#i’m not actually anti cordelia!!

[pansexual-lilychen]

i honestly think alastair & grace should just drop their siblings and become each other’s siblings because they’re both better and more caring siblings than cordelia & jesse

[coraniaid]

reverse unpopular opinion meme: xander?

[Reverse unpopular opinion meme]

I like to consider my opinion of Xander Harris as being particularly complicated and nuanced, but – engaging in some critical self-reflection for just a moment – I think the objective truth is probably more that I’m just instinctively and aggressively contrarian about it.  I find that I tend to strongly disagree with most of the online takes about Xander I see, almost regardless of whether they’re pro or anti.  

I mean, on the one hand I do think it’s more than a bit silly to pretend, as many people seem to do, that Xander Harris is [somehow?] uniquely and only a Joss Whedon self insert [despite being written by multiple people] in a way that none of the other characters [that Whedon also created and that appear in the show Whedon created] apparently are. Or to ignore the fact that very often the audience is clearly meant to think that Xander is in the wrong and disapprove of his actions.  (You obviously aren’t supposed to be cheering for him when he lies to Buffy about Willow’s message about Angel in Becoming, for an easy example; or to be clapping and applauding him when he cheats on Cordelia or leaves Anya at the altar either.) And I think it would be wrong to dismiss the fact that Xander starts the show as a dumb but (mostly) harmless teenager and that, not only does he gradually mature and improve as a person as he grows up, he also [perhaps uniquely for this show?] manages to do so without killing even one person.    

But equally I would be lying if I didn’t admit that many of my least favorite episodes of the show are either Xander-centric episodes (Teacher’s Pet, The Pack, Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered for example) or episodes in which Xander plays a non-trivial role in exactly the parts of the episodes I most dislike (his treatment of Buffy in Dead Man’s Party, say, or his speech in support of Riley in Into The Woods).  The haters are right to say that Xander does often treat his female friends and partners abysmally, often in ways that the show doesn’t seem to acknowledge or which it briefly acknowledges only to brush them off with no consequences.  There certainly are times when the writers expect the audience to cheer for Xander a lot more than I personally want to, or when he says something gross and sexist which is just meant to be funny and that the writers simply didn’t think critically about at all.  And the flipside of Xander being written by a range of different writers is that his character growth is often slow, halting or inconsistent (which, while arguably realistic, is not particularly fun to experience).  And unlike some of the fandom I don’t really believe anything Xander does can be handwaved away by him being deeply affected by what happened to his “best friend” Jesse in Season 1’s The Harvest: in fact I would put money on a majority of the show’s writers having no idea who Jesse was.

Anyway, none of that preamble is really in the spirit of the ask game, is it?

Um.  Five things I like about Xander, then.  No hedging or clarification except for what I heavily imply above (oh, and also the comics aren’t canon and don’t mean anything and actually don’t even exist … I mean, uh, what comics are we even talking about?).

I think the show resolves the initial Season 1 “love triangle” (in which Xander is really into Buffy and she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings or even seem to notice them, while similarly Willow is really into Xander and he doesn’t reciprocate her feelings or even seem to notice them) in about the best way it possibly could have done.  Buffy and Xander don’t ever get together and there’s never really any suggestion that they might – one or two odd moments in Season 2 aside, I guess? – and Willow musters the self-respect required to firmly reject Xander when he tries to ask her to the dance that Buffy had just turned him down for in Prophecy Girl.  Not only that, but Willow goes on to have a serious relationship with a guy who isn’t Xander and then comes out as a lesbian and continues to have serious relationships with woman who aren’t Xander, right up to the end of the final season.  And this happens all while the three of them stay very close friends; in fact Buffy and Xander at least are clearly better friends in the second half of the season than they were at the beginning of the show [when, after all, Xander had only just met her].  Whether or not that was planned from the beginning – and to be honest, I think the Buffy fandom as a whole wildly overestimates how much of the show was planned from the beginning – I think that’s a pretty unambiguously great way for that particular subplot to have be handled.   (Although the funniest and most geometrically pleasing resolution of the Season 1 love triangle would, of course, have been for Buffy and Willow to end up together.)

Speaking of Buffy and Willow, for all his faults Xander is consistently written as somebody who cares about his friends and wants them to be safe and happy.  As well as the obvious big moments – helping to save Buffy’s life in Prophecy Girl; his speech assuring Buffy that she’s his hero in The Freshman; repeatedly assuring Willow in Grave that he’ll always love her, even if she ends up killing him or destroying the world; that moment in Season 7 where Buffy sends him away to look after Dawn because she “needs somebody [she] can count on” – I think it’s fun when we get to see the three of them just hang out, in those quiet little moments they get to just all be kids together.  I am very firmly in the camp that thinks Buffy should have friends and be allowed to not be treated for an idiot for liking said friends or wanting to spend time with them.  Whatever else you can say about it, I think it’s obvious that this is how the show’s writers expect you to engage with the show.   That’s part of why I’m more forgiving than some people of episodes like I Robot, You Jane or Bad Eggs or Amends: these are all episodes in which I can believe that Xander is fundamentally a good kid who Buffy would want to be friends with, and that he’d grow up to be somebody she’d still want to be friends with as an adult.    

Some people online – mostly not on Tumblr – talk a lot of rot about Xander getting self-defense training or somehow reconnecting with the military persona he had in Halloween or otherwise Learning How To Fight, and I can’t overstate how glad I am that the show didn’t go in this direction.  Xander makes sense as a character precisely because he isn’t a fighter.  Because he doesn’t occupy that more stereotypically masculine role: because he is the one who gets rescued and brings in baked goods and that the other, more powerful but emotionally repressed characters can go to to talk about their feelings.  Because he is the person who, by the end of the show, can best reassure Dawn that she doesn’t need to be a Potential Slayer or have superpowers to be special.  This idea that Xander complains too much during the show about not having special powers and that the “solution” to “fix” this is to have him go out and get some (as opposed to this being a deliberate character arc in which Xander learns to accept that he’s never going to be that sort of person) is not one I have a lot of sympathy for.  The show already has a human male character who is trained as a fighter so he can go on patrol with Buffy: he’s called Riley Finn and he’s insufferable. 

Although the fandom as a whole loves to massively oversell how “abusive” the Scoobies respective parents are, I do think that Xander’s home life is a key part of understanding who Xander specifically is as a person.  And – again, however deliberately planned from the beginning or not it was – there’s something nicely disturbing about how we never get a big dramatic reveal about how awful Xander’s parents are: it’s just something that the writers just slowly build up to – from the idea in Season 1 that Xander doesn’t regularly eat cooked meals at home (“do your parents even own a stove?”), to Xander joking about his dad trying to “send [him] to some Armenians once” early in Season 2, or calling home to say he’s going to be out all night and having his mother clearly not recognize his voice, through to Cordelia revealing in Season 3 that he admitted to her that sleeps outside during Christmas to avoid his parents drunken fights  – until by Restless we can see Xander having nightmares about being trapped in his parents basement and having his father come down the stairs and we don’t need to have anything more than that explained to us.  I think that’s all really effectively done, and while I don’t think it excuses te way Xander behaves I do think it does a lot to make sense of it.

Again, while I think it’s possible to drastically overstate the Mind/Spirit/Heart metaphorical reading – I don’t think this is something the writers were consciously thinking about most of the time and I don’t think the reading of the show in which everyone is reduced to a part of Buffy’s own psyche is even particularly interesting except perhaps as an intellectual exercise – I do think it’s a reading that works pretty well for Xander. (Actually of the three elements, that’s surely the one that’s easiest to see: I’ve never been completely sure why Willow is the Spirit rather than the Mind.)  Yeah, Xander can often be petty and jealous and selfish and hypocritical and refuse to analyze his own feelings: that doesn’t rule him out from being Buffy’s metaphorical heart, it’s evidence that he is.  Buffy can be all of those things too!  (I think I am rather more fond of Buffy herself than you are – she is my favorite character on the show, after all – but I don’t like Buffy because she’s flawless and perfect; I like her because she’s interesting and realistically flawed, and very often flawed in the same ways as her friends.)

[yuikomorii]

I’ve recently just seen your post on the person that claimed Yui looks childlike, and I completely agree with you, she doesn’t? I mean, her body doesn’t even look like it’s under-developed, she’s got nice legs/thighs and it’s canon that she has wide hips anyways (u can even kinda see it in the anime when she’s wearing Cordelia’s dress) what kind of a child would have wide hips? Yui at the very least has a slim pear shaped figure. And she’s not even that flat as I’ve seen in the cgi’s that came with the post. Her breasts are small but they’re not completely flat, and that doesn’t make her childlike? Being short/petite doesn’t mean you’re childlike or can’t have curves, bc my cousin is literally 5’0 but her body doesn’t look under-developed, bc she has curves even if she’s petite. Even if she didn’t have curves, that wouldn’t make anyone a child. Anyways, that person needs to snap back to reality because shaming adults for not having “mature” features and making it seem like they’re children is NOT it

// Preach!! I really can’t comprehend how people are able to think that Yui looks child-like. She sometimes acts childish but this doesn’t mean she looks like one. 😭😭

I also don’t get why she’s constantly bodyshamed by antis or even fans when she literally is a C cup. I don’t know whether it was fully confirmed or not, since it’s impossible to know all content, but it seems like Japanese fans collectively agree that she’s a C. The whole Chichinashi thingy is just a JOKE to call out the Japanese players, who are on average flatter than her.

