#buffy guide

[girl4music]

I was awaiting the Buffy guide for this episode for such a long time that I think I maybe anticipated it too much because I was left slightly disappointed in the analysis conclusion as I honestly thought TPN would bring up something I’ve realized for quite some time now about it. Something I’ve found to be very profound about it but could never quite put into words in the way I know he could because he is much more articulate than me.

I assumed many people have already made the connection about The Dawn and Dawn in that it “dawned” on Buffy in that moment that she could sacrifice herself over Dawn as they shared the same blood. But it’s not just blood that is the ties that bind these two sisters. It’s also humanity. Human nature itself is represented through Dawn in exploring and questioning her own existence. Her reason for being.

She is human. She may not be born human with being the incarnation of ‘The Key’ that closes the portal. But everything about her goes back to her humanity. The people that love her and the people that she loves back. The way they know her, learn her and care about her regardless of her not really being part of their real lives. The fact they just seem to disregard that information on account of FEELING the way they do about Dawn.

Therefore, when the revelation of this hits Buffy via the thematic visual of The Dawn, she immediately knows and understands what she can do. Not what she must do. What she CAN do. There is a clear distinction in this because Dawn could sacrifice herself and it’d still work. The portal would close. The Universe wouldn’t collapse. They may have to do some clean up of the mess of the realities colliding with each other but otherwise, they’d be relatively safe again. Dawn knew this as her purpose. Not just what she was made for but why she exists at all. Why she even has a human existence in any case. Because she will possess the consciousness to act. To FEEL like she has to act in exactly the way Buffy would. A random inanimate physical object would possess no such quality unless it is wielded by that of which did because a weapon doesn’t commit a crime of violence. That of whom intends to cause violence is what does. Glory. The same goes for the opposite: In healing pain. Administering medicine. That’s why we have doctors. Ben. That duality and dichotomy that gets lost in the confuddle of the back-and-forth switch-arooing them because they can’t share the same space as Ian said in his ‘Weight Of The World’ analysis - that I agreed with.

But Buffy prevents Dawn from fulfilling her purpose knowing how hard and unfair it is to be chosen for something and have no say in it yourself. No agency. No right to self-government and maintenance. To have no autonomy either in a bodily way or in a mentality way. To be just a vessel with which to conceal what has more power within you and leave you to just be the passenger in a flesh vehicle that has been entirely driven for you.

And to just be a martyr for the so-called “greater good”. More than a thing - a thing with self-consciousness and therefore a thing that can also decide its fate or destiny.

Buffy realizes in that moment that it’d work with her too. Therefore, she literally becomes ‘The Gift’ in her death. And she’s ‘The Gift’ in several different ways which all seamlessly work to emphasise each other.

Firstly and most significantly she’s ‘The Gift’ to Dawn by taking her place and allowing her to live a full free human life in a way that she never really got to have.

She’s ‘The Gift’ to her family of Scoobies so that they could cut their losses before more could happen to them. More loss or harm. Especially if it’d all be in vain as the portal couldn’t be closed once it was opened.

She’s ‘The Gift’ to the world or the universe itself by directly closing the portal to all the other dimensions.

But most poignantly and importantly:

She’s ’The Gift’ to herself by letting go of everything. Not just her life. But her destiny. Her obligation. Her burden. Her pain. That of which she gave no consent to ever go through in the first place. ‘The Gift’ to herself is both in her defiance of the Slayer system that she’s been unwillingly thrust into as well as adhering to it. She finds the loophole. The back door. Another way - while simultaneously relieving herself of her suffering.

It’s perceived as self-sacrifice/suicide. It is that. I’m not denying that it’s not. But there’s just much more to it. More nuance and complexity. It’s well thought out. It’s well-written. It’s well-acted. It’s my preferred ending because I have learned so much more from it and all of what leads up to it than I ever could in ‘Chosen’s’ end.

Having that agency in WHEN and HOW I leave the stage matters to me more so in storytelling than continuing to perform when I feel no joy in the many roles I must play.

I love this episode and specifically this ending so much. I love the dark awareness and truth in it. The tragedy. I love how it’s a quick flick of the switch transition from desperation and confusion to complete utter clarity in Buffy knowing what she can do to save the world again.

That is the profundity of “Death is your gift” and as interesting as I think Ian’s points are in this Buffy guide, I feel like he really missed out on explaining that insight. I was really looking forward to him addressing this line and put clear concise logic to how I feel inside about The Dawn. Which is oddly positive and enthralled considering it is literally a death scene. However, a death scene with so much vitality in it. So much life because it both arrives and departs with such grace.

But maybe that’s just the way only my wacky mind works because the way I understand how I perceive ‘The Gift’ is honestly too much for my own words to convey, let alone anyone else’s who have a platform with which to express to thousands of viewers/listeners such tremendous knowledge of the human condition - which is of course why Buffy remains a staple in pop culture TV and why I think the reboot has a lot to live up to if it wants to touch on anything near Season 5 does when it comes to plummeting the depths of humanity through a supernatural/fantasy environment because that’s no small feat to take on. It takes skill. It takes understanding how useful metaphors can be to the ultimate value of storytelling in TV art/entertainment. I mean I don’t ever watch anything that’s clear cut literalism as much as I love fact and logic. It’s not me. It’s just not how I engage with any kind of storytelling. I love philosophy. I love psychology. I love the deep stuff. The landscape has changed so drastically now that despite all the best intentions, I don’t think it’s doable. I think we’ve hit out peak as far as long-form shows go. I hope I’m very wrong about that but I just don’t see it happening now or certainly not as well as the original.

[thehalloweenhub]

10 TV Episodes for Halloween (part one)

[jane-not-rizzoli]

Sometimes I think the only authentic and positive representations of autism are written by accident. In this essay I will…

[maggottgrrrl]

Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cable Guide UK 2000 Jan

[90s-2000s-barbie]

TV Guides 📺

Back before we had the TV Guide channel, we had to by the guides every week. Our area didn’t have a TV Guide channel till I was in high school. We bought these for decades.

[vamptvgirl]

[fictiongods]

I have a song on my Fuffy playlist and I really just added it cause I liked it and that was the playlist I was listening to at the time so I kept meaning to take it off because I didn’t really know if it even related to them or not and I just looked up the meaning…..don’t talk to me. It’s safe to say that song is STAYING THERE. Goodbye.

[batty4horror]

Horror Flavored Valentine's Watch Guide

[gerardwaygirlmoments]

What We Do in Sunnydale: An AU

At the command of the Master to conquer the new world, Darla, Angelus, Spike, and Drusilla travel from the UK to the USA and eventually end up in Sunnydale, California. There, Angelus meets Buffy, a woman who wishes to become a vampire, so she becomes his familiar for some time. Unbeknownst to them all, she is the Slayer. On the night of the Master's arrival in Sunnydale and Buffy's tenth anniversary, some other humans start a documentary about the vampire household. Hilarity and drama ensues.

[werewolf-swag-competition]

The moon is rising...

The werewolves that have gathered are:

Alice "Daisy" Tonner (The Magnus Archives)

Alphonse (Sir William and the Wolf)

Angua von Überwald (Discworld)

Anton (What we do in the Shadows)

Big and will be Bad Wolf (Lobotomy Corporation)

Bisclavret (Bisclaveret)

Catalina Schnitz (Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure)

Clawd Wolf (Monster High)

Daniel "Oz" Osbourne (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Father Gascoigne (Bloodborne)

Farkas (Skyrim)

Jack Howl (Twisted Wonderland)

Jack Russel (Marvel Comics)

Jawbone O'Shaughnessey (Dimension 20)

Julie (Moonstruck)

Laurence the First Vicar (Bloodborne)

Link (Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess)

Lycaon son of Pelagus (Greek Mythology)

Maddy Smith (Wolfblood)

Malaya Walters (How to be a Werewolf)

Mason Greyback (Wizards of Waverly Place)

Mebh Óg MacTíre (Wolfwalkers)

Paul Schue-Horyn (Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye)

Quentin Collins (Dark Shadows)

Rendog (Hermitcraft)

Ruby/Little Red Riding Hood (One Upon a Time)

Scott McCall (Teen Wolf)

Sonic the Werehog (Sonic Unleashed)

Wayne (Hotel Transylvania)

Werewolf Cookie (Cookie Run)

Will Blake (Goosebumps)

Yaretzi (Hello from the Hallowoods)

"But wait a moment!!" you may say. "Where's David? Where's Chetney? Where's Scott? WHERE'S CLAWDEEN???" and for that, I direct you to @werewolfbattle ! I decided to give other characters a chance and eliminate characters who made it far in that contest. I think that's fair. The semi finals are still happening, so go ahead and vote there!

[whattraintracks]

A BUFFY STAN?? BRO THATS SO REAL !!

(im pumpkinpie59 btw fjdkdkd)

Heck yeah, I'm a Buffy stan!! I loved "Poor Little Rich Turtle" because I loved her. Absolute crime we didn't get more of her. I am constantly haunted by the fact that I must create the content with her that I want to see. So thank you for your adorable art!!

[girl4music]

“No one is birthed into the world complete and we don’t cross a line somewhere in our 20’s to find that we’ve arrived at adult. We shape ourselves into the people we are by making choices or circumstances will do the shaping for us. Which brings us to Willow…

This episode is a significant one for the Rosenberg and I realized watching it that I’ve suffered something of a Mandela Effect when it comes to her. Specifically I’ve been misremembering the very first episode where Willow’s eyes turn black upon casting a spell. In ‘Becoming Part I’ after Giles tells Willow that casting a soul restoration spell might open a door she’d be unable to close. She insisted. But his warning implies that casting magic potentially leaves an indelible mark on the caster and while being watched by Cordy and Oz something channelled through her and I was sure that she looked up, looked forward and had black eyes during the remainder of the spell - but no. Still, the door was open, and in Willow’s case what that has meant so far is magic becoming her number one coping mechanism. Magic has been a metaphor for a few things, but one of it’s analogues set up early on by Giles’ abuse of it to get high in ‘The Dark Age’, was drugs. A metaphorical connection between magic and alcohol was made in ‘Something Blue’ when Willow first tried to deal with her grief over Oz by way of a sick bud-light dance party. She has resorted to magic to cope with her lust, to cope with her anger, to cope with her grief,… and in ‘Tough Love’, her rage.

Historically there has usually been a scene afterwards where she suffers guilt for the spell’s misfire and bakes a round of apology cookies, but the episode always stops just short of her learning the actual lesson. Her regret is never specifically for the use of magic to solve her problem, but for the fact that she wasn’t capable enough to pull the spell off the way she wanted to and everyone tends to let it slide. On to the next episode. Heck, Buffy said more to Jonathan in ‘Superstar’ than she has ever said to Willow… because Willow is just… in pain, angry, lonely, lost. That’s all. It’s a familiar pattern with abuse-based coping mechanisms given there always tends to be a lot going on for that person. Big things that their friends and family members see as what actually drove their loved ones to this and that big thing feels more important right now than confronting their loved one about their little problem. Now is not the time, now is never the time and then time slips past.

But Willow has continued to become more powerful with every passing season and in ‘Tough Love’ her breaking into the Magic Box and channelling actual black magic I think represents a turning point. This is the first time her eyes actually turn black and if every spell leaves an indelible mark upon the caster, there is something in her now that she will always have to carry. But in keeping with Willow learning the wrong lesson or none whatsoever, the final scene in the episode follows the pattern we’ve seen to this point. Scoobies feeling bad for what Willow must be going through, conversations about consequences not being had and Willow feeling defeated and depressed. If the pattern fits not just because of Tara’s state, but because Willow wasn’t strong enough to wield the necessary power to properly take her revenge. Wasn’t strong enough,.. yet.”

Once again, nice job, Ian. Hit some points that I’ve never really thought about myself as you often do.

About your comment on the final scene of the episode being confusing because of the location they’re in.

Tara has not officially moved in with Willow. Yes, she stays in Willow’s room more often than not (hence the double bed replacing the two singles since ‘The Replacement’) and because of the traumatic events of ‘Family’ where her abusive dad just let himself in when it was unlocked, making it unsafe for Tara to be there alone, but they don’t officially live together. Willow still has her dorm room and Tara still has hers. So the room you see them in at the end of the episode is Tara’s dorm room, not Willow’s or Buffy’s.

[a-heart-of-kyber]

The way in which people seem to blindly act as if season 6 of Buffy exists in a vacuum is actually bananas.

[lodane]

Tubi Testimony (pirate POV, tubi-n-chill x reader)

Context? i came to the site for gothic soap opera Dark Shadows on ABC in the late 1960s. if you're gonna do the same... look for "Dark Shadows: the Beginning" because that's the real 1966 start of the series (before Barnabas shows).

Ads... Like, ANY?

first things first... i assume tubi has ads but i use ublock-origin (win10, firefox/opera) and haven't seen any... at all... ever.

. n . o . t . h . i . n . g .

Account?

in my browser, you don't have to have an account. I REPEAT: NO SIGN-UP OR SIGN-IN REQUIRED. can't speak for the phone app, haven't used it 🤷‍♀️

Watch Party

i'm not sure if they're one of the services that black out the screen when you stream to friends on discord/etc. (tbh i don't think they do this? but...) if so they're one i've worked around by disabling hardware acceleration in the browser's settings. 🤷‍♀️ like candy from a babbyform.

Subtitles [CC]

the captions aren't perfect but they're a straight up SRT file 👀 you can rip with anything (including, just, like... the ublock logger showing you the direct URL). i don't know where they came from, and they don't seem *entirely* automagically generated... so, i can't tell if they're pulled from some (phoned-in) DVD, they're paying someone to caption, scraping some (really half-assed) fan subs...or some combo?

this is important to me since i'm going to be fixin' up my OWN fan subs for this show and it's great when someone saves you some legwork. i use downsub dot com (which is SHOCKINGLY not a k*nk site) to scrape the captions when i'm being lazy.

The Video Itself

the videos themselves are quite easily obtained, too... but... i'll tell ya... i never bothered ripping the show, and i stopped downloading it from elsewhere atm, because i legit enjoy just watching it on tubi... the vibes are good, the ux/ui are good, and they basically have the same files as i can find elsewhere (admittedly scuffed, for the example of Dark Shadows) on any archive or torrent for a show...

i can side-by-side a rip to a file and see there's basically no difference... so i don't think they attempt any reformatting/editing/etc. of the media they, uh, obtain... from... somewhere?

🤔

actually... i have a test for this... brb...

(pulls up Buffy's 'Once More with Feeling' on Tubi)

so, since it's shockingly different on various platforms and editions, it's a great little litmus test.

VISUAL DIFFERENCES? placing the file and tubi side-by-side, playing the exact same spot... yeah, i guess... there's a little bitsy change in color/contrast/fuzz (very likely just throwing a few less pixels on the screen) that's probably just some lossy compression they do to make it easier to house/stream all these files…

BUT WHICH VERSION IS IT? for Buffy's s06e07, OMWF, they have the 00:50:45 runtime version, which afaik is "the good* version" with all the original visuals intact. i'm sure someone is a bigger Buffy scholar than me, but i think this the "DVD version" (not an old DVR/TV rip, like i subsisted on for years, not the terrible blu-ray wherein they cut several minutes).

the captions are LITERALLY identical from the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 1 to 7 Mp4 1080p" torrent (which, again, are likely originally from the DVDs).

tangent: the entire scene before and after "I Have a Theory" is an amazing case study in why those Blu-Rays were strangely good 5% of the time but absolutely still ruined the show. why? well, tbh there are a couple edits this episode could use… changes that were made for the better in the blu-ray version, like... i guess i can understand taking out the donut/cruller Magnolia PUA joke, since it's very dated? along with Anya dropping the m-slur… we could lose that, for sure [which, i just checked, is in the tubi version, so it's def not blu-ray]. too bad the blu-ray also kills the pterodactyl joke??? they cut out the shared visual framing device of the shoppe's door/bell when buffy/dawn enter for one but leave the other? it feels like the level of brainpower that went into that Hitchhiker's Guide movie when they ruined the joke about "beware the jaguar" and all that in the first 10 minutes?

conclusion...

go watch Dark Shadows: The Beginning or Buffy the Vampire Slayer on tubi tv ig? do a fan sub for the first 365 episodes of an ancient soap opera in a desperate effort to get ppl to watch it?

fuck man idk...

💋

Tubi is the best streaming service because it captures the feeling of a video store, but not a corporate video store like Blockbuster, or even a good indie store, but a rundown video rental place under a overpass weeks away from closing down. You'll find, like, 2001: A Space Odyssey next to a unwatchable copy of a 70s exploitation film and a micro-low-budget indie and a movie called STRIPPER VAMPIRE MASSACRE III but you can find no evidence of STRIPPER VAMPIRE MASSACRE one or two existing.

This is a real, commercial streaming service and they've uploaded films with the DVD menu visible for the first few seconds bc it's a recording of a DVD copy. What a titan in the landscape of streaming

[artuski]

Definition of whiplash. I watched Disharmony right after The Body.

[ssaalexblake]

I dislike takes that say Giles hated or was a poor parental figure to xander out of dislike because Giles was actually just a shitty parental figure to all of the scoobies full stop tbh