#look we need more Tara works in general but that's a whole other TED talk that I don't have the capacity for rn

[blackbird-brewster]

There are 24 JJ/Tara works on AO3 now!!!!!

Last year, before I'd written [Fooled Around - Part 2], this pairing only had TWO works on AO3. And to be honest, I had never given much thought to JJ/Tara. I'd been shipping Je T'Emliy for years, but I mostly shipped it as a triad with Emily as the overlapping partner.

Opening my eyes to the potential of JJ/Tara together ruined me for other ships. After I finished Part 2, I made it my personal mission to add to this pairing on AO3.

Now, out of 24 works on AO3 -- I'm 13 of those!!! I am so thrilled whenever I see other people starting to consider and write this ship. It's a joy to find all of you stray Jara shippers on here.

It actually reminds me a little of how Jemily was back in the day. When I first started writing Jemily in 2014, there were less than 90 JJ/Emily works on AO3. I dedicated all my time into adding to the cause and by the end of 2015, that total had doubled. (Now look how many Jemily fics there are!!)

This is to say, if you ship a rare pair -- keep on shipping it, keep on yelling about it, writing about it, creating art for it, because you never know, maybe you'll open some other people's eyes to a great new ship they hadn't considered before!

[sorryforbeingcrazy]

Buffy and Spike deserved more...talking.

I´ve been marinating this in my brain for a couple of days, so here I go.

I really liked the relationship between Buffy and Spike. And I´m not only focusing on the “romance” part, but in general. I loved their transition from enemies to allies to....friends? I just enjoyed how when it came to serious threats, they always looked  and relied on one another for help.

That´s why one of the things that disappointed me the most about the last season was the fact that they never really talked about how wrong they did to each other on season 6.

Season 6 is a very very dark season, for all of the characters: Willow´s addiction to magic and the effects it has on Tara, Xander´s fears that end up leaving Anya on the altar, Giles feeling that he is useless...But who really takes the trophy home in this one, is Buffy. I don´t even know how to start.

From the moment she is brought back to life, she suffers. We were expecting her comeback to be a happy moment, filled with tears of joy, laughter and hugs. Instead, she wakes up in her grave, has to dig herself out and then she walks around a Sunnydale on fire and full of demons. Can you imagine the shock? Only the crawling up from the grave should be enough to send someone to therapy for the rest of their lives. The mere thought of waking up in a coffin, six-feet undergroundnd makes me anxious...But let´s keep going.

She is back. She is traumatized and shocked beyond belief and at home with Dawn (after reliving everything that happened before she died). She is quiet, trying to process everything while Dawn is constantly talking to her about how things are and asking if she is ok. Her hands still wrecked from the diggin. And suddenly, she is face to face with Spike. (This is a sidenote related to the actors. I cannot give enough credit to James Marsters portrayal of Spike in general. But in this scene...man, 12/10, flawless). He looks at her in disbelief. And despite the fact that he was happier than ever that she was alive again, he does not try to touch her or approach her, and the moment he sees her hands he acknowledges what she has been through. So he just tell her that they are going to take care of her, and sends Dawn away to fetch stuff to clean her wounds. And they are alone in the living room. He does not overwhelm her with questions or hugs or anything. He just stares at her, giving her time to put her thoughts in order.

It may look like a trivial scene but I´m not kidding when I tell you that, for me, this is the most important scene of the whole season. And it is because it defines how the dynamic between Buffy and Spike, and Buffy and her friends is going to be.

When Spike is holding her wounded hands, letting her ask questions, just staring at each other, there´s silence. Peace. Calm. It´s the first moment since she is back that she is at ease. But the moment her friends burst through the door, is chaos. Noise, questions, worry, light, people...And this is why this scene is so important. During the rest of the season, the reason why Buffy goes away looking for Spike is because she wants that peace and quiet. She wants the calmness she gets around him, when she does not have to worry about being fine and happy in front of her friends. She can take her mask off when she is in front of Spike. That´s why she tells him that she was in a good place. That´s why he turns into her confident.

