#btvs touched

[diaryofateenageslayer]

Watch "Buffy Gets Therapized | Selfless Love" on YouTube

Love this analysis of Buffy and Spike's relationship from an unbiased therapist's pov 😊❤

[bisexualdawnsummers]

[littlenastieswewhispered]

“buffy ended the show single :)” ok but only because her current love interest just DIED!! (he near quite literally died in her arms! in sacrifice for her!) her last words of the entire series were telling him she loves him and then saying his name in admiration. she isn’t single; she’s a widow.

[tenderjock]

I’m with you, my love The lights shining through on you Yes, I’m with you, my love It’s the morning and just we two

[camellcat]

"cordelia could you please drive me home?" "of course" OF COURSE she replies to buffy, softly, without hesitation. even if she goes right back to harping on about the world ending, of course she'll help buffy. head in my fucking hands

[ptieuca]

3x18 / 3x21

[tubesock86]

spike receiving praise

[vampirismadvocate]

sometimes I talk to my irl friends about my thoughts on vampires and am reminded that there’s something genuinely unwell about me

[birdhousemp3]

skill issue. spike should’ve been crawling on his hands and knees and drooling on her thigh high boots personally

[flintmirandas]

buffy and spike. she is asleep in his arms. he is awake, watching her. he strokes her hair, infinitely gentle. and then leans down and presses his lips against her forehead.

buffy the vampire slayer | 7.02 beneath you, 7.10 bring on the night, 7.20 touched

[juanabaloo]

still thinking about that "here's what's gonna happen in 20 years" video related to parents not loving their children (specifically in the video for a possibly trans child). thinking about all of us that don't get to know our grandparents, or our parents. thinking about how sometimes we don't get a choice in it, and sometimes it's not about poverty or distance or a language barrier. how sometimes people are so grateful that we actually don't get to know them. sometimes they are protecting us but we don't know it.

thinking about how i carry a last name with me, carry it around like a broke down chair. carry the name of a grandfather who was not a father. how my dad barely even knew him. how my dad has like 2 anecdotes about his dad, and it's like a story you tell of running into a celebrity, but it's all mundane, like oh i saw stephen king at the grocery store and he bought corn flakes.

thinking about how dementia fucks up a lot of goodbyes.

thinking about Will saying goodbye to his dad in sense8. thinking about that scene in ER when Doug (Clooney) tells off Mark (Edwards) about his dad. "your father was there for you - every night."

thinking about my favorite show BTVS and how Buffy's dad isn't just absent, he's terrible. and even though (spoiler) it's her nightmare, we don't know it for SURE at that point, and her dad (hate you Hank) shows up in 1x10 Nightmares to be SO SO cruel to her. nothing physical, all verbal, and it's BRUTAL. Buffy asks "why are you saying all these things?" and cries. he belittles her crying. later he literally does not show up when his ex-wife Joyce dies. completely MIA.

thinking about how the next best thing Buffy has to a dad is Giles, and (spoiler) in 3x12 Helpless he drugs her. when he admits it she is understandably justifiable angry and crying. "if you touch me I'll kill you... I don't know you... Cordelia could you please drive me home?" (we'll just ignore how the show allows Buffy that moment of anger and then glosses over any lingering issues / processing for her)

[effulgent-spuffy]

Touched 7x20

Spike? Could you... stay here? Will you just hold me?

[herefortheships]

Buffy has totally ruined me for any other show. Because in Buffy there are consequences to things. And I feel like few shows actually give the characters lasting, realistic consequences to things that they have to deal with. It's all a rush to solve everything before they have to move on to the next season's plot.

In Buffy, for example, when Willow went Dark Witch and almost killed everyone and destroyed everything, she had to deal with the consequences next season. Her character is affected in a very tangible way by what happened. And so are all the other characters around her, with regards to her. And they all have to get used to each other again and work through it. The show dedicates time to deal with what happened and for the characters to get through it. Because it matters! It matters to the character arcs, to the story, and to the viewers! We WANT to see the consequences and the aftermath and how characters are dealing with things! Not only because that's where the "juice" is in the show, but also because it helps us deal with our own shit in some way. Like, it's cathartic, I guess.

We want to see the aftermath, because it was a very dramatic, huge thing that happened and we want to see the characters recovering from it; we don't want the show to skip over it.

Then there are other shows where the characters deal with massive, insanely dark things, and then next season they're totally over it because that's last season's plot... It's like they can't "dwell" on last season's plot except for a throwaway line or two because they have to move on to the next big bad...

No! I want to see how it affected the characters!! Don't you see that's where the juice is?? I WANT to see how the characters are dealing and getting through what happened! I want to see consequences and how characters heal!! I want to see them changed by their experiences for better or worse.

Yeah. Buffy totally made me expect other shows to give that kind of attention to detail to their characters and their personal arcs.

[wolfstrong]

I Wanna be like “ohhh it’s so funny how Giles has such a deep genuine affection for Buffy and Willow but he lowkey can’t stand Xander and think he’s dumb” but then I remember Xanders dream in Restless when he saw Spike and Giles together and Spike was like “Giles is my new mentor! He’s teaching me to be a Watcher :)” and Giles was like “yeah. He’s like a son to me :)” and Xander was like “haha yeah. I wanted to be like that for a while. But I moved onto other things” and his other things were just like his sad minimum wage job that he hates. And then it’s revealed later in that same episode that Xanders father is abusive. And then they never talk about annnnyyyy of this again and Xander is the funny stupid guy everyone loves to hate. Anyway!

