I was in fourth grade when Disney rocked my world. The Little Mermaid came out to theaters and I was happily anticipating the story I had heard all my life: of a little mermaid (nameless) who had sacrificed her own life for love and was turned into sea foam. Needless to say, I was surprised at Disney's ending, and since everything is black and white at fourth grade, Disney was obviously in the wrong. However, when I tried to tell people the correct ending, no one believed me. The other kids threw rocks at me until I shut up (no, not really, but doesn't it make the story more colorful?). In any event, that was that.

Perhaps because of my silly childhood experience, the original story of love and self-sacrifice has stuck with me. So when I watched, fascinated, at the season 5 finale, I thought of the Little Mermaid. Buffy, who was stripped of her real family (with her mother dead and her sister not technically real), and with her strength of no use against a god, must do the only thing left to her: she must sacrifice her own life to save Dawn and the Scoobies. Death is her gift, since she killed herself out of love to her friends, her sister and humanity. The Little Mermaid, taken from her family under the sea to be put on earth, bereft of her voice and pained wherever she walks, sacrifices her own life to save the life of the man she loves. The man who does not love her back. Death is her gift to him, the love that they could have had, and to the sea where she was born and to which she returns.

But as similar as these stories seem, the stronger tie is the theme of heroism and virtue. Neither one of these ladies could bear to see another human die when they could help it. They had the courage and strength to do the only thing they could do to save these people. That is what puts them in that special place only reserved for heroines.