Yeah I mean, it's not like in universe Anya isn't dangerous with a huge body count. Anya trying to get Xander's friends to pull the trigger on murdering him is shockingly terrible. That fandom ignores this entirely while declaring Xander's behavior in Entropy unforgivable is hard to deal with, which is why I try to put it out of my mind. I remember reading someone who not only disagreed with Willow's concern in Triangle that Anya might hurt Xander, but claimed that it was unbelievable bad writing that Willow would even believe this.
It is true that the real life analogues to Anya are a bit vaguer than those for Angelus e.g. I love the interpretation of Halfrek in OAFA et al as a frankly venomous child services bureaucrat, who sees it as her duty to punish bad parents and lets that eclipse her concern for the child, and I think this "social worker who uses their power for ill rather than good" is one way to interpret Anyanka in a down to earth way... but that doesn't get at the scale of her crimes.
Certainly the gang learned some of the outline of Anya's origins in "Doppelgangland," but I'm not positive if they found out the specifics of Anya coming because of Cordelia/Xander(/Willow). It is possible that if Willow knew she would have gotten angry at the idea of Anya lecturing *Willow* on Willow's kissing breaking X/C up given that that occasion led to Anya creating an evil parallel universe, but it's hardly conclusive and playing on Willow's guilt, while sometimes putting her more on the offensive, sometimes does make her mostly clam up. (I mean, in story, Willow and Anya's conversation in "Triangle" is "you have your 'a thousand years of hurting men' gold watch" vs. "you kissed Xander and broke up him and Cordelia" and they are almost treated as equivalently bad things to do by the two characters.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2016-03-07 10:27 pm (UTC)It is true that the real life analogues to Anya are a bit vaguer than those for Angelus e.g. I love the interpretation of Halfrek in OAFA et al as a frankly venomous child services bureaucrat, who sees it as her duty to punish bad parents and lets that eclipse her concern for the child, and I think this "social worker who uses their power for ill rather than good" is one way to interpret Anyanka in a down to earth way... but that doesn't get at the scale of her crimes.
Certainly the gang learned some of the outline of Anya's origins in "Doppelgangland," but I'm not positive if they found out the specifics of Anya coming because of Cordelia/Xander(/Willow). It is possible that if Willow knew she would have gotten angry at the idea of Anya lecturing *Willow* on Willow's kissing breaking X/C up given that that occasion led to Anya creating an evil parallel universe, but it's hardly conclusive and playing on Willow's guilt, while sometimes putting her more on the offensive, sometimes does make her mostly clam up. (I mean, in story, Willow and Anya's conversation in "Triangle" is "you have your 'a thousand years of hurting men' gold watch" vs. "you kissed Xander and broke up him and Cordelia" and they are almost treated as equivalently bad things to do by the two characters.)