Everybody knowns Yui is designed to have appealing body and I’m tired of seeing people treat her like the most under-developed heroine out there when she’s actually one of the most fit-looking ones.

Last but not least, it’s not that Yui doesn’t look mature, she’s just surrounded by tall people, which is not something surprising given that boys are usually taller than girls.

[im-out-of-it]

it amazes me how much of CC’s fans will actually defend her, her lazy and shit writing, and the stuff that she’s done. so you like racist, homophobic writers you say? just say that then lmao

I’m not going to go in deep but I’m 100000000% sure she’s probably racist and a homophobe. I don’t care if you thought media wouldn’t accept gay relationships. YOU DID NOT HAVE TO WRITE THEM THE WAY YOU DID. Alec didn’t need to be biphobic. IT WAS NOT FUCKING NECESSARY. and I find it funny how in eldest curses: Magnus and Alec are completely different people. see what happens when authors who might actually give a shit write good arcs??? it was a money grab for CC. she doesn’t care about Alec, magnus, or any of her lgbtq+ characters. I don’t care if you think adding incest makes it “spicy”. INCEST IS NOT ROMANCE.

she’s a shit writer, has no originality when it comes to creating storylines and characters. I’ll give CC one thing. she does start to have good characters but she does absolutely nothing with them. CC could’ve done more with Magnus, Jem, Alastair, Thomas, Matthew, alec, Izzy, Ari, Gabriel, Gideon, and I could go on BUT SHE DIDNT. I can name hundreds (probably) of fan fic writers who would write the shadowhunter series better than CC ever could. I mean, the show literally proved they could do a better job lmao

she chose to focus on her main white “angelic” characters and let them do anything without holding accountability. and I get that it’s just a fucking book but people out there actually think like this. what she writes, her fans defend. like I think some of her fans think she’s a god who can’t do any wrong

staying in my anti tags make me feel safe because it’s astounding to me that people are actually okay with the incest, the abuse, the biphobia, how she writes her POC characters and storylines, how none of these POC characters can ever be their full race, and gives them the shittiest storylines, like they’re all a okay with that?????

and I get it’s just a fucking story but it means something if she continues to do this over and over again and it’s very clear that this is how she feels. look at how CC talks to her fans. I wasn’t there for the Harry Potter fandom shit but she was a fucking menace to people. she’s 50+ and writing about teens and a bunch of sexual shit. like the way she sexualized Cordelia??????

I’m also not saying that everything has to be perfect and make sense in “fantasy” world but even her worldbuilding doesn’t make any sense??? I’m kind of tired of seeing the same white guy who is an abusive asshole who seems to be loved by everyone and pays no repercussions. it’s very old lmao

show could be cringe but at least they tried to stay away from this as much as they could 😌 and when I say I love the show, I love the Malec aspect and some of Izzy’s stuff. I’m only here show malec 👏🏼

[annyankers]

Have you given us a breakdown on Anya (Train’s version) yet? I’m loving your recent Anya posts and want to know more

kdjlsfghdfjklsg OKAY!!!!! ANYANKA!!!! TRAIN'S VERSION!!!!!

First off I fancast her with Emma Myers now or Maya Hawke in the recent past. I feel both of them could handle the role and both are closer looking to the 17-18yo age we’d need for S3!Anya which is one of my main reasons for even recasting Anyanka bc lbr... Emma Caulfield is iconic in the role no notes really on her end. But yeah, both could pull off that “alien who just moved to earth tries to hang with the teenz” vibes that are so integral to the Anya experience.

After that I just lean WAY more into her established backstory and season 3 personality, you know, how she was before they flanderized her to hell and back. Basically more of a cranky adult trapped in a shitty mortal teen body and having to deal with all this shit they can’t remember from their own youth and probably didn’t have to even deal with the first time around. Her moods are all over the place in S3-4 since she’s so new to being mortal and like...18 years old. It’s like being boss baby and needing a nap lol.

She also has beef with Willow and Giles from day one and actually develops a real friendship with Cordelia and Faith-- basically if they’re in the Scooby sphere but not well liked by the Scoobies proper they’re gonna end up friends with Anyanka. Which means by the end of the series she’s homies with Cordelia, Faith, Spike, Oz, Angel, Wesley, Andrew, etc. The only one I don’t think she’d have time for is Amy and that’s entirely because she doesn’t have time for her or Willow and their issues with magic, superiority complexes and how little they listen to her even tho she’s you know, their obvious magical superior on the knowledge front.

Circling back to Willow and Giles it’s because she’s the anti-Willow and anti-Giles in some ways and until a better set up is thought up she’s basically the spirit and mind of the shadow self hands-heart-spirit-mind metaphor that the scoobies take on. She and Spike are basically already the Rowdy Ruff Boys to the Scoobies’ Powerpuff Girls as is. She’s already kind of established as a shadow Willow in the show but I wanna you know...... NOT FORGET SHE CAN DO MAGIC FOR LIKE 4 SEASONS.

Without her demonic powers Anyanka is not as strong of a witch as Willow when it comes to pure strength. But she was an extremely gifted one even before she got 1,000+ years to hone her craft and learn more. She can buy and sell Willow and Giles any day of the week, they basically only win against her because Buffy’s the slayer, luck, MC powers etc etc yada yada. She’s also not afraid to remind them of this fact which makes Willow especially very insecure and dislike her a LOT. Along with that Anyanka still lacks a filter nor cares to get one. She probably also backed Faith’s whole bad slayer shit for a while like “yeah you go girl get your revenge!!!! (and also idk can you maybe help me get my powers back or like??? talk to your boss about it????? idk idk)”. bc ofc she’s not giving up on that so easily and also you know, Faith is a pretty wronged lady and old habits die hard. Also it parallels the Buffy-Willow friendship and makes it all sexy and evil and shadow self-y.

ofc once she realizes what he wants to do is Ascend she’s like LOL NVM I’M OUT!!!! LOL BYEEEEEE!!!!!

I’d still have her going to prom with Xander, negging him when she asks him and terrorizing him unintentionally the whole night. It’s comic gold. But I want her entry into being a main cast member to not be wholly dependent on her riding his dick on the reg like in canon so she’s the first person to bang on Buffy’s door and be like “something’s happening to the Sunnydale demon population!!!!” because ofc she still cares about them, in her brain she’s not human, she’s a demon. This whole mortal form thing is temporary really. Her and Xander is a background courting ritual of freaks and losers incomprehensible to all around them. It’s not the slap slap kiss vibes of Xander/Cordelia but it still has the same “whAT--?!?!?” moment and top tier comedic duo timing. 

Anya only really starts to see herself as human when she breaks her arm in 5x2 and even then it’s very uneasy. It’s like 8 kinds of crisis she’s combatting here guys.

Also starting in S4 she and Spike are besties. Again it’s a shadow self, my demons are their own angels, us but sexier energy. They’re serving Scoobies from the Negaverse. They’re giving “this could be you Buffy but you playing”. They’re also like, the greek chorus in the back being like “uhhhhhh what’s with the gross human-centric ethics you creeps?”. They’re another next level comedy duo. Could’ve removed his chip the whole time but he never asked so she never offered. She mentions this casually in Season 7 and he mcloses it over that for several episodes, it’s a running gag.

Anya and Willow have Tension from Season 4 on about being the Magical Girl of the group. The Scoobies all naturally pick Willow pretty consistently over Anya but then Willow Fucks Up (something blue etc) and they turn to Anya to fix it. It’s a popularity contest and they all know it and it makes Anya bitter and Willow even more insecure. This feeds into her Dark Willow Arc later. Also, she and Anya have a Wizard Fight at the end of Season 6 and it’s Sick Nasty.

Xander still leaves her at the altar because I think that’s actually very important to both of their characters and she does still become a demon again. The major difference is that she doesn’t then stop being one in Season 7. She ends out the series still a demon and the confrontation in the frat house actually is basically a psychological boss battle for Buffy that gets into shit relevant to the season and her own struggles.

Anyanka never really asked for this, she was basically tricked/manipulated both times into becoming a demon but she also gains incredible powers from being like this that realistically she wouldn’t want to give up as they’re a part of her now. Her identity is malleable, she’s been treated like she doesn’t get to have one, she has to fight to make one of her own. she’s in a position when she’s controlled by a cruel man and if she goes outside the lines or does things she feels are right the consequences are dire. She is Buffy, she’s the demon side of Buffy. The counterpoint to Dawn’s innocent youthful human girl, she’s the grown adult demon woman. She’s representing the struggles Buffy is dealing with now in herself and the plot. Buffy ends up deciding to not punish her for the murders both yes because of friendship but also because Anyanka is an irreplaceable asset, even more so now that she’s a demon again, and Buffy cannot afford to lose any of those right now. A logic that Anyanka actually approves of.

I enjoy Anya’s fish out of water and no filter vibes in the original but I hate how they consistently forget she’s smart until it’s useful again. Like lbr, S4-7 Anya is basically just there to say something cringe or funny or say “when i was a demon--” before being shunted to the back again so the Most Important People could talk. Season 3 Anya was cunning, acerbic, clever, knew the basics of how things work in the mortal world and I’m sorry-- I know it’s very important to many people but I hate her monologue in The Body. I just HATE it.

