Cindy and Hec (and everyone) thanks for the explanations. I was aware of the concept (and have seen the eps), but I don't think I'd heard the joss term before.

brenda, in Chosen, didn't someone say, "From now on, every girl who can be a slayer, will be a slayer," or something like that? I think that's the bit that did the jossing of Fray.

Nonian, you're welcome. I am sorry if I went on too long.

Cindy, I think you're right, but that could be easily attributed to unreliable narrator.

Also, to add to what I said last night, can you picture a circumstance in which it would be easier for the Slayer line to be lost? Not died out, just totally unlocatable? Say Faith dies, a new Slayer is called...but with a hodge-podge, pasted together council and hundreds or thousands of other one-shot Slayers running around, how on earth would they ever locate her?

I am sorry if I went on too long

Not at all - thanks!

I have a Chosen -> Fray wank.

The spell conferring slayerhood on all the potentials made all current potentials into slayers and essentially ended all of their lines. No future slayers because, no potentials. A sort of balancing.

The slayer and her friends driving magic for the world (I don't remember exactly how it was said in Fray) is a mythologization of the history (our future) in which the army of slayers is largely successful in rooting out magical evil from the world but has no successors.

I'm curious about DebetEsses's, plankton or no plankton.

Buffy would never have known about it, let alone acquired it, if Caleb and crew hadn't dug for it. I'd like to think they had some reason, but I've never come up with one. Just another plot hole, I guess.

Yeah, leaving it completely embedded in solid rock probably would have been a good way to keep Buffy away from it.

The only way I can make Season 7 make sense is if the First Evil's goal wasn't to end the Slayer line, but rather to end itself. In "Chosen" it said that once its übervamps outnumbered the remains of the human race, it would be able to take fleshy form of its own. In essence, it would be alive—and killable, if a powerful enough opponent and weapon were at hand. Its words to Willow once it revealed itself could be interpreted in that way:

Fact is, the whole good versus evil, balancing the scales thing—I'm over it. I'm done with the mortal coil. But believe me, I'm going for a big finish.

The only way I can make Season 7 make sense is if the First Evil's goal wasn't to end the Slayer line, but rather to end itself.

Whoa. Matt, that interpretation of the First's line to Willow is actually really cool.

Can you dig up any more support for it?

I like that Matt.

It's the First Evil after all, it's probably tired.

And SURELY Buffy of all people would leave anyone she had reason to believe was in heaven well enough alone.....

That too. I don't think Buffy would put Tara through what she went through just to give Willow a happy. It is an idea that I am glad did not work out, as throwing things at the screen would be a minimal appropriate response.

(So what do you guys think Buffy would spend her one wish on?)

Jenny was not a witch.

I was using the term loosely, but you are right.

That too. I don't think Buffy would put Tara through what she went through just to give Willow a happy.

Well, it would be a reality altering wish- I'd assume that the wish may not be that Tara would be brought to life, but that Tara had never died?

ETA: This would mess up mountains of other things, I know. Still not an endorsing it. Besides the huge Squee I'd have made at the time of execution, in the long run it wouldn't work.