elisi | Prophecies are tricky things...

Loyalty/Sleep Tight/Forgiveness are a fantastic trio of episodes, as good as anything in all of AtS. If I could I'd love to delve in deep and analyse it properly, but I really, really don't have the time at the moment. So for now all I'll focus on is the prophecy. You know the one: 'The father will kill the son.' Except of course Sahjhan says he changed it a little:

GUNN: You wrote the prophecies.
SAHJHAN: More a re-write.
FRED: "The father will kill the son."
SAHJHAN: Yeah. I flitted back and forth in time, changed the one that threatened me, polished some others. Flitted in a manly way. Just so we're clear.

The thing is, everyone sort of assumes that the whole thing was just false. But Sahjhan only claims that he *re-wrote* it. What did the original say? Well let's ask the Loa:

Wes: Is it true? Will Angel really kill his son as it says in the prophecies?
Loa: That the vampire will devour his child is certain.

'Devour' is an odd word. Could certainly be changed to 'kill' very easily. But it made me think of something else:

Male Oracle: There is one way. But it is not to be undertaken lightly.
Female Oracle: We swallow this day, as though it had never happened. Twenty-four hours from the moment the demon first attacked you, we take it back.
Angel: Then none of this happened and Buffy and I... What - what'll stop us from doing the exact same thing again?
Femal Oracle: You. You alone will carry the memory of this day. Can you carry that burden?

Angel *does* devour Connor - swallows up every memory of him that there ever was. Connor is erased from history, more thoroughly gone than if he'd been killed... and that's the sort of thing I find very interesting. Was any of it planned? Or did it all just join up pretty much seamlessly? Whatever the case, it is very satisfying.

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Very cool. I find this insanely pleasing, too.

Thanks!

My pleasure. :)

What a brilliant premise - why don't I ever think of things like that (headdesk) I really enjoy reading your analysis, and lurk here frequently. Thank you.

Sami

why don't I ever think of things like that (headdesk)
The flipside of that is 'Why can't I ever just switch off my brain and stop being obsessed? *headdesk*' We can't win! ;)

Anyway, thank you for commenting and enjoy your lurking!

OH, MY. That is such a splendid way of looking at it. I don't even care whether they planned it at all. It's there. And that's very satisfying, indeed.

I don't even care whether they planned it at all. It's there. And that's very satisfying, indeed.
That's it! It's there, that's the beauty of it. :)

The loa's prophecy was fullfilled, literally, exactly when the loa said it would be--when Angel drank the blood that was spiked with Connor's blood.

OK, technically that works, but it just doesn't strike me as the sort of thing someone would put in a prophecy... They are generally concerned with world altering events - life and death type stuff. The blood spiking gave Angel a mild case of Angelus and no more - there were zero reprecussions to the world at large. Wesley didn't even know about it.

Ohh....very neat! And you just gave me a *really* interesting idea! *scuttles off*

Yay for ideas! :)

I'd buy that. Or Rahira's interpretation.

My main problem with

rahirah's idea is that it would make no sense to put it in a prophecy...

Only to put the wind up people! But you are right - it would hardly seem the sort of thing that would need a prophecy...

But changing it was putting up the wind. If it was *already* putting up the wind then it just gets silly. (I am *way* too tired to talk about this btw, so if I make no sense that's why!)

(Also your icon is hilarious!)

Great catch, that is a very interesting way of looking at events.

Thanks! :)

I agree. The Buffyverse writers were so good at joining the dots - even if it was after the event.

Re-watching some of this stuff it seems almost inconceivable that they didn't plan it all out ahead.

I like your reinterpretation here, although personally I'd always assumed that 'the vampire will devour his child' was a reference to Angel drinking Connor's blood. The prophecy came literally true while getting everybody confused and worried about its wider implications, just like all good prophecies.

As for the question "why would there be a prophecy about something so minor?", well for starters this was, if I remember rightly, just a small part of a much larger prophecy. And secondly, most of the seers and prophets we've actually seen on 'Angel' have been rather flaky, to say the least. A prophecy doesn't necessarily have to be a Highly Significant Vision sent by the PtB; it could be more like the prophet has their mental TV set tuned to "next millennium", and is picking up random images that they can't really make sense of. So they write them down, and after a thousand years of mistranslation and inappropiate reverence we get the prophecies our characters use on the shows.

personally I'd always assumed that 'the vampire will devour his child' was a reference to Angel drinking Connor's blood
The thing is that I really have a problem with that interpretation, because it devalues Wesley's conflict. If the prophecy was purely made up by Sahjhan (which it might be), then it works well. If it actually speaks of the mindwipe (or was altered in another way - maybe originally it said 'The Son will kill the Father' which could fit well with the end of S3), then it also works well. But if it only spoke of an insignificant event, that led to not much more than Angel going awol on a demon rock group, then it feel cheap - like a non-funny version of the fear demon in 'Fear, Itself'.

is picking up random images that they can't really make sense of.
I get that, but the acts are so convluted that I can't see how it could end up as 'devour' or similar - as though it was a big event. Blood swiped from the doctor's and mixed with Angel's usual supply that he then drinks out of a glass - the writer of the prophecies would have had to be a genius to work it out!

Aaaanyway, it's all just speculation about a TV show...

(Also, please forgive the lateness of this reply!)

Prophecies are tricky things...

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