She’s been killing people for over a thousand years. She knows what death is and how it works. She knows it means this person will never eat eggs a-fucking-gain sHE KNOWS THIS!!!!! Now if this was about the emotionalness of that loss-- of being the one to actually do the losing I wouldn’t hate it!!! That actually tracks. Anyanka is basically immortal and likely as never had a single person she truly cared about die in that time. It would make sense if she understands that Joyce is dead but doesn’t know how to react to that or process it. Loss is a thing she inflicts, it’s not done to her. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself.

Also she doesn’t give a stupid fucking speech about running away that makes NO sense and just TELLS YOU SHE’S GONNA DIE with a fucking FOGHORN and then DIES POINTLESSLY IN THE FINALE. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

[cinnamonfm]

{ SAVANNAH LEE SMITH, 22, CISWOMAN, SHE/HER } Is that HENRIETTA ASTOR? A JUNIOR originally from GREENWICH, CT they decided to come to Ogden College to study GOVERNMENT. They’re THE FALLEN PRINCESS on campus, but even they could get blamed for Greer’s disappearance.

001 – the basics.

full name: henrietta pearl kennedy-astor (no relation to the kennedys, other than name) nickname(s): heni, hen, etta, ettie, hettie date of birth: 01 november 2000 place of birth: greenwich, ct hometown: manhattan, new york sexuality: bisexual, though i’m pretty sure she thinks she’s mostly straight religion: agnostic, lapsed catholic

002 – the girl.

+ intelligent, loyal, resourceful, quick-witted, eloquent, cunning, astute, observant - fault-finding, rigid, insincere, scheming, unyielding, vindictive enneagram: 3w4 mbti: esfj temperament: choleric-melancholic

character inspiration(s): blair waldorf (gossip girl), cordelia chase (buffy the vampire slayer), paris geller (gilmore girls), quinn fabray (glee), summer roberts (the o.c), heather ratner (chuck), claire standish (the breakfast club), heather duke (heathers), regina george (mean girls), mini mcguinness (skins), lucille bluth (arrested development), alex russo (wizards of waverly place), amber mariens (clueless), sharpay evans (high school musical)

primary trope: the fallen princess secondary tropes: lovable alpha bitch, always second best, manipulative bitch, deadpan snarker, death glare, defrosting ice queen, good all along, bitch in sheep’s clothing, anti-hero, moral myopia, stepford snarker, jerk with a heart of gold, inferiority complex

how they embody their trope:

(brief neglect mention tw) Facades, facades, facades. In hindsight, it’s a wonder her first words as a toddler hadn’t been scripted for her and pre-approved by the Astor PR team. She’s the only child of two lawyers - with her mother serving her second term as New York’s attorney general and her father ensuring that multi-million dollar corporations were able to skirt around their social, environmental and fiscal obligations. They’re not American royalty, not by any means, but the Astor name carries a certain weight, and her parents would sooner give up all their worldly possessions than let her forget it. It wasn’t her parents who brought her up, so much as their expectations. Perfect grades, perfectly behaved, perfectly aligned with their wants and needs. The Astors hadn’t really wanted a child. What they’d been in the market for was a trophy. Henrietta, by virtue of her upbringing, is a perfectionist. Nothing she ever did as a child was good enough for her parents (not that they’d ever say that, but she could sense it), and nothing she ever does as a young adult is enough to meet her own impossible standards. She’s spent considerable time and effort constructing a vision of herself that she feels comfortable portraying to others, a thin veneer to keep herself hidden from onlookers - a never-ending performance. And part of that was being Greer’s best friend. After all, you’re only as good as the company you keep. She’s yet to take an actual tumble, but with Greer missing, the paint job on the facade that is Henrietta is slowly starting to crack. It’s only a matter of time before it starts chipping, too. 

general personality: 

Were I to use one word to describe Henrietta, it would have to be sharp. It’s her defining characteristic - she’s all edges, all the time. Sharp wit, sharper tongue. At least that’s the curated version of her. The one you’d get to see. Beneath the high school mean-girl persona, behind the rolling eyes and raised brows, she’s genuine and vulnerable and has the capacity for care. But she’s been raised to believe that kindness is a weakness, something for others to exploit, and so she’s extinguished that flamed. Stubbed the embers into the ground with her foot. Because it’s easier to keep people at a comfortable distance this way. This way, they won’t get too close. They won’t be able to see her for the lonely, insecure person she’s tried so desperately to keep under wraps.

003 – greer.

If there is such a thing as a universal truth, it is that teenage girls exercise cruelty rarely seen outside of cartoony depictions of hell. And if the Manolo-toting schemers of gossip girl were anything to go by, Manhattan girls were the absolute worst. Henrietta had thrown an uncharacteristic fit when her parents had broached the subject of moving (in the middle of the school year, no less) - tears wiped on the back of cashmere sleeves, voice choked with adolescent desperation. Were they trying to ostracise her from her peers? Ensure she’d stand out like a sore thumb? How did they expect her to find friends, when social hierarchies and cliques had already fully solidified by now? The answer to the latter was, unsurprisingly, Greer. Henrietta had hardly set foot on the grounds of her new alma mater, before Greer had linked elbows with her, flashed her a bright smile, and announced to anyone who’d listen that this, this was her best friend now. Maybe, she’d told herself as she returned home from that first day, moving hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. Ever since that first meeting, the two of them had been practically joined at the hip. If Greer was there, you could place a pretty safe bet that Henrietta was there. Joint birthday parties in their early teens, trips abroad over the summer holiday, secrets shared behind walk-in-closet doors. They were inseparable. It was the sort of friendship others looked at through either a lens of envy or aspiration. Or both. Perhaps that’s why Henrietta feels so guilty over how restricted she’d felt since traipsing in Greer’s footsteps all the way to Ogden. It wasn’t that she didn’t still love Greer in that platonic way a best friend does, because she really, really did, but college had just highlighted just how much her existence had been fashioned as an extension of Greer. It wasn’t like the power dynamic had ever been even, not even back in New York, but something about the new backdrop to their relationship had lit up its flaws like a starry night sky. Getting to bask in Greer’s light also meant existing in her shadow. It was always Greer, and then Henrietta, half a step behind. It was hard not to feel like an afterthought. An asterisk at the end of a lengthy paragraph.  004 – family.

(see here) To say that Henrietta’s relationship with her family teethers on being strained, would be an understatement. Everything she does is with the express intent of getting their approval, and yet, she’s never so much as gotten a nod in recognition. Everything she achieves, her brother (four years her senior) has already done. And better at that. During her formative years, they were too concerned with getting Evangeline elected as attorney general to let their children be children. And now they’re too concerned with getting her re-elected to see the damage that did to them. 

005 – brief summary of events. 

coming soon.

006 - wanted connections.

exes (derogatory) - these two used to date, and now they can barely stand to be in the same room as each other. can they even remember why? who knows, but that doesn't stop them from bickering all the same.

what could have been - what's worse than almost being something, but never quite getting there? these two never had the timing thing figured out

academic rival - the nelly yuki to her blair waldorf. someone heni feels like she has to outperform, all the time. could even be one-sided.

the project - no idle rich girl is complete without someone to take under her wing.

behind closed doors - someone heni gets on with, and likes spending time with, but for social reasons (and because she's the worst) she doesn't want to be seen with publicly

the light feminine to her dark feminine - she's always been a pack animal, and now that greer's off somewhere? being her counterpart is up for grabs.

[cabeswaterdrowned]

ask game:

tsc (i’m sorry i always ask about them, my brainrot is strong and i love hearing your thoughts)

and community

don’t apologize pls lol I also am brain rotting hard and have few people to talk about it with so it’s appreciated :)

The Shadowhunter Chronicles

M/F OTP: there are others I really like or love in a more normal way, but Emma/Julian Will/Tessa and Jem/Tessa are the ones that hit on another level for me emotionally, I’m clinically insane about them. Also it’s a bit hilarious to think about, since this was formative media for me (I first read TID in late elementary/middle school and TDA as they were coming out in high school) how my taste in ships generally speaking was shaped… like if you look at pairings I gravitate towards in other fandoms since there are def patterns xd. The impact!

Other M/F ships I have love for (including this category because ik i don’t talk about them as much and in another fandom where I had less dynamics I’m super fond of to choose from I could have placed them in that first category think of them as like second tier Otp’s for me ): Mark/Cristina, James/Cordelia, Simon/Isabelle (last one also was formative they were thee hot girl/soft boy nerd ship to me in middle school. But it has been a while so unsure if they’d hit the same on reread, they are the tmi couple I would most like to see in the better in black collection though!)

M/M OTP: Jem/Will! And then follow up Kit/Ty Surefire ways to get me invested in a ship: they do necromancy together, meet cute with a knife to the throat, they break up without ever dating. Triple check.