And for sometime, it works. Whenever she feels like she can´t take it anymore she goes to spend sometime with Spike. The problem is that her life gets harder and harder: financial problems, Giles leaves, Willow´s addiction, her relationship with Dawn. Her struggle becomes unbearable to the point were Spike is the only safe constant in her life. The only person she can rely on. And of course, mixing this with Spike´s feelings and their “tension”, their relationship turns physical. Very physical. And here is when Buffy starts using, quite wrongly, Spike.

The first time could be a slip, but not the rest. She may not have been aware at the beginning, but deep inside she knew what she was doing. She knew that Spike had strong feelings for her. She knew that he would never deny her and even if he did (that he actually does a couple of times) he wouldn´t last long. So she takes advantage of him and his feelings.

Someone, blind as a fucking bat, could say “Spike wasn´t minding it. He was enjoying the sex with Buffy. It´s what he wanted.” Fuck, no. He spents the whole season wanting to talk to her about their relationship. To discuss what is going on between them. If you are in it just for the sex, you don´t care to ask questions. You just don´t care. You just take what you came for and then you leave. The way Buffy does. And this bothers him. It bothers him that the moment they are finished she runs away. It hurts him. More than once he calls her out by the fact that whenever they are not “in bed”, she is constantly yelling at him and insulting him and his feelings, and yet, she always comes back to him.

Now, for those who think that Spike was fine with this I want you to imagine for a second, that you are in his shoes. As a human being, and not caring about genders. Imagine you loved someone, beyond reason (i´m not even going to throw in the fact that he saw her die even though i could). And because you care about this person, you spent time with them because they are in a bad place mentally. And that person enjoys your company. And starts spending more time with you. And one day, you kiss. Once. Twice. Then, you sleep together. Once. Twice. And god knows how many more times. You could think “If they like to spend time with me, tell me things they do not to their friends, kiss me and even sleep with me, they must feel something, right?” It´s a fair assumption. But instead, this person is constantly telling you how disgusted they feel with themselves for being with you physically, to the point were they keep what you have in absolute secret from their friends, and they run from you everytime you sleep together.

Fucking. Imagine.

Evil or not. Souless or not. That fucks you up my friends.

What leads us to the horrifying events of Seeing Red. You won´t see me coming any close to justify what Spike tries to do to Buffy. There´s no excuse in the world that clears you from that one. But I do see where it comes from. And it´s not just because Spike is evil. That´s a lame excuse of an argument. That scene, is the representation of Spike hitting rock bottom. He wants what he had with Buffy back. Even if it was only physical, it was at least something. And so, he is desperate...and well....we all know what happens. I swear to you, that scene creeped me out so fucking much.

That´s why it angers me how they did not approach these subjects on season 7. They both did terrible things to each other. They should have talked about it in depth. And even though I´m quite satisfied how they ended up acknowledging each other in ways any of the other characters do, I cannot hide my displeasure about that missing conversation. They needed more closure for what happened on season 6.

Good lord. This really turned out long.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[marylovettpostgradblog]

10: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY                                                                 The process and where it has led.

The blog has afforded me a unique opportunity to explore a journey of enquiry. It has opened up unexpected avenues for research, particularly for someone studying a music technology-based masters degree. Although some blog posts have focused on technical audio practices, most of them have not been.  I have found myself drawn to looking back at the historical context of the ancestral line of my female electronic musician forbearers. This feels important to me and it was impossible to do this without reflecting on the patriarchal systems and institutions that exist within the music industry and beyond. This has made me think more widely about societal value systems, about who decides what is “good” art or music and what is not and how these decisions and values are made.  My own research has not adhered to a particular methodology, I have simply followed my interests related to my field, as per the assignment brief.  