[secretsofthewilde]

Sexual intimacy in seasons 1-3 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer - continued

@girl4music asked me to write a section on Willow, so here is my very quick initial look into Willow's relationship with sexual intimacy in the first three seasons of Buffy. okay wow this ended up much longer than intended

The original post with my points briefly covering Buffy, Faith, and Cordelia is here (x).

Willow Rosenburg

As I touched upon in my actual essay, I think that the introduction of Tara marks a difference in how gender norms come into play in the depictions of sexual intimacy in the show. For this section, as with the others, I am going to be sticking to the first three and how they depict Willow's relationships.

When first introduced to Willow she is a shy and often meek character, who we know has a heart of gold and are supposed to sympathetic towards. Comparatively to Buffy and Cordelia, Willow could be seen as the true "good girl" of the Scooby for the most part. While she attempts to emulate Buffy's confidence or more risk taking tendencies, when it comes to her role in relationships in the first two seasons she still defaults to gendered stereotypes for the most part.

Upon the very first episode of the show we are introduced to her as having an unrequited and rather hopeless crush on Xander. Despite the fact that it's puppy love she feels for him, we are meant to still view her love for him as pure and good. When Buffy urges her to try seize the day in those first episodes, she then decides to go against her heart and goes out with a boy she just met at the Bronze, who is then of course revealed to be a vampire. This first attempt of Willow's to seek an intimate relationship is one she is punished for (though it may not stick out to us, it is an important moment for her), because it doesn't have the emotional connection that the show requires of it's female characters to have.

I'm not going to get into Moloch (the demon that possesses a computer) too much, but I will just quickly say I think that an argument could be made that the relationship between them was punishing Willow for attempting to form a relationship with someone through means that went against the norm for teenage girls at the time. Obviously the key theme of that episode is a sort of 'Online Stranger Danger' but at the same time it's interesting that Willow's key strength (the supposedly feminist aspect of her early character) lies in her computer skills in these early seasons, but she is unable to use those skills in order to establish an intimate relationship.

Her relationship with Oz is arguably presented as the most healthy of the Scoobys' relationships at this time. He respects her and routinely informs her that he doesn't want her to feel the need to change herself or present a certain way in order for him to remain interested in her. His more mellow personality and constant praise towards Willow often makes us forget the dominating traits he has in the relationship - i.e. his age, experience, and the fact that he is a werewolf. I also think it's interesting to note that due to his werewolf status that we see her falling into a more submissive feminine lover role; she is a beauty who loves the beast and believes that the power of her love is strong enough to perhaps tame him one day. When she does initially attempt to initiate sex into their relationship, Oz rebuffs it, suggesting that they take their time with introducing sexual intimacy, as he believes she is primarily initiating it out of her personal insecurity at her lack of experience. He primarily makes the decisions in how they move forward in their relationship, but because we know that Willow is intellectually superior to many of her peers and Oz presents himself as not at all domineering, we don't question whether it's right for him to speak for her as to whether she really feels ready to have sex yet. 

When it comes to Willow and Xander cheating on their respective partners for one another... I'm not going to rewatch that story line just for this post, so this will be based off of my memory (about a year a two since I've last rewatched). While we are made to understand that Xander and Willow are both in the wrong for their emotional affair, the show does constantly remind us that Willow has held love for Xander for several years and in doing so it tries to make us more sympathetic towards her actions. While Willow is (from my memory at least) the one who initiates and pushes them to continue their behavior, she is the one the show expects us to be forgiving towards. This brief dominance she displays with Xander breaks her usual passiveness and in doing so also appears to be playing against gender roles in their relationship. However, when the pair are caught kissing by their respective partners they quickly revert to their expected roles; Willow becomes a passive and submissive partner to Oz again, wracked by the guilt of her actions and wanting to repent. While she isn't granted instant forgiveness by Oz, it's relatively quick that the two resolve their conflict and go back to being the Scooby's representation of a "good relationship". It is very interesting to note that the show forgives Willow for her cheating behavior, whereas it could be argued that Cordelia is punished for not forgiving Xander for his behavior. This reinforces the idea that Willow is supposed to be a passive participant in her relationship, as we see Cordelia, who refuses to do so, gets exiled from the Scooby gang and narratively punished.  

The first time that Willow has sex in the show is with Oz and it's one of the rare times we see sexual intimacy being portrayed as both loving and without punishment for the women during these early seasons. As Buffy and Angel's first time was presented as being a reflection of their love, so too is Willow and Oz's. One could argue that the show even rewards Willow for returning to Oz and submitting herself to him sexually. At the end of season three their relationship, the one which appears to fit gender roles, is the only one that remains. From this we can see that though Willow attempts to contest gender roles through the same strengths that grant her position in the Scooby gang, when it comes to relationships and intimacy she is often pushed into the role of being the token "good girl" of the group; even when she does navigate contesting this role, such as in the case of cheating with Xander or expressing the desire for sex casually, we will see her revert back into a more submissive characterization afterwards.  

To draw this all back to my original post; the female characters are able to challenge gender roles in many ways in the first three seasons, however this isn't extended to sex. Willow is allowed to desire sex and even enjoy it, however it is on the provision that she fulfills certain heteronormative conventions, or is at least perceived to do so during these times.

[violettathepiratequeen]

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