F/F OTP: along those lines it’s Lucie x Grace literally the main reason I want to reread TLH (well I do also just want to see how it reads back to back and not broken up and I have other reasons but like. Those are less important) is to be able to properly write fic about them, like it genuinely pisses me off this fandom is so boring and tasteless I can’t believe I actually miss the legacies fandom they were annoying as hell but at least they understood that when women do dark magic together it’s polite to write detailed analysis of how gay they are 😭. The way I know cc has seen Buffy too like flop. Also it just fits archetypes of antagonistic femslash I tend to love in general see: Julia/Marina Aria/Alison Elena/Rebekah and more

OT3: Herongraystairs and then Kierarktina

Friendship OTP: Tessa & Magnus + Will & Magnus! And for familial relationships I adore all The Blackthorn siblings in TDA and their dynamics but especially Julian and Mark’s relationship is v compelling to me and I also love Cordelia and Alastair’s relationship v much it was my favorite overall development in TLH. And then for psuedo familial dynamics I Love Charlotte’s relationships with Tessa Jem Will and Jessamine. her relationship with Jem might be my softest spot overall especially because they have moments in CP2 that make me go 🥺 but as a documented Tessa lover I adore how having Charlotte as a mentor figure effects her arc. So those are my favorites Ik I failed at picking just one. Oh I also adore Emma and Cristina’s friendship although I also sometimes ship them romantically

Canon OTP: Blackstairs Wessa Jessa like I said

Crackship OTP: what even counts as crackship? I will admit that during my CP reread I did look up how many Will/Magnus fics there are on ao3 although I did not read them (there are 12 for inquiring minds).

Anti-OTP: The worst ship to me is Jordan/Maia but it’s been a long time so the vitriol has worn off and I don’t have another solid notp besides them but the other canon pairings I’m #unimpressed with are Clace Ghostwriter and Gracetopher … Lucie/Jesse probably irks me the most these days because I actually want to like them because the concept is so good but the execution falls flat for me and I really like Lucie and want someone more interesting for her (like Grace lol.)

Community

M/F OTP: ultimately when I’m actually watching the show it’s Jeff/Britta love their emmaxknightleycore vibes. But I did get really into Abed x Annie at one point and even wrote some fic about it over quarantine (when I first got into Comm) so I have a soft spot for that concept too

M/M OTP: Troy/Abed. They of course are The otp of the show.

F/F OTP: not really otp status but well I did write this Annie x Britta Carmilla Au: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27728689?view_adult=true

(I orphaned that account post quarantine)

OT3: Troy/Abed/Annie

Friendship OTP: I mean all the study group dynamics but I especially have soft spots for Annie and Troy + Abed and Britta moments

Canon OTP: Jeff/Britta

Crackship OTP: what even counts as crack …

Anti-OTP: I just don’t like Jeff/Annie I used to viscerally hate it these days I’m just like. It’s not for me lol.

[fiercestpurpose]

Okay so I spent too long thinking about this and I’m still not entirely sure about it but this is my best attempt:

Debut - Cordelia - The butterfly imagery, “A Place in this World,” and the fact that it’s the debut mean that it’s about coming into your own, finding yourself and emerging from your cocoon, that matches well with Cordelia’s story

Fearless - Simon - We all know that “You Belong with Me” was his theme song for the entire first trilogy, but beyond that, it’s an album about growing up, coming into your own, and changing your priorities.

Speak Now - Lucie - The storytelling on Speak Now is so good, and it fits with Lucia’s creativity/writings and her honesty/forthrightness. The fairytale romantic sensibility that we see in “Enchanted” fits her well.

Red - Cristina - Love is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right! The album that starts with “State of Grace” and ends with “Begin Again” is about learning that some things are worth risking getting hurt for. (Also, Rosales/roses/red. You know.)

1989 - Clary - THE ICON HERSELF!! I just felt like Clary absolutely had to be 1989. It’s the New York album. It’s the album that launched Taylor Swift’s pop career. It’s the passionate, energetic, slick, amazing album. And “Style” is so very much a Clace song.

Reputation - Emma - Rep has a reputation (ha) as being an album about revenge and getting people back, but when you actually listen to it, it’s so much about true love and soulmates. And that’s Emma! She seems badass, but it’s all about the love.

Lover - Will - He’s such a Lover! The brooding emo act aside he’s so full of love. “Who could stay?” fits him well, and he is also a London Boy ;)

folklore - Matthew - My mirrorball boy. My this is him trying boy. My August in a not quite a love triangle but still a love triangle boy. He is living with guilt and insecurity and yet trying to be there for others.

evermore - Tessa - Evermore is a more mature, sadder album that is ultimately about how pain will fade and love will last forever, and if there is a single thesis statement to Tessa’s story, that’s it. Also, I think evermore is a pretty literary album, and Tessa would go for that.

Midnights - Magnus - Between “Bejeweled,” “Anti-Hero,” “Mastermind,” and “Sweet Nothing,” I think this one speaks for itself.

I know I’m always asking my tumblr friends for gift ideas/help for my loved ones, and I have another important question from swiftie shaodwhunter fans to help me with a gift for my best friend:

What TSC character do you associate with each Taylor swift albums?

[a-dream-dirty-and-bruised]

Is it stupid of me to believe this means we’ll get non whitewashed art of the characters

[belle-keys]

This is really random, but I hate hate hate how some people call James nothing but a horny bland white boy. I think they've twisted the narrative so much they forget he's been abused; by Grace or Tatiana, whatever you want to believe, but he's been abused. His emotions have been dampened, that's why he can only verbalise physical affection. But I seriously can't understand the people who say he's never shown his love for Cordelia. As if:

Learning her language

Carefully decorating their house with her culture in mind

Giving her a fucking necklace and eagerly fantasising about visiting Constantinople with her

Dancing with her at balls even though it looks weird now that they're married

Was the minimum in a marriage of convenience. Cordelia is just blind and (rightfully) insecure to notice that James would heed her every order because he loves her.

Also, did these people even read Chain of Iron? Because the moment the gracelet was off (aka, the moment he regained his ability to fully process his emotions), James did express he loved Cordelia. In fact, he said he began loving Cordelia at fourteen. And he loves her so much he refused to ruin her fun time with Matthew in Paris.

It's just infuriating. People gloss over James to create an oversimplified version of his character that is canonically incorrect, possibly because they like Grace so much that in the span of a year they've decided to forget she's done actual harm, therefore James is just being silly by not processing his emotions? Idk, the thing is their whole anti-James rhetoric is idiotic. They can say they find his character boring, but calling him 'jist a horny man' and not acknowledging he's been abused feels so wrong.

Btw, this is no hate to Grace. She's been abused as well, it's only that when you talk about James you have to talk about Cordelia yk?

I mean, I’m gonna be honest, I follow like four (4) TSC blogs and all of those don’t even exclusively post about TLH, so I’d say that on my blog and with whoever I’m chatting with, it’s acknowledged that James being “horny and reckless” isn’t his personality or the sum of his character– that’d be reducing him to a caricature. And pretty much none of my mutuals think he’s bland either– the whole “unhinged James” bit is just for humor.

James is romantic and sensitive and caring and chivalrous and truly loves Cordelia and he shows it. He loves Cordelia and is the ultimate husband material sans gracelet. So yeah, it is annoying if people disregard his actual feelings for her. Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t spend the whole of chog or choi just staring at her chest and making out. James is pretty multi-faceted, and I don’t care for any anti-James sentiments, period.

[drusilla-carstairs]

As a happy anniversary to Fearless (Taylor’s Version) I’m assigning a TSC character/ship to some Fearless TV songs!

Fearless - Malec - Starting off strong, a classic for a classic! Malec is Fearless. The Fearless rune is so important to their original TMI story and just,,, some on. “You pull me close and I’m a little more brave.”

Love Story - Sizzy - “Isabelle! Let down your raven hair!” Honestly who could do it better. If the Love Story final verse isn’t the Sizzy proposal I don’t want it.

Hey Stephen - Clace - Another perfect classic… sorry all the TMI ships are first but this is simply true.

White Horse - Cristina - “Stupid girl, I should’ve known, I should’ve known”. I just know Cristina blasted this song after her breakup with Diego )): “Begging for forgiveness, begging for me, just like I always wanted, but I’m so sorry”

You Belong With Me - Drias - Maybe I am biased but Drias would give the perfect friends to lovers, and I can already see Thias in the role of unnoticed but always there for Dru until she realizes.

Breathe - Ty - I’ve always taken this song in a more platonic sense than romantic—so if you take this as a Ty & Livvy or a Ty & Kit song, it fits post-TDA Ty horribly well.

Tell Me Why - Kamalanna - I am not anti-Kamalanna, but this song really hits all the issues of their current relationship. Anna’s mean streak and Kamala’s lack of communication…

You’re Not Sorry - Jocelyn - Master manipulator Valentine meets Jocelyn’s conviction and realization that he actually isn’t capable of love or change.

The Way I Loved You - Maia - Oh this song really gets Maia’s mixed feelings for Jordan, and subsequently her relationship with Bat.

Forever & Always - Wessa - The dramatic romanticism? The hot and cold of Will suppressing his emotions? The irony of the song title? Yeah.

