The Buffyverse carries its own symbolic law; it is a carnival realm where monster and human alike constantly exchange bodies to face their shadow selves or alter-egos, where language alters or is lost altogether, where traditional rules of gender are irrelevant, and where the nature of reality itself is always uncertain.  There is little wonder then that the mostly teenaged and young adult characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer struggle to achieve a sense of self.  The Scoobies essentially exist in a psychotic realm where they must survive in an unstable, ever-shifting reality.  In this realm, they rely primarily on each other for self-verification. 

Using Lacanian concepts of subject formation, my paper focuses primarily on the musical episode “Once More, With Feeling” to explore the issues that the Scoobies face in finding a sense of self within the Buffyverse.  I see this episode as the paradigm of the absurd, comical reality of the Buffyverse mixed with the painful issues that the characters face in maintaining a sense of subjectivity.  The carnivalesque, musical format allows for a loosening of speech among the characters, so that their repressed, painful feelings in relation to each other are able to come to the surface.  Although Buffy is ultimately rescued by Spike from fading into oblivion, the episode ends with all of the characters’ relationships at perhaps their most tenuous.  Because they rely on each other for a sense of selfhood, the detachment that they come to feel from each other is a challenge to their own individual identities.