Go after Buffy?

I was working on this s4 fic, and it suddenly occurred to me how unrealistic is for them to have this tiny slip of a girl who's stronger than ten of Professor Walsh's strong (pumped up on juice men) not be seriously tested on in any form or fashion besides some lame attempted attack by the Initiative soldiers, which Buffy was fully aware.

(That is the only test they gave, and I didn't just forget something else from s4, right?)

Did that strike anyone else as odd?  Or am I just really late on this particular bandwagon?

Also, could I be more obvious in my longing for topic discussion?

:P

I would guess that it had a lot to do with her relationship with Riley. Remember, the Initiative doesn't know the Slayer is real (or that it's Buffy) until she tells them. I think her access to the Initiative and Walsh's inclusion of her on missions was sort of an indirect way of testing her - obviously, Riley wouldn't let his girlfriend be openly experimented on.

Also remember that Walsh only knew she was the Slayer for a couple episodes, and then she saw Buffy as a threat to be eliminated, so she couldn't risk keeping her alive for experimentation. She tried to have Buffy killed (unsuccessfully) and then Adam got loose and she kicked it, and the experimentation arm of the Initiative sort of went downhill after that.

I think the whole Initiative arc was both appalling and stupid.

Here's this neo-Nazi group performing experiments on anything "less than" human, including werewolves and the writers have gleefully Buffy join up with the sick bastards. She only started viewing them as a threat after they attempted to kill HER. Gee, what a hero we have here.

After seeing Willow's anti-Thanksgiving crusade, you'd think the Jewish girl would have had something to say about Buffy joining up with a group that performs cruel and outright disgusting experiments on sentient beings.

Plus, there was the fact that none of the demons ever reacted to the humans hunting them- a group of beings made up of some extremely violent and aggressive creatures just rolling over and letting the Initiative run amock. Give me a break, all those various demons that are scattered and separate would have banned together against their common enemy, for nothing else if not self preservation, and fought back way before Adam popped up and started using them for cannon fodder.

Don't forget the sheer stupidity of the microchip in Spike head. That whole thing was a complete crock of bad science. First, there are no pain receptors in the brain. Second, electical impulses from external sources delievered to brain tissue cause completely different reactions than they would to other tissues.

-SC

I think the idea that the Initiative would be interested in Buffy is pretty well established in fanfic, if not in reality. So, there must be a lot of us who agree with you, Scarlet. LOL I know I'm far from the only one to have set fics in a Season IV where that happens, and I've got several of them. :)

And, yeah, I totally agree, SC - Willow should have been all over that "experiment" bit, although, in fairness, how much did the Scoobies actually know about that part of it? Adam was a secret, and all Spike knew (in canon) is that they put a chip in his head to prevent him from feeding.  I'm not sure how much of anything else is actually canon and how much of it is fanon.  I guess I need to re-watch Season IV and see how much of what gets used in fanfic is actually mentioned or hinted at in the episodes, and how much of it is just writers drawing logical conclusions from what little we did see.

Eowyn is right, too. There really weren't that many episodes after they found out what she was before it all went to hell and everyone was too busy to worry about experimenting on Buffy.