The Best Day - Matthew - This song regularly makes me cry, and so does Matthew if I think about his relationship with his parents for too long 🥲

Change - the TWP gang - “The walls they put up to hold us back will fall down”!!! This group of teens is going to break the cycle of violence and corruption like none of their predecessors could and I’m already proud of them 💜

Jump Then Fall - Heline - (,: they’re perfect. “When people say things that bring you to your knees, I’ll catch you. The time is gonna come when you’re so mad you could cry, but I’ll hold you through the night until you smile.” It’s giving a partner who will follow you into banishment <3

Untouchable - Jemma - Forbidden love anyone? “In the middle of the night, when I’m in this dream, it’s like a million little stars spelling out your name” is equal to “I love you more than starlight”

Come In With The Rain - Kieran/Mark - “Talk to yourself, talk to the tears, talk to the man who put you here” This is Mark during Lady Midnight, when Kieran needs to learn to take his fears and insecurities out on the actual reason for them (his father). “I’ve watched you so long, screamed your name, I don’t know what else I can say”. Anyway, it’s Kieran and Mark before Kieran’s arc

The Other Side of The Door - Malec - I know they’re on here twice. I’m sorry. But this song is the Malec breakup. Like I’m convinced CC used it for inspiration. Magnus wanting Alec to make an effort and be everything for him? Magnus ignoring Alec’s efforts for his pride but not wanting him to go and leave him alone again?

Today Was A Fairytale - Ghost Writer - Okay, disregarding canon, Lucie deserves her fairytale romance, and I know Jesse would give it. This song sings of Lucie romanticizing their every move and I just,,,

Mr. Perfectly Fine - Jordelia - This song is very much a Cordelia perspective of James going from genuine with her to “Mr. Perfectly Fine” who has no feelings for her at all.

[spuffybot]

I’m actually not anti-Bangel because I think that was an important story to tell and a very relatable and real one…but I’m re-reading one of my fav BTVS book series (the Unseen trilogy) and in it Cordelia encounters this group of teen runaways who are determined to become vampires. Even though she is only 19 at the time she refers to these 15 & 16 year olds as children and it’s very clear that she / Wes / Angel are adults and they are little kids in need of help.

That context and separation from the highschool students just makes me feel icky about Angel and Buffy’s age difference.

Just thinking out loud don’t kill me plz.

[cassandraclare]

Hey Cassie! I love Cordelia and her connection to her Persian Middle Eastern roots. I was wondering if we would ever see something similar and have a Muslim character? Thank you for all the representation you put in you books it’s really nice to see yourself represented in a character. ❤️

I’m glad you like Cordelia! A great deal of love and research went into her and Alastair. :) 

I recognize it may be frustrating for some readers to encounter a Persian/Iranian character who isn’t Muslim. I’ve written about this before here. Unfortunately, Cordelia and her family can’t be Muslim, just as Cristina couldn’t be Catholic, Will can’t be Church of England, Jem can’t be Buddhist, etc. Shadowhunters have their own religion. It’s part of what binds them together, and it’s also necessary — both to the characters, and to the concept of Shadowhunters at all. They believe all the stories are true, because I realized early on in the creation of this world that they couldn’t participate in mundane/human religions. There was no way to have the Shadowhunters be of a religion that actually exists in our world; that shut too many people out of being Shadowhunters, and made the books essentially an embrace of one religion over others. Nor could they all follow different real-life religions, without a constant ugly argument over the source of their magic — i.e. what kind of angel is Raziel? What religion does he represent? What religion does all this power they have come from? What is heaven, what are angels, what’s after death — for the Shadowhunters to function as a demon-fighting group, they need to share core beliefs about what demons and angels are. I gave them a religion that didn’t correspond to a real-life religion because I wanted to forstall that kind of infighting, both on the page and off it.

Cordelia and Alastair do come from a Muslim-majority country. But they are not Muslim. They are Shadowhunters. Cristina comes from a majority-Catholic country, but is not Catholic. She is a Shadowhunter. (There are also, of course, many non-Muslim Iranians; I knew many growing up, as my parents retained a lot of the friends they had made in Iran. Some were Jewish, some Zoroastrian, some Baháʼí. Part of what I love about Iran is that it is a tapestry of incredible history and different cultures; it’s definitely not a monolith!) This is a fundamental part of the Shadowhunter books’ world-building that has existed since the first book.

Fundamentally, Shadowhunters hold beliefs that contradict those held by every real-world religion I’m aware of. They can’t be meshed in with existing religions without compromising the tenets of those religions and I believe it is more offensive to present a warped or halfway version of a real religion than simply to say that the characters you’re writing do not practice that religion at all. This is in part why I am writing Sword Catcher, because its magic system is based on Jewish mythology — something I can’t do in the Shadowhunter books, though Judaism is my own religion. 

Cordelia is a woman of color, she is biracial, she is Middle Eastern in her heritage. But she is not Muslim. I understand that Cordelia and Alastair not being Muslim means some readers will have trouble relating to them; but this was a world-building decision made long before Cordelia and Alastair were invented. I needed to present all religions, all mythology as equal, without any religion being the “only” one Shadowhunters can practice. If that means you don’t want to read about the Carstairs, I understand, and can recommend some wonderful books based on Islam-inflected fantasy instead, like Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon. However, this is not a new piece of information about Shadowhunters, or the way their world works. 

I believe Islam to be a beautiful, deeply felt and peaceful religion, and while I cannot write Muslim (or Jewish or Christian or Hindu) Shadowhunters, there certainly is nothing that says there cannot be Muslim Downworlders, sighted mundanes, etc. (I have written other Muslim characters, like the Reyjavis in Magisterium, who are observant.) 

I will say only one other thing, which is that I’ve received some pretty anti-Semitic asks about this specific issue of religion. I’m answering this ask because I won’t reply to asks that contain anti-Jewish content (and I will block the sender). Or asks that just say “you suck” or “Cordelia and Alastair are bad” because yeah. I mean, why bother. As a member of a minority religion myself, I can say I’ve grappled with how to respect and uplift my rarely-depicted-in-fantasy religion in these books while also making clear that all other religions are regarded equally as “all true.” (Simon, for instance, is Jewish while he is a mundane, and after he becomes a Shadowhunter, must struggle with how to reconcile his Judaism with his new beliefs which run contrary to the religion he was raised in. That is however unique to someone in Simon’s situation, and I wouldn’t feel qualified to write a character who must decide whether to discard their Muslim or Catholic heritage in order to be a Shadowhunter.)

I do not believe the people writing/and or sending me anti-Semitic comments represent my sincere Muslim readers. There are, however, kinds of anti-Semitism that are coded into certain language (especially discussing “greed”, “control of media”, “clannishness”, using the word “Zionist” instead of “Jewish”, and suggesting I must disrespect Islam or Christianity specifically because I am Jewish) that people may not always recognize for what it is. It is of course always fine to critique representation and how it’s done. (There is no such thing as perfect rep; it’s generally always going to be flawed, even if it’s something as small as a spelling error.) I would only urge not attacking the religion or ethnicity of a writer in doing so. 

[thatsmybluefondue]

A New-Old Writeblr Introduction

Sterling Blue here! So... I was around a couple years ago, and now I am deciding to make my comeback! 

Here’s where I’ve (sorta) been the last couple of years.

Twitter: @/mybluefondue

TikTok: @/thatsmybluefondue

And now...

The introduction!

Name/Pen Name: Sterling Blue

Pronouns: They/She

Age: Uh... Old enough.

Some More About Me: I’m in university for Education in English Language Arts, English, and a minor in creative writing. Then I’m gonna get my Master’s in English, and finally a Doctorate in creative writing. (At least, that’s the plan.) 

I play D&D in my free time, and write (duh), and watch TV (mostly anime). 

My dream, of course, is to be a (good) published writer, and I’m aiming traditional or indie at the moment. Teaching others is also a fun dream of mine, and especially teaching something I’m so passionate about.

Currently, I’m really into graphic novels, so I’ve been writing a lot of those (even though I cannot, for the life of me, Art. I just partner with people). I’m also working on an upper YA novel, and sometimes I dabble in a (sort of?) memoir-type thing.

Without further ado...

The WIPs.

Guardian of the Sun: The Weight of a Life

The world is split into the North and South. In the North, Sunchild Cordelia rules with a careless hand. Because Sunchild Cordelia refuses to leave the castle and spread light and energy, the North has long fallen to ruin—and with the decay of trees, clean air has become a commodity that only the wealthy can afford. Guardian of the Sun: The Weight of a Life follows siblings Nash and Nova, orphans that scam their way to survival. Nash’s cough is worsening though, and only clean air through a specialized mask can improve it—something they can’t yet afford. Nova would do anything for her brother and will carry him however far it takes, even if that means piggy-backing him to the Inner Circle to make more money. But the Inner Circle is different from their wide-spread Outer Circle life, and things will change forever because of their trip—especially when Nova accidentally kills someone for a mask. Now they’re on the run, and Nash is only getting worse.

Distant Dreams

Casey, Preston, and Zara are just ordinary kids when narcoleptic Aurora comes bursting into their lives via teleportation. They think this is their chance to escape The Frozen Land and reach freedom in The Sunny Place across The Mountains, but Aurora has yet to master her powers—and with monsters around every corner and random bouts of teleportation taking them to the worst possible locations, it doesn't seem likely that Aurora will have the chance to learn any time soon.

The Sea Witch and Her Curse

After Alcina’s family is murdered in front of her, an old sea witch takes her to be trained into becoming a sea witch herself. With the sea princes in-fighting over who will become the next king, witches are used as the main line of fighting in these battles and war. But there are dark secrets lurking in these waters, and Alcina does not want to figure them out.

Like Clockwork

Kilo never got to practice magic like everyone else growing up, but he has his chance now. With his internship at Magix solidified, Kilo can practice fighting in the Arenal Department to his heart’s desire. But with upper-rank officials dying left and right and the Anti-Magix Rebellion rising, Kilo will have to use whatever skills he has just to survive the summer—before time runs out.

Mentally Stable

Basically a journal of my journey through mental health. It’s totally fun—not really—and funny—if you enjoy dark humor—and absolutely, positively sane.

There are others in planning stages, but these are the ones with actual words on paper.

Like and comment and reblog and all that jazz, and I’ll follow you if you look like a neat-o writeblr!

[hamliet]

The Girl Who Gets to Have It All: Buffy Summers

So with @linkspooky​‘s encouragement, I have binged Buffy the Vampire Slayer and relived my childhood culture. And, it's a 10/10 for me. Not that it doesn't have flaws, but it's genuinely one of the best stories I've seen, with consistent character arcs, powerful themes, and a beautiful message. It's also like... purportedly about vampires and demons and superpowered chosen ones, but it's actually all about humanity.

Buffy was able to be a teenage girl, allowed to like the things teen girls are scorned for (boys, shopping, etc), to be insecure about the thing teenage girls are insecure about (future careers, dating, school, parents), and to be a superhero with its good and its bad aspects. The story wasn’t afraid to call Buffy on her flaws (sometimes she got in a very ‘I am the righteous chosen one’ mode) and to respect and honor each of her desires (to be a good person, to be loved, and more). The story listened to what she wanted and respected her desires, giving her the challenges needed to overcome her flaws while also never teaching her a lesson about wanting bad boys or romance is silly or any manner of dark warnings stories like to throw at teenage girls. 

It respected teenage girls--nerdy girls like Willow, jocks like Buffy, lonely wallflowers with trauma like Dawn, and popular/snobby ones like Cordelia, girls gone wild like Faith. It never once reduced them to the stereotypes that were lurking right there: each character was fully rounded, human, flawed and yet with respected interests and goals. This is so rare for a story that I’m still in awe. 

The story as a whole follows Buffy from 15 to 21, of her as she grows from teenager to adult. She acts like a teenager and grows to act like a young adult, wrestling with loneliness and duty. The adults, like Giles, Joyce, and Jenny, are not perfect either, but neither are they “bad parents” or “bad mentors” necessarily. Joyce in particular says something terrible to Buffy, but she tries to do better, and it’s rare to see a parent in YA stories shown with such nuance. Basically, it wrote the long-lasting adult characters as human beings, too. 

Speaking of growing up, I appreciated how Buffy’s love interests mirrored this. Angel was someone Buffy loved and admired, wanted to be like, but who was always either extreme good or extreme bad, and combined with Buffy’s own tendencies towards black-white thinking, made for a beautiful relationship to help her grow, but didn’t necessarily form a foundation for a long-term partner. Spike, on the other hand... they both saw each other at their worst and were drawn to each other even then, and were inspired to become better because they couldn’t bear to be a person who treated the other person so wrongly. They pushed each other to become the best them they could be, and believed in each other. Also, Spuffy is an enemies to lovers ship for the ages. 

(Also, most of the other ships were well-done or at least can be understood. Riley was very obviously wrong for Buffy which paralleled Harmony and Spike in being 100% wrong for each other. Cordelia and Xander were a fun ship even if we all knew it would never last, and Willow and Oz were beautiful and cute. But Xander and Anya and Willow and Tara? OTPs. As were Giles and Jenny, the librarian and the computer teacher.) 

That said, it’s not a perfect series. No story is. All of the characters and ships had problematic aspects to them worthy of critique, and the writing is very 90s in a lot of ways. It’s a product of its time, and in many ways it’s good society has progressed beyond some of the tropes/metaphors used in the show. In other way, though, the show was ahead of its time, and in a good way it wasn’t bound by the fear of purity policing with its takes on redemption (many characters would never fly today). 

So, in order of seasons ranked from my very favorite to my “still enjoyed it very much” (no season was actually bad, imo), here’s my review. I’ll also review my top 10 villains in the show, because Buffy does villains very well in terms of the redeemable and irredeemable.  

Season 7:  Yep, the final season was my favorite. 

Overall Opinion: Buffy's finale is literally "f*ck them men, our power is ours" and while it seems cheesy it actually works (also, f*ck in both a literal and figurative sense). The series strongly hit all the themes: love as strength, and redemption. Buffy consistently shows love as her strength--*all* kinds of love. Friendship w Willow/Xander, familial with Joyce/Dawn, romantic with Spike/Angel. These types of love are also never pitted against each other as is so often the case in current-day media. It's beautiful. Also, Spike’s confrontation with Wood was so powerful in terms of exploring forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation: where they overlap and where they don't, and what it means to move forward. 

Unpopular Opinion: I have seen a lot didn’t like the inclusion of Potential Slayers, and while I agree they could have been better incorporated/characterized, it was a great way to show Buffy’s final stage of growing up to be ending her chosen one status and projecting/multiplying her powers over the world. 

Biggest Critique: Kennedy was female Riley--the anti-Tara to Riley’s anti-Angel (by ‘anti’ I mean opposite in every way). Kennedy was annoying and immature. Her role, like Riley’s, was less about exploring her as a character and more about her just being stamped as “love interest: lesbian.” 

Favorite Episodes: Beneath You, Lies My Parents Told Me, Touched, Chosen

Season 6: 

Overall Opinion: I said this on Twitter, but I felt like this was Buffy’s The Last Jedi or Empire Strikes Back moment. It is polarizing and dark, deconstructing the tropes it stands on--but by digging to the core of these tropes, it actually makes what’s good about them shine brighter. Everyone’s enemy was the worst versions of themselves. Giles left Buffy, Willow's struggle to relate to the world led to her trying to destroy it, Buffy hurt everyone through her anger, Xander abandoned Anya at the altar, Spike... yeah. It ages well as an integral part of the story, and the Trio were eerily prophetic. 

Unpopular Opinion: Dawn is a great character with a good arc. A traumatized teen acting out and struggling to come to terms with loss and identity? She wasn’t whiny; she was realistic. 

Biggest Critique: Willow’s addiction coding (I’ll discuss this below) and Seeing Red as an episode. I see the argument for both of its controversial scenes from a narrative perspective: Willow starts the season not grieving Buffy but instead being determined to fix it with magic and needs to learn to grieve, but. Still. Bury your gays is not a good look. For the Spike scene... he conflates sex/passion and violence (”love is blood, children” is something he said way back in season 3), but like Tara’s death, it had more to do with Spike (as Tara’s death did for Willow) than with Buffy’s arc, and as for the actual execution... they really botched that. Did it like... have to go on that long or go that far? No. Also, the framing was good, but inconsistent with the rest of the series (Xander to Buffy in the hyena episode, Faith to Xander and to Riley, etc.) 

Favorite Episodes: Once More With Feeling, Smashed, Grave

Season 3 (tied with Season 5):

Overall Opinion: The opening continuity of Buffy meeting Lily/Anne after saving her life in Season 2 was sweet. The Witchhunt episode had really powerful subtext: stories of deaths that aren’t even true are actually demons that possess the town and convince them to turn against their children in the name of protecting the children. It’s a good commentary on, oh, everything in society. Faith’s character arc was fantastic, and her chemistry with Buffy was off the charts (look, I may be Spuffy all the way, but Fuffy has rights). The finale was satisfying in so many ways, seeing the entire graduating class unite to destroy the Mayor and the school with it, symbolizing Buffy et al’s readiness to move on to college. Oz's relationship with Willow was very sweet and meaningful for a first romance for Willow. 

Unpopular Opinion: I actually don’t really have one. Maybe that the miracle in Amends was earned? I think you can make a decent case that Season 3 is the best written of the seasons, but can only truly be thematically appreciated to its full potential in the light of subsequent seasons (which finish Faith’s arc and deconstruct Buffy’s).  

Biggest Critique: It forgot Buffy killed the hyena guy in Season 1, making her continual insistence that she can’t kill people very ????? 

Favorite Episodes: Lovers Walk, Amends, Graduation Day Part 2 

Season 5, which ties with Season 3:

Overall Opinion: The entire season is about family and what it means, from Tara’s to Buffy’s to the Scoobies. I loved Glory aka Enoshima Junko as the Big Bad, I loved Dawn’s interesting meta commentary on retconning (like, the fact that she’s retconned in matters), and most of my ships are still alive. Joyce’s relationship with Spike is one of the most heartwarming aspects, and Spike’s arc’s desire is clearly highlighted: he wants to be seen as a person. The episodes after Joyce’s death are the most honest portrayals of grief I’ve ever seen, and absolutely brutal to watch. 

