Mindy Newell: It All Gives Me A Headache – Part Three
“And in each universe, there’s a copy of you witnessing one or the other outcome, thinking – incorrectly – that your reality is the only reality.”
– Brian Green, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos.
• • • • •
Who are you?
Are you sure?
• • • • •
Are you Buffy Summers, the Slayer, the chosen one of her generation who stands alone against the vampires, monsters, and demons who threaten the world? Or are you Buffy Summers, a schizophrenic patient in a psychiatric hospital battling the unleashed horrors of your own id?
Doctor: Do you know where you are?
Buffy: Sunnydale.
Doctor: No. None of that’s real. None of it. You’re in a mental institution. You’ve been with us now for six years.
Spike: Put a little ice on the back of her neck. She likes that.
Buffy: Some kind of gross, waxy demon-thing poked me.
Xander: And when you say “poke”…?
Buffy: In the arm!
Buffy: They told me that I was sick, I guess crazy, and that Sunnydale and all of this — none of it was real.
Xander: Oh, come on. That’s ridiculous. What? You think this isn’t real just because of all the vampires, and demons, and ex-vengeance demons, and the sister that used to be a big ball of universe-destroying energy…?
Willow: Okay, all in favor of research? Motion passed.
Doctor: In her mind, she’s the central figure in a fantastic world beyond imagination. She’s surrounded herself with friends, most with their own superpowers.
Doctor: Together they face grand, overblown conflicts against an assortment of monsters, both imaginary and rooted in actual myth.
Doctor: Buffy, you used to create these grand villains to battle against. And now what is it? Just ordinary students you went to high school with. No gods or monsters, just three pathetic little men… who like playing with toys.
“Normal Again”
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Season Six, Episode 17
• • • • •
Who are you?
Are you sure?
• • • • •
Are you Buddy Baker, married to Ellen Frazier, father to Cliff and Maxine, and living in San Diego? Or are you a character in a comic book called Animal Man, which was written by Grant Morrison and published by DC Comics?
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• • • • •
Who are you?
Are you sure?
To be continued…
At least, in this universe!
(citations copyrighted by their respective owners)
TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis