#buffy liveblog

[the-golden-dragoness]

I love scenes where I like Xander (see: saying they should kill Angel instead of cursing him to have a soul again)

[hauntedhikingsociety]

nothing like getting 8 episodes into a tv show where the heroine exclusively uses broken bits of wood as weapons and then someone shows up with GUNS? girl that's cheating

[hmslusitania]

Lore in Buffy is of course extremely loosey goosey but I will never not love that a number 2 pencil counts for the purpose of a wooden stake to the heart for vampire slayage

[ashes0909]

one thing i've always found comforting, whether i'm in my 00s, 10s, 20s, or 30s is that there will always be a new fandom to fall into. whether its hitting me like a speeding train or pulling me under like a soft pillow, whether its canon is brand new or decades old, whether its a rare one or a popular one—i won't even know to look for it. until one day i'm ready for it, and it'll be waiting for me with open arms.

[morrithal]

Sorry but this is Angel to me. Like this is the only pose and expression he does when he's trying to be cute

[herinsectreflection]

I love it when the the show doesn't even try to make the Girl/Slayer Dichotomy discussion subtle.

[granny-weatherwax]

They pULLED A "THE BODY" ON TORI?????

[chasingfictions]

doublemeat palace as about bodies and autonomy and systems!!!!! buffy moving as a body within the minimum wage service economy with the things that allow her full personhood being stripped away systemically by her employer ("in it for life. like me. you wanna get something out of this, Buffy? you'll do the same." / " yeah. they all start to look the same to me too." / "do you think they'll mind if I take another break? "we're not allowed. downtime robs us all."). and then anya within the system of marriage and heterosexuality and there's something about that being questioned by halfrek that's like. okay what would it mean for you NOT to put your body through this system. the simple question of : "so, um … you're marrying that man with the large upper arms?" "yes" "why?" . and then Willow in the process of renegotiating what it is to live in her body in this world then having her bodily autonomy violated by Amy ("You don't get it. What you did to me was wrong. Do you have any idea how much harder that makes, just, everything?") but in a way that nonetheless doesn't recognize that that's just what she did to Tara.

meanwhile dawn is processing the reality of what it means to have to live in a world run by money ("but that means she's gonna have like crap jobs her entire life, right? Minimum wage stuff. I mean, I could still grow up to be anything. But for her … this is it.") . in a way that is also about buffy and dawn's different roles in life and buffy's bodily autonomy being violated at 15 and in another way being violated in time immemorial when sineya's autonomy was violated, and how "i could still grow up to be anything. but for her, this is it" is about buffy's slayerhood. but also it's dawn in a moment of contending with her own powerlessness -- as a minor who sustained an injury a few weeks prior because of one of her caregivers wasn't in control of their body either, and trying to figure out a way out of this system. is there a way for her to have power. and there isn't yet, not like this -- like, the next two episodes again in the dawn pov are about her having no power over what her caregivers decide to do or how that affects her life. and then the macrocosm of that extending to the spuffy conversation in the dmp which a) is so funny bc it's just like wow ok two upper middle class guys say what. please youre embarrassing yourselves. and b) is like.

this could just be any conversation about buffy's general attitude towards life as a whole in this season. in the last season. like, don't make this harder and the throughline of hardness throughout this season --

and like, this season being so much about the way buffy's life is not in her control and you can see it with all the time-fucky and identity-bending plots of the season, and this episode is engaging with that in such an interesting way bc the dmp does feel like this liminal time-stuck space where you lose your personhood but that's also not through magical means like in life serial or tabula rasa or dead things it's just baked in societally, economically, structurally. and maybe im getting away from myself but like, the way buffy's entire life has been this timefuck and this identity bending, personhood-denying experiment. what does it do to your perception of time to know you're going to die before you reach 25. that you just have less time than everyone else. buffy's managers pointing to their 5-year, 10-year badges, and buffy knowing that she's currently 7 years into slayerhood and her number's been up twice already. the identity-bending and autonomy-denying of all of that being forced upon her at age 15, simply being told that this is her life now, forever.

and like, all of that is so highlighted in this specific episode because i do think like, buffy is vampirecoded all series yeah but all season in particular, she is undead, she crawls from her grave, she came back wrong, "sun sets and she appears" "every single night the same arrangement," all of that. but in this episode in particular there's something about the almost cryptlike sunlessness of the employee area of the doublemeat palace. the insistence that they need to eat the food the dmp produces mirroring the like, closed cycle of vampires feeding on blood, it's just blood in and blood out. doublemeat in and doublemeat out. the way they're also slowly being fed on by wig lady, and by the system, and the way all vampires are also victims of vampires, and vampires also are about autonomy and denial of personhood. we're told it seven episodes into the series. "a vampire isn't a person at all" and the way especially the first vampires we meet in the series are so invested in hierarchy, in system, that that's seemingly a tremendous part of vampiric culture and just like!! also buffy affirming some piece of her identity by taking a break she's not supposed to take to go have sex with a vampire in the alley and engage in this very bodily and human act with someone whose body is not human and instead is meant to be abject, and it's this tiny and sad little moment of trying to assert her personhood in the middle of endless systems that deny it .

anyway something something capitalism and the alienation of the worker from the body something something how patriarchy and capitalism are threaded together through the explicit villains of the doublemeat palace but the implicit villains of the watchers council and straight marriage and the american family structure. something something willow saving buffy and herself at the end of this episode and her doing that in the process of telling buffy about what happened with amy and processing her feelings about it and something about these two friends who love each other and have known each other since they were sixteen and didnt know fully how badly the world was going to try to mangle them standing there still alive and still themselves after an entire episode of feeling like they are the last people in control of themselves. willow being the one to save buffy for once, and then affirming a boundary to amy and she doesnt get it yet but maybe she will some day and buffy returning to the doublemeat palace but on her own terms and i dont know that i have a conclusion because i think there isnt one, it's just the whole thing, the whole season about what does it mean to really try to live in the world . can we find a way to survive. i dont know. can we? let's keep trying anyway. ill throw this monster that's about to eat you into the meat grinder to prove it.

[worflesbian]

the whole thing about rank and power dynamics and how janeway can't have a relationship with anyone on the crew and thusly is both cut off from and placed above everyone around her... thats not fucking healthy and im Thinking Thoughts. ik people do talk about this but for the most part we really Don't interrogate starfleet being a military enough, or the fact that these kind of hierarchical structures are like Not necessarily a given like there are other ways to lead... ways that Don't distill all responsibility and authority down to the shoulders of one person setting them apart from everyone around them. ik i was thinking about btvs this episode anyway but literally "you've got a superiority complex and an inferiority complex about it", buffy and janeway being women who to some extent didn't choose to be leaders in their situations who nonetheless spend seven seasons being blamed for every failure and carrying every victory and start to see themselves as above the law but also undeserving of the loyalty of those around them, being dragged out of their depressive episodes by the need to protect those people, unable to have a real relationship with any of them so they resort to someone who doesn't "count" because being above everyone makes you so, so alone

[caricature-of-a-witch]

bloody fucking hell I was expecting some. funny lil song and dance episode with some dangerous but ultimately easily resolved guy responsible for the shenanigans. instead now I want to cry about mediocre songs and my heart is breaking for just about every single character

[the-golden-dragoness]

Realizing that spike is a guy who says things like “daddy” and “kitten”

[agayhomestuck]

So you’re telling me angel came so hard he lost his soul.

[debbthelesbianbountyhunter]

And just like that I fell in love.

I could write a whole dissertation on Cordelia “says faiths hair is obviously fake even though it is brown” chase. But the thing that I love specifically in this line, and why it’s so iconic, is because Cordelia isnt scared of Buffy, she’s ANGEY, and she doesn’t just ask Buffy what her issue is, she asks her what her childhood trauma is. She says the cattiest, funniest thing and then immediately goes and tells everyone that the weird new girl threatened her w a stick.

I adore you ms. chase.

[anadrenalineslut]

how old is angel???? buffy is 16.... SIXTEEN.

[forcebookish]

imagine not being able to enjoy a ship because they break up y'all are weak and won't survive the winter

[morrithal]

Spike walked on screen and was immediately better than Angel because he has a better jacket