Unpopular Opinion: Buffy’s choice at the end seems a deliberate inversion of her choice at the end of Season 2 (sacrifice a loved one to save the world), but it actually isn’t: much like at the end of Season 2 where Buffy skips town because she’s devastated after killing Angel and doesn’t want to sort out being expelled, her mom knowing she’s the slayer, and her own trauma, Buffy’s sacrifice here was as much about her wanting the easy way out of relationships, family, college, etc. as it was about saving Dawn. Buffy’s death is coded as a suicide, which Season 6 emphasizes as well. 

Biggest Critique: Like Season 3, I don’t have a lot to critique here. I wish the suicidal coding had been a little more obvious in Season 5 itself, but also I’m not sure it could have been more obvious; it’s pretty apparent if you pay attention. Maybe also that Buffy and Riley’s relationship failing should have been more squarely blamed on Riley, you know, being insecure and cheating. 

Favorite Episodes: Family, Fool for Love, Intervention. 

Season 2:

Overall Opinion: Heartbreakingly tragic but exciting and revealing at the same time. It asked the viewer interesting questions about redemption and forgiveness and atonement through Angel being honest about his past, and then decided to show us his past now reenacted, challenging us. And still, we saw them save him in a parallel to saving Willow in Season 6 (but Season 2 was tragic because it wasn’t enough, while Season 6 was not). Jenny’s death was agonizing, and the scene were Angel watches Buffy, Willow, and Joyce get the news through the window was powerful. We didn’t have to hear them to get the grief. 

Unpopular Opinion: Jenny’s death isn’t a fridging; it works for her arc too when you consider her history. She worked to save the person whose life she was tasked to ruin, and it cost her her own--yet she still succeeded, because Jenny brought joy and wisdom to the show. Kendra’s death, on the other hand... was because they needed the stakes to be high--but we already knew that before she died. So, her death was useless. 

Biggest Critique: The subtext was Not It. It was essentially “do not have sex. Your older boyfriend will lose his soul, kill your friends, you’ll lose your family, your school, your home, and have to kill your true love or else hell will literally swallow earth.” 

Favorite Episodes: School Hard, Passion, Becoming Part 2.

Season 1:

Overall Opinion: I really liked it; it’s just lower on this list because the others are just better. It’s a great introduction to the series and to its characters, from Giles to Buffy to Willow to Jenny to Cordelia. It has great subtext a lot of the time (for example, Natalie French as She-Mantis is a literal predatory bug who engages in predatory behavior with students). Additionally, it subverts the typical YA trope of two guys and a girl, in which the girl is usually the least interesting character. Buffy and Willow were both fully fledged characters from the beginning with distinct strengths (even before Willow became a witch, as she wasn’t one in season 1 yet), while Xander was the more ordinary of the group. 

Unpopular Opinion/Biggest Critique: Xander’s arc showed its first flaws that unfortunately continued throughout the series: his writing was either very good or very indulgent in ways it never was for other characters.  (cough, the hyena episode, cough, in which he gets to skirt responsibility--and acknowledges that he is skirting it--for something the show will later hold others to account for). Xander’s just kind of inconsistent, which weakened his character over all. (Which is why both his love interests--Cordelia and then ultimately Anya--were good for him: they did not indulge him.) 

Favorite Episode: Witch, Nightmares. 

Season 4:

Overall Opinion: it’s still a good season. It’s a good portrayal of college and the growing pains of branching out, the strains of college growth on relationships (romantic and platonic). It shows us the first hints of Spuffy, giving us some serious Jungian symbolism between Spike and Buffy early on, and does well in establishing Xander/Anya and Willow/Tara as beautiful OTPs. Faith and Buffy’s foiling is fantastic. The Halloween episode was very fun as well. However, it suffers because its Big Bad, Adam, is not all that compelling thematically--yet, he could have been. See, the final battle pulls off the Power of Friendship in a really strong way but notably the season does not end there. Instead, it ends on dreams of each character’s worst fears, continuing what we saw in Nightmares in Season 1. Why? Because it shows us that the characters’ wars aren’t against monsters, but monsters of their own making: their flaws. Adam, as a literal Frankenstein, exemplifies this, but it wasn’t capitalized on as well as it could have been. 

Unpopular Opinion: Beer Bad isn’t a bad episode, at the very least because Buffy gets to punch Parker. It’s not one of the series’ best, obviously, but it does give Buffy an arc in that she gets her daydream of Parker begging her to come back, but she has overcome that desire and her desire for revenge. If we wanna talk about bad subtext in Season 4, Season 2′s Not It sex subtext continues in the Where the Wild Things Are episode in this season; it’s a powerful callout of abusive purity-culture churches, until the fact that the shame creates a literal curse undermines the progressive message it’s supposed to send. Also, the Thanksgiving episode (Pangs) is a nightmare of white guilt and Oh God Shut Up White People. 

Biggest Critique: Riley is awful. Like Kennedy, he had “love interest:normal” stamped on him and that was it. The thing is, he could have worked as an Angel foil, representative of the normal-life aspect of Buffy to Angel’s vampire/supernatural aspect, but the writers never explore this and seemed to even try to back away from that later on. They threw all the romantic cliches at the wall to see what sticks, from klutzy “I dropped my schoolbooks, that’s how we met” to cliché lines that had me rolling my eyes. Do you know how bad a romance has to be to make me dislike romantic tropes? 

Favorite Episodes: Fear Itself, Hush, Restless

Villain rankings: 

Dark Willow, the only villain to be truly sympathetic. While the addiction coding was insensitive and, while unsurprising for its time, aged extremely poorly. That said, Willow’s turn to the dark side after Tara’s death worked well for her character and the story: it was believable and paid off what had been building since Season 1's “Nightmares” episode (Willow’s inferiority complex). 

Glory managed to be genuinely terrifying, and humorous/enjoyable too. Her minions and their numerous nicknames for Glorificus were hilarious, as was her intense vanity. Her merging with Ben--a human being who genuinely wanted to be kind and good--added complexity and tragedy to her role. 

The First. A really good take on Satan. The seventh season as well as the First’s first appearance in season 3′s “Amends” had kind of blatant Christian symbolism, and so the First being essentially Satan works. Their disguising themselves as dead loved ones and the subtle manipulation they used to alienate people was really disturbing and well done. 

The Mayor, who was a terrible person but a truly good father. He provided an interesting contrast to the normal ‘bad dad’ bad guy character, in that he provided Faith exactly what the other characters refused to: he saw the best in her and offered her parental support, while the heroes didn’t and wound up pushing her away. 

The Trio, who were villains ahead of their time: whiny fanboy reddit dudebros, basically. The stakes seemed so much lower than fighting Glory, a literal god, the previous season. But that’s why they worked so well for Season 6′s human themes, and were especially disturbing because we all know people like them. I also appreciated the surprisingly sensitive takes on Jonathan and Andrew, who got to redeem themselves, but Warren did not, and I don’t think he should have either. 

Angelus + Drusilla. I’m ranking them below the Trio because Angelus was just sooooo different from Angel that it was difficult for me to feel the same way for him. He was still Angel, so it wasn’t possible to enjoy his villainy, but he also wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as Dark Willow, had no redeeming qualities like the Mayor, and wasn’t as disturbingly realistic as the Trio. However, the emotional stakes were excellently executed with him as the Big Bad, in that you were never quite sure how to feel and it just plain hurt. Also, Drusilla was a favorite recurring character. She was sympathetic and yet batsh*t enough to be enjoyable as a villain at the same time. 

The Master, who was just completely camp and really worked as an introductory villain. He was scary enough to believe he was a threat, and was funny enough to introduce the series’ humor as well. He was, like Glory, an enjoyable Big Bad. 

The Gentlemen, the one-off villains of Season 4′s Hush who were genuinely terrifying. It’s not as if they got a lot of explanation or any backstory, but they didn’t need it. 

Caleb, the misogynist priest. Fitting with the First’s Christian symbolism, Caleb serving as a spokesperson of all bad religious beliefs felt appropriate. He was also a good foil to Warren--being actually supernaturally powered instead of a wannabe--and to Tara’s family in being full-out evil. I despised him. 

Snyder. Okay Snyder is not a Big Bad like Adam is, but let’s face it: Adam is lame compared to the other villains. But Snyder as a principal? He was so irritating and yet really well used in the series to critique overly strict, hypocritical teachers. Like, we all know teachers like him. I loved to hate him, and his ending was so satisfying. 

[carnalpleasure]

Michael x Angel!Reader 👼

hi!! i’ve had this idea in my head for months and finally felt inspired to start it tonight. i’m still working on my other two fics.. but Michael’s been calling to me lately💕

Summary: The reader assigns herself to be Michael’s guardian angel. This takes place at the beginning of Sojourn, with Michael in the wilderness. But takes a slightly different turn <3

Every human being in the history of humanity had been born with a guardian angel. The precious moment a newborn baby breathes its first breath of life, an angel is assigned to be their lifelong guardian. The angel’s main mission being to protect their human ward from the dark forces that had plagued the earth for all eternity. Ever since the serpent seduced Eve into her first bite of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

But that streak was broken one day in late March of 2012, when Vivian Harmon gave birth to Satan’s only begotten son.

She was the Anti-Mary. Instead of a blessed virgin being touched by an angel, she was a victim of a demonic sexual assault. She died giving birth to the Antichrist.

