#let Tara Maclay have flaws and be a human being in the 2020s

[lightdancer1]

A certain type of Buffy fan:

"Tara Maclay never did anything wrong."

"Willow and Tara freeloaded off of Buffy in Season 6 and it was terrible of Willow to do that."

These two statements cannot both be true at the same time, Tara did at least two big things wrong to Buffy, specifically, and her lying to Willow for that entire first year had the major justification of her cult survivor trauma, while Willow being too forgiving about it is about Willow's emotional immaturity, not Tara herself.

But.....she specifically had a near-lethal magic misfire (and nobody, after continued searching, has ever done the 'Tara gets Monkey's Pawed in Family by Willow dying as a result of the Cadria spell' fic and that's got my fingers itchy for another short one) and she freeloaded off of Buffy just like Willow did...if you take that as what they did.

It's why I think some of the people who take empathy for her in ways that have only gone up in 20 years along with appreciation of her as the best of the Scoobies (which she 100% is regardless of what she did do wrong with her actual flaws anyway) to a point they substitute a character in their head for the far more interesting one Amber Benson actually played on TV.