Having freedom to do this has led me to look at music production through the lens of feminist writers and researchers as a result. This had bought me to feminist epistemology, which as Duran puts it, is a means of summarising, to some extent, and integrating women's knowledge and experiences. (Duran 1991). Central to this idea is the multiplicity of women’s voices, implying that feminist researchers are not searching for one truth, but the multiple truths that exist within women’s experience. (Ardovini-Brooker 2002). This may also link back to why a single statistic about the number of women in audio is not enough to collect the data on the more complex nature of women’s roles within the music industry. There is more than one answer, as there is more than one lived experience, numbers are not enough on their own. The nature of women's roles in the music industry is complex: the proportion of women working within it rose from 45.3% in 2016 to 49.1% in 2018. On face value this looks encouraging, but when the type of roles are closely examined, it shows a different and less positive picture. Approximately 21.7% of artists in the music industry are women, but only 12.3% of songwriters, 2.1% of music producers, and 3% of engineers/mixers in popular music are women, so women are excluded from crucial roles in the industry. (Smith et al. 2019 cited in Hepworth -Sawyer M et al. 2020)

Feminists argue that women are under-represented in audio production due to a previous implicit assumption that it was a male domain, due to undervaluing of the contribution of women in audio production and exclusion of women from studios historically. Tara Rogers expresses this in relation to women in electronic music by saying that ‘the terms technology and music are often marked as male domains, and the trenchancy of associated gendered stereotypes seems to gain force when these fields converge in electronic music’ (McCartney & Waterman 2006, Cited in Rogers T 2005). It is the same gendered associations about music that Pauline Oliveros referred to when she emphasized musical values of intuitive practice as being important yet undervalued as patriarchal culture has coded this as feminine. (Taylor T 1993).  

David Butler also refers to patriarchy in his paper that offers an alternative view of Delia Derbyshire’s post BBC life. He refers to well-intentioned masculinist narratives on the much reported tragic and uncreative years, casting her as a failed artist and alcoholic (Butler D 2020). He cited many examples of her creative work which were not acknowledged during this time. My own thoughts on this are that perhaps her work was not perceived as valuable or significant because they were not in the mainstream or presented through powerful structures like the BBC. This is another example of the masculinist hegemony, dictating what is viewed as valuable and important.

When writing my first blog post on why there are so few women in audio, I could see that this subject could be a huge distraction from me researching technically how to be a better music producer. Indeed, this cautionary comment is made in the recommendations for change in the book 'Gender and Music Production'. Women in production need proactive male allies because, ‘when women are given sole responsibility for inclusion agendas, their time is taken up on the gender agenda, which prohibits progression within their actual field.’ (Jude Brereton, et al cited in Hepworth -Sawyer M et al. 2020)

The direction and subjects of my research make me consider the Baader Mienhof phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion, a term that Professor of linguistics Arnold Zwicky coined to describe it, He, said that ‘once you notice a phenomenon, you believe it happens a whole lot.’ (Zwicky A 2006) According to Zwicky the frequency illusion is the result of two psychological processes, selective attention and confirmation bias (Zwicky, A. 2006). This could have implications on my own objectivity. If I had only researched texts that were noteworthy to me and ignored others (selective attention) and looked for texts that supported, my position and overlooked counter evidence. (Confirmation bias) I’m not sure that I had a particular position to support, apart from the obvious fact that I am a woman in electronic music production. Judith Bell warns of dangers of bias especially when there is only one researcher who may have strong views about the topic they are researching, choosing texts that support your view point and using inappropriate language that could indicate bias in one direction. Bell, J. (2014). In my blog I have followed personal interests so there is inevitably an element of bias and my comments in blogs are not necessarily objective, but I am aware of the need to consider bias in research. I do acknowledge the challenge of remaining objective in potentially emotive gender issues, however I have tried to be balanced in my research.