Michael Langdon was Satan’s very first creation. Because he was not a child of God, he was not born with a guardian angel. His father didn’t bother to assign him a guardian demon either. The spawn of Satan was left in the hands of none other than his grandmother Constance, whom his father felt was perfect for raising the little monster.

When Michael outgrew her, his father introduced him to Anton Lavey, one of his most trusted followers, who would then introduce Michael as the heir to the Church of Satan.

Michael, however, didn’t really take to Anton. He felt much closer to another key member of the church, Miriam Mead. She took a liking to the boy too and lovingly welcomed him into her home, where she taught him all about rituals, prayers, Black Mass, satanic prophecy.. She was preparing him for the apocalypse. His destiny, as they’d all say.

Once Michael began becoming aware of his powers, his father then led him into the hands of the Warlocks. They thought they were training him to be their next Supreme, but he only needed them to show him how to use his powers. They were disposable beyond that.

Michael was a loyal son, never questioning his father’s decisions, until his beloved Ms. Mead was permanently taken from him by the witches. Cordelia was right, why did he let this happen?

In search of answers, Michael fled to the wilderness on a quest. Jesus had spent 40 days out in the desert being tempted by Satan himself before his own Father finally spoke to him. Michael decided he had to do the same.

That’s when he wandered out into the forest on the outskirts of LA and started to trace a pentagram in the dirt, tired and out of options.

“I’m not going any further,” he sulked, dragging the jagged stone across the ground. “Father, tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” he pleaded, out of breath as he finished carving his sigil into the soil.

“I’m not leaving this circle until you talk to me,” he pouted stubbornly. “They’re gone.. the warlocks.. my Ms. Mead. Burned alive at the stake by the witches. Until nothing was left but ash and smoke,” his voice was breaking but he was too exhausted to cry.

“You tell me what to do,” he sighed, “or you let me die here.” Then he fell to his knees in the center of the circle and waited for a sign.

He watched the sun set and rise four times before he finally had a vision. But even then, he couldn’t be sure if he was seeing a sign or just suffering from severe dehydration.

He saw a little boy offering a cold grape Fanta, and a little girl holding a basket of red apples, and he thought maybe God was trying to tempt him into the light now. To distract him from his mission and derail him from his destiny.

He refused, “No, I’m on a mission. I have to talk to my father,” he said weakly. “Leave me alone.” Then the visions turned dark. He was taunted by Ms. Mead and then praised by Anton Lavey.

“You’re not real. None of this is.. re-real.” He shook his head and raised his hand to shield his face from the blinding light that was radiating from the High Priest before him.

“You’ve done a great job.” The Satanist proudly smiled. “No..” Michael protested, “I failed. I-I’m lost. I don’t understand my purpose,” he was out of breath and at a loss for words. He was tired of games, all he wanted was his father’s help. Everything was spinning.

The vision of Anton continued reciting to him from the prophecy in Revelation, calling him the Alpha and the Omega. Michael couldn’t take it anymore. He made a lunge for Anton, wrapping a hand around his throat to choke him out. Only seconds later, the vision vanished altogether.

And that’s when he saw you. The last thing he remembered was an impossibly beautiful girl with big white wings and a little white dress. He fell to his knees again, in shock and exhaustion, and collapsed into her arms. He felt the warm, soft embrace of feathers, and then he fell into a much needed sleep.

When he awoke a day later, he was still pretty disoriented from the lack of food, water, and sleep. His mind was a haze. He didn’t realize where he was, he only knew that this bed was softer than anything he’d ever felt.

The blankets felt like fluffed up clouds and the pillows smelled like lavender. A cool breeze caressed his skin, and he noticed the temperature of the room was significantly cooler than anything he’d felt in a long time. That radiating heat that seemed to consume him constantly just wasn’t there.

He reached his hand out to feel along the bed. Empty. He opened his eyes, hoping to see the angel from his dreams sitting there watching over him. But the room was empty too.

He sat up in bed, clutching the sheets and looking around anxiously. The room was nice, but it wasn’t anything extreme. It was kinda charming actually, soft and cozy. It didn’t look like anyone had been living here for very long.

Michael climbed out of bed, stepping foot on the soft, plush carpet and smiling at the touch. He walked towards the bedroom door which was just barely cracked open, and stuck his head out slowly to peak outside.

You were in the kitchen, digging around in the refrigerator when you heard him come out. You twisted around, bumping the fridge door shut with your hip and then dropping everything on the counter.

“You’re up already? Are you feeling okay?” The pained look on his face made you worry. He looked exhausted still, leaning against the doorway just to hold himself up.

You rushed to his side, a little faster than humanly possible, and wrapped an arm around his waist to help him steady himself. He leaned into your embrace but winced a little at your touch. His body was sore everywhere.

He couldn’t stop staring at you. Almost glaring, looking at you like you’d just lied straight to his face. You walked him to the counter, sitting him down across from you and then running back to quickly check the stove. He didn’t take his eyes off you the whole time.

“I’m making you a breakfast feast,” you smiled at him over your shoulder. “You look like you haven’t eaten in days..”

“I’m sorry,” he interjected. “But wh-who are you? How did I get here?”

You smiled gently, passing him a plate of bacon and eggs to get him started while you finished the french toast. “I’m Y/N, I brought you here,” you said happily.

He kept looking you up and down. You looked exactly like he remembered, but you were now missing one unique, defining feature..

“Are you-“ he couldn’t bring himself to say the word out loud. It didn’t seem possible to him. “You had.. wings before,” his brow furrowed in confusion and his glare returned.

You simply nodded, glancing over at him and frying a piece of toast in the pan. “You remembered,” you said with a smile.

His confusion only grew. You poured him a glass of milk and then slid the fork closer to him. “Eat, please. We have plenty of time to talk later. I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” you brushed his blonde curls out of his face and the divine touch of your fingers briefly lingered on his skin, sending shivers down his spine.

He hesitated, picking up his fork and taking a bite. It wasn’t just the starvation talking, he genuinely enjoyed your food. He immediately started feeling his strength and energy coming back. He felt revitalized.

It wasn’t just the food. Something about your presence was so satisfying to him. You brought him a kind of merciful peace that was only reserved for the saints. He didn’t need confirmation, he knew in his heart you were something holy. And he only hoped that you didn’t know what he truly was. If you ever fell in love with him, it would be your fall from grace.

“You’re an angel,” he whispered softly. His heart was pounding. He felt like he was committing a crime just by being in your presence. He felt like God would smite him any minute just for laying eyes on you.

You cupped his face in your hands gently, wiping away a stray tear that fell from his eyes. “As of today, I’m officially a guardian angel,” you smiled proudly. Your eyes actually twinkled, it completely captivated him.

“Guardian? Who’s guardian?” his pouty lip quivered and you could see all the new emotions swirling around him like a hurricane. He couldn’t believe any of this was really happening. He thought he must’ve been dreaming. He wasn’t dead, he knew that. He was destined for hell and there’s no one like her down there.

He was so cute. “Yours, duh” you giggled, letting go of his face and playfully tousling his blonde locks. He looked up at you with a small smirk that spread into a big smile. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. “How?-“ he silently mouthed as the words he was looking for escaped him.

“You didn’t have one,” you shrugged. “So I.. guess you could say I volunteered.” You didn’t want to overwhelm him with too many details, but the adorable confused puppy look on his face was begging for answers. “Volunteered?” he repeated, cocking his head to the side curiously. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“I just thought you should have someone looking out for you too.. you know. You didn’t deserve to be abandoned. Not by God or anyone.” You said it with such sincerity, he could see it on your face how strongly you felt about those words.

His eyes started to overflow with tears but he couldn’t help but smile. It was the single kindest thing anyone had ever said to him. That’s when it hit him. You already knew what he was. You knew who he was. And you were willing to go against both God’s will and Satan’s to take over as his protector. You left heaven just for him.

He pulled you into his lap, wrapping his arms around you and quietly sobbing into your chest. Tears of pure joy and gratitude. Little “thank yous” whispered on repeat against your skin, so close you can feel his lips brushing across your collarbones with each word.

He snaked his arms around your waist tighter and tighter, pulling you as close to him as physics would allow. It melted your heart how close he wanted to be to you.

“Aw.. you just want to be held,” you giggled, putting your arms around his shoulders and hugging his body closer to yours. “I’m here, Michael. I’ve got you now. You’re safe, you’re mine,” you cooed, your lips brushing against his temple.

His eyes were closed and his face was pressed against your chest, all he heard was a swift whoosh as your wings suddenly appeared, folding around both of your bodies like a soft shield tucking him into you. He’d never felt so safe before, all nestled in your feathers.

He peaked his eyes open to look around at them. “That’s fucking awesome,” he muttered softly, his jaw dropping as his eyes shot up to meet yours. You smiled down at him, kissing his forehead. You couldn’t help but giggle. He made you feel giddy, the way he looked at you. Like you were made of magic.

“My own guardian angel,” he said quietly to himself, still in awe of it all. He refused to let go of you for the rest of the day after that. All he wanted to do was lie in your arms. Feel your embrace. And you were happy to oblige because he needed to rest anyway. The two of you returned to your bed where he spent the rest of the night on your chest, fast asleep in your arms. The safest place he could ever be.

💕taglist: @sexwon131 @jimmason @whatcodysaid @angelicmichael @thewarriorprincessxo