#Tara deserves better from a lot of her hardcore fans regardless of whatever Willow did or did not do
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lightdancer1 · 2 months ago
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This is also a factor in Taffy or Mehane fics:
The Tara they write in them has literally nothing of Tara's actual background or character notes, she's an in name only relationship sue which ironically is the precise flaw the canon character evolves out of and is right to evolve out of. She was not, in fact, Willow's perfect reward for magic, and Willow treating her as that to a point was where Willow went to her nadir in multiple ways as a character.
Treating her as that for whichever character she gets set up with instead, and ironing out literally all of her flaws is not 'doing Tara justice.' It's substituting a character with Amber Benson's face and literally none of those motifs. Canon Tara trusted Willow so little she spent an entire year under the influence of the cult that traumatized her keeping a vitally important secret from her about that magic she was doing.
Why would miss "Doomed to be a demon" react BETTER To the literal DEMON SLAYER? This should be a vital motif, Tara should be far more visibly and repeatedly nervous and standoffish around Faith or Buffy PRECISELY because up until Family she thinks she's the exact kind of thing Slayers exist to kill. She'd be even vaguer with them than she would be around Willow. She would have literally every single reason in the world to be. This should be a major point of where their characters grind against each other and grow as it was with Willow and Tara.
Does it even come up in 99% of these fics? Hell no.
Add to this as well that Tara literally is both more emotionally mature than ANY of the other Scoobies, not just Willow, and has her own life OUTSIDE of those narrow channels. None of them, not just Willow, would be entirely at ease with that. These are people who live in a very closed circle who are used to a life limited to that and both badass and less emotionally mature than a random rock in a gravel bed.
Tara is none of these, Tara has her own trauma background but blends that with reaching a level that none of her friends did. This would 100% cause major friction in different ways reflecting the different insecurities of Buffy and Faith, and would rival the 'you loved me but never trusted me enough to tell me you were a demon and I might have to kill you when you turned 20' for entirely normal relationship friction and the stuff stories are made of.
Omitting 99% of Tara's actual motifs and story arcs does not mean you write Tara, it means you want a relationship sue to kiss the Slayers and fix their boo boos and Tara is the closest one that fits, which is true, she is the morally best character on the show. Still means if you want to write that you should actually write her, Willow if written without any of her own far more ambiguous to outright evil moments would be more like the character they think Tara is.
Willow's evils rise out of her greatest virtue, the way she loves her friends so much she renders her own personality invisible on their behalf. Tara is far more guarded of her own person and was always more aware of that than Willow was, even without the Bramble and the rest that was going to cause a big blowup between them at some point where they either get past it and much stronger or it goes to Hell permanently and not necessarily in a way solely Willow's responsibility.
There is an entirely understated and almost never used canonically valid reason for Tara to switch relationships that Willow essentially goes 'I poured out my heart to someone who never told me the truth, how can I ever trust her for anything again' and essentially 'friend zones' Tara as her 'reward' for everything in that first year and goes on to Kennedy or Faith or something like that.
An even slightly more emotionally intelligent Willow would have had serious problems with that, and even the canon version SHOULD have had major issues with what Tara did that entire first year of the relationship and some trust issues. It's debatable canon intended it but it might be its own part in why Willow listens rather less to Tara for the rest of Seasons 5 and 6 as a kind of passive-aggressive retaliation, if her actions are viewed in a purely negative light or even a more cynical one. It's a pre-existing justification for 'everything I do is right and why I don't have to listen if I elect to ignore it.'
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