How would not activating the potentials be choosing Dawn, since Dawn wasn't a potential slayer in the first place?

No -- Buffy "chose" the potentials, as future slayers.

Dawn was not chosen. I don't think the fact she wasn't a potential matters, only that she was not in the group of people Buffy "chose."

It's lame, but I think it's the best interpretation you can get from what's onscreen. YReadingoftheLineMV.

I think having Xander kidnap her, choosing not to have Dawn in the final battle, is the closest thing to Ghost!Joyce/FE!Joyce prophecy fulfillment that we've got in canon.

This is a possibility, too. Or, as the writer says, it may just have been the First messing w/Dawn's mind.

YReadingoftheLineMV.

It does, because to me, Dawn would have to be a choice of some kind, up for the choosing, for that to fit.

This is a possibility, too. Or, as the writer says, it may just have been the First messing w/Dawn's mind.

As many have said though, the FE lied with the truth. What should have happen (another example of lazy writing/poor execution in season 7) is that at some point in the season after CwDP, Buffy should have had to make a choice, and in doing so, if she chose Dawn, Dawn would start to doubt whether or not Buffy was Buffy, or, in not choosing Dawn, Dawn should have been felt betrayed and been more susceptible to the FE.

Or...

Buffy and the FE!In-Buffy's-Appearance, should each have been trying to convince Dawn that she/it was the real Buffy, and Dawn would have had to decide who was Buffy and who was the FE. But, since the FE was incorporeal, this couldn't really work.

It was a shame they let such a great set-up go to waste, in favor of things like the Eye of Tapioca.

My instinct says it was this:

the First messing w/Dawn's mind

but I would not argue with this

No -- Buffy "chose" the potentials, as future slayers.

Dawn was not chosen. I don't think the fact she wasn't a potential matters, only that she was not in the group of people Buffy "chose."

as canon as to how FE!Joyce ended up telling the "truth". Especially given the title of the finale.

If you want to get real technical though - the FE couldn't have known Dawn wouldn't get chosen, because that means it would have known Buffy's plan to defeat the ubervamp army was to activate the potentials - and it didn't know that. Or...did it? cues scary "doom doom doom doom" music

My instinct says it was this:

the First messing w/Dawn's mind

In the strictest sense, we already know the above to be "true" because the writer has confirmed she was writing FE-as-Joyce.

It's just that when you take away the meta knowledge, for me, that scene is much more likely to be Joyce, than to be the FE as Joyce, because of all that happens in that episode.

In the strictest sense, we already know the above to be "true" because the writer has confirmed she was writing FE-as-Joyce.

I know this doesn't need to be stated yet again, but I'm gonna: that's just lame.

I know there were situations where the FE was just messing with folks - Eve with the potentials mostly - but there so could have been a great payoff of the Joyce and Dawn thing.

OK - I'm over it now.

I think the best explanation of how all this fits together is: Dawn mushroom green lantern marshmallow cocoa.

t /Allyson

Don't you just want to date Shawn's BF?

No, but I do want to lock him up and do experiments on him study his reactions to the eps from an outsider perspective.

I was among those who assumed from the start that "Joyce" in CWDP was actually the First Evil. It seems to me that at first the carnage ("Mother's milk is red tonitght," etc.) was revealed as illusion until Dawn (like Willow, later) started messing with magic and opened the door for it to seize control of her spell. Also note that despite Dawn invoking everyone who loved her, her actual attitude during that spell was tinged by anger and hate ("Die, bastard!"), emotional states more in line with the First than the nebulous forces of Good.

It would have been fitting to have the FE appear as Buffy to, say, the Scoobies, the Potentials, Andrew, Dawn, Wood, the paperboy - anyone aside from just Caleb and Spike. Because it would have completely fucked with them, which is what the FE seemed to be trying to accomplish. Honestly, get a truly truth-twisting and evil Buffy saying things to Willow or Dawn? I think we would have seen some nice torture there.

Sheesh, when I think about Season Seven, I just want to rewrite it, top-to-bottom.