Interesting review and some points there which I haven't thought about. For example the metaphore of slayers as aristocracy - hmm...
What I'm mostly seeing there is watchers at puppeteers pulling slayers' strings - both Roden and Giles. Roden is into a sunset cult, obviously, and I think his goal is to set Slayers against Slayers to eventually get rid of all of them. Giles motives also get more complicated here with the last page as it might not be about preventing apocalypse after all but preventing assasination of Buffy and playing against Sunset. In both cases slayers are not given the full truth and are being played. The endga,e might be for all of them - Buffy, Faith, and Gigi - to break free of those puppet strings and get to heart of the matter.
Now to your questions. Why Roden choose Gigi? Maybe because she was a spoiled brat the most successible to his propaganda? Also she had resources - a castle, a protection system - similar to Buffy's. And she could maintain them without raising suspicisons. What about the knife? I thnk both knives were broken and lost in the rubble left by Gargoyles. And they probably just scraped off the whole thing with a bulldoser afterwards. :) Also were Faith going to strike Gigi before Gargoyles took her? It's an open question - she drew the knife in the same way before when standing in line, and couldn't go through with it, put it back. Similar thing might've happened here again - she wouldn't have the nerve - but we'll never know now. Why Roden didn't kill Faith? I got the impression that Gigi was watching over Faith at her bedside. I don't think Roden would do sonething like that in front of her and without her consent.
I'm also puzzled why characters haven't grabbed you here and only story twists seem interesting. IMHO it's a first really character driven story we got in Buffy-8 and BKV is superb in that. It's all really about Faith inner turmoil, and Giles as complex and coflicted as it comes - and yet sympathetic and understandable for the 1st time since him killing Ben, and now we are going to get Buffy into the mix and up the ante even more. I'm very jazzed up about all of it, hope the story will become more enjoyable for you as well. :)
no subject
What I'm mostly seeing there is watchers at puppeteers pulling slayers' strings - both Roden and Giles. Roden is into a sunset cult, obviously, and I think his goal is to set Slayers against Slayers to eventually get rid of all of them. Giles motives also get more complicated here with the last page as it might not be about preventing apocalypse after all but preventing assasination of Buffy and playing against Sunset. In both cases slayers are not given the full truth and are being played. The endga,e might be for all of them - Buffy, Faith, and Gigi - to break free of those puppet strings and get to heart of the matter.
Now to your questions. Why Roden choose Gigi? Maybe because she was a spoiled brat the most successible to his propaganda? Also she had resources - a castle, a protection system - similar to Buffy's. And she could maintain them without raising suspicisons.
What about the knife? I thnk both knives were broken and lost in the rubble left by Gargoyles. And they probably just scraped off the whole thing with a bulldoser afterwards. :)
Also were Faith going to strike Gigi before Gargoyles took her? It's an open question - she drew the knife in the same way before when standing in line, and couldn't go through with it, put it back. Similar thing might've happened here again - she wouldn't have the nerve - but we'll never know now.
Why Roden didn't kill Faith? I got the impression that Gigi was watching over Faith at her bedside. I don't think Roden would do sonething like that in front of her and without her consent.
I'm also puzzled why characters haven't grabbed you here and only story twists seem interesting. IMHO it's a first really character driven story we got in Buffy-8 and BKV is superb in that. It's all really about Faith inner turmoil, and Giles as complex and coflicted as it comes - and yet sympathetic and understandable for the 1st time since him killing Ben, and now we are going to get Buffy into the mix and up the ante even more. I'm very jazzed up about all of it, hope the story will become more enjoyable for you as well. :)