So would you expect sithossance (look Ma, I made a new word) to be more common among redemptionistas or others who prefer to read demons as combatants or undead Americans rather than as metaphors for human weakness/evil? I like this, I agree that it’s incumbent upon each audience member to choose the name of the scythe, like choosing to be strong and I like that. But even more I’m distracted by your links to battlescythes as the people’s weapons.
At first I thought it was a hammer and sickle reference but the link to improvised battlescythes that evolved into halberds and Lochaber axes and the ceremonial roles both the later have seems even more relevant. In Fray Joss called the weapon a sceptre. It was designed to be something that looked cool when carried as well as kill lurks two ways - stake or slice, all it really needs is a holy hand grenade attachment to sent them on fire. Spike was on to something. So I guess the halberd-like appearance came from that plus the need to not be a sword or a spear or anything else too obviously phallic.
By the time it entered S7 the concept had devolved (from a military history perspective) back from halberd to battlescythe. The ancestry thing amuses me – a halberd looks like an axe but it’s a case of convergent evolution, the scythe-scepte halberd is no more an axe than a whale is a fish. Calling it a scythe-symbol of death is a statement abut Buffy’s calling that fits what the Guardian (let us not talk of her) implied was the first original Slayer’s purpose. She killed the last true demon after clearing back the demon hordes that once ruled this plane(like rainforest weeds) and made the world safe for agriculture. That’s the tradditonal wisdom but the revolutionary meaning that neither Guardian nor Giles mentions (well they wouldn’t would they) is the one I like best and the one Buffy intuits to victory. The people’s weapon, the cutter of workers’, peasants' or potentials’ chains. It also has nifty in-text associations with the power shot from S3 and there too the sycthicle is a throwing weapon.
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At first I thought it was a hammer and sickle reference but the link to improvised battlescythes that evolved into halberds and Lochaber axes and the ceremonial roles both the later have seems even more relevant. In Fray Joss called the weapon a sceptre. It was designed to be something that looked cool when carried as well as kill lurks two ways - stake or slice, all it really needs is a holy hand grenade attachment to sent them on fire. Spike was on to something. So I guess the halberd-like appearance came from that plus the need to not be a sword or a spear or anything else too obviously phallic.
By the time it entered S7 the concept had devolved (from a military history perspective) back from halberd to battlescythe. The ancestry thing amuses me – a halberd looks like an axe but it’s a case of convergent evolution, the scythe-scepte halberd is no more an axe than a whale is a fish. Calling it a scythe-symbol of death is a statement abut Buffy’s calling that fits what the Guardian (let us not talk of her) implied was the first original Slayer’s purpose. She killed the last true demon after clearing back the demon hordes that once ruled this plane(like rainforest weeds) and made the world safe for agriculture. That’s the tradditonal wisdom but the revolutionary meaning that neither Guardian nor Giles mentions (well they wouldn’t would they) is the one I like best and the one Buffy intuits to victory. The people’s weapon, the cutter of workers’, peasants' or potentials’ chains. It also has nifty in-text associations with the power shot from S3 and there too the sycthicle is a throwing weapon.