quickly moved onto other tasks at hand and let the subject drop. There's nothing to say she couldn't be told later, and it's possible someone decided to fill Giles in on it. But as far as I can remember, we have nothing that we can use to definitively argue that anyone besides those four know.

It's honestly pretty fascinating to think about the limited information characters have to work with, and what they’re all walking around with inside of their heads.

Comments

[raine]

I figured out once that on Buffy and Angel, most of the characters have a massive communication blackout problem. None of them seem to be able to talk to each other at crucial moments about things that would change the outcome of events or even how they'd react. Everything is a surprise. "Spike has a soul?! As of when?" Giles is super guilty of withholding information, too.

[hannah]

It's frustrating and remarkable in equal measures.

Giles has better in-character reasons for holding things back, given his history and desire to remake himself. I don't like it, and I have a better sense of why he does it than, say, Willow.

[yourlibrarian]

It is. It's also so meta to think of the information viewers have compared to characters when it comes to Dawn's whole fictional history.

[hannah]

When I watched it, there wasn't any sense of surprise with Dawn showing up - but there was still suspense, because I knew the characters didn't know. It can be a valuable tool.

[gillo]

other Slayers currently active as of "Chosen" that might find out through shared Slayer dreams, asking the living people on the list some very persuasive questions

Xander tells the assembled Potentials that Buffy has died twice. He doesn't go into details then, but we can, I think, assume that they make their own enquiries of Giles or Willow later.

One fascinating thing is the way the unreliable narrator is used in a visual sense. We see through Spike's eyes what happened when he was sired, when he killed his two Slayers and his relationship with his mother. But how much of that does he actually put into words? (The same with Angel's flashbacks - they inform the viewer, not the characters, but the narrative POV is less interesting.) What exactly does Buffy know? Or the others in the basement in LMPTM? Our sympathies are manipulated while it is not at all clear if anyone in-story gets the full plot, other than Spike himself.

Who tells whom about appearances by the First, for that matter? Does Spike ever describe his visitors in Lessons? To whom?

Oh, and how does Giles remember that Ben is Glory when he kills the former?

[hannah]

I'd forgotten Xander told them that! Someone else pointed out Doc managed to find out about Dawn one way or another.

I suspect Buffy knows very little about Spike's history, as of the end of the show. Same with Robin. As for the appearances by the First, few of them tell others, and it's a big loss that none of the writers used the dialogue to heighten the tension. Though someone pointed out Spike never met the Mayor, ever, so he wouldn't even know who that was to tell anyone. Again, visual storytelling for the audience.

I think Giles remember Ben's Glory because by that point, the veil between the two had broken down enough everyone remembered.

[itsnotmymind]

Here from Sunnydale Herald.

Interesting thoughts! And who knew Buffy beat Spike up in an alley? He had bruises the next episode but no one seems to have thought to even ask. There's a lot that went between Buffy and Spike in S6 that only they two know.

[hannah]

Hi there! Nice to see you.

Thank you. And nobody knows. The secrecy of the bulk of their season six relationship makes for good TV, and I can see why they spent most of season 7 learning how to have conversations again.