Collaboration as opposed to single genius. Ideas that feed into my practice

None of us exist on a creative island where the muse comes, bypasses all other influences and we independently create a musical masterpiece.  Influences are an inherent part in what we do.  Brian Eno came up with the word “scenius” rather than genius, rejecting the idea that his creativity was an independent act. He chose to collaborate with other artists in unconventional ways. Eno describes scenius as ‘the power generated by a group of artists who gather in one place at one time, genius is individual, scenius is communal.’  (Jones A 2014) Pauline Oliveros described the experience of being with two other musicians in an underground cistern with a 45 second reverb. She described it as playing with the reverb, improvising and playing with it, respecting it’s sound and including it in their collective musical sensibility, as if it were another musician in the space. The musicians in the cistern had learn to listen and interact to the sound in a new way. (Ted X. 2015)   In his 1979 lecture, the studio as a compositional tool, Brian Eno described composition as now being ‘additive’ as a result of four track analogue tape recording, and something that is done in the studio, rather than having a fixed idea and then recording it, as was preciously the case. (Eno, B. 1979. cited in Cox, C. 2020) Composition in collaboration with technology which is how a vast number of people work in a DAW environment today. Like Oliveros improvising with the reverb and Eno composing with the studio, musicians and producers are in musical collaboration with the technology in the DAW. Listening and responding to the sounds that are generated rather than a fully formed idea being generated, at least this is how I work. The only difference from when Eno talked about four track additive composition is that now there is no limit to the number of tracks that can be used, which can be  a mixed blessing!

In this time of Covid 19 lockdowns and enforced isolation I am fortunate in being able to make music in my home studio. I still feel the lack of musical collaboration with people in the room and also profoundly miss my song writing partnership. I have been re thinking how I interact with my DAW and have begun thinking of it as something to improvise with. In a sense I was already doing this but had not thought of it in these terms.  I enjoy improvising musically with other humans and some of the spirit of that can be lost using a DAW in solitude. Error and serendipity have afforded me a different way of working with my DAW. I accidentally moved a drum loop into a software instrument piano track.  I really loved the sound of the piano as it interpreted the midi information of the drum loop.  I have made a piece of music based on this discovery. The lyrical content of the track is influenced by my research and blog on Melodyne. Further to this as part of my experimentation in working in different ways, I also utilised the voice from some assistive software designed for people with dyslexia.  The voice reads small sections of text from my blog. I will be using it as part of a four track EP assignment submission.

The blog posts relate to my practice directly in the case of technical audio software and recording. The other subjects all influence my work either by exploring the male dominated paradigm in which I work or concerning artists who inspire me.  Some of these subjects have featured in my production work for other modules. The idea of an electronic music ancestral mother line which was expressed by the DJ known as the Black Madonna hugely resonates with me. She said that she felt “Motherless” in terms of female role models in electronic music and then remembered Pauline Oliveros et al she was inspired to start the Daphne (Oram) festival celebrating the pioneering women of electronic music and highlighting contemporary female and nonbinary electronic musicians. Eoin M (2017)

This theme is used in another production for my EP submission for the Creative Music Production Module. I am encouraged by the achievement of past female audio electronic musicians but also by the discovery of organisations who promote their achievement and offer education to children to celebrate their work and to experiment in sound workshops. Writing these blogs have made me reflect on my interest in promoting women and young girls access into audio production as well as the changing technologies and approaches to the creative process which are influences on my work.    

References:

Feminist Epistemology https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/288331875.pdf Taylor, Timothy D. “The Gendered Construction of the Musical Self: The Music of Pauline Oliveros.” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 3, 1993, pp. 385–396. JSTOR,

https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.herts.ac.uk/stable/742386?pq-origsite=summon&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.herts.ac.uk/docview/1545867803?accountid=14660&pq-origsite=summon

https://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/LSA07illude.abst.pdf

Bell, Judith, and Stephen Waters. Doing Your Research Project : A Guide For First-Time Researchers, McGraw-Hill Education, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=1910218. Created from herts on 2021-01-15 06:36:20.

https://herts-summon-serialssolutions-com.ezproxy.herts.ac.uk/search?s.q=Doing+Your+Research+Project+&s.fvf%5B%5D=ContentType%2CNewspaper+Article%2Ct%7CContentType%2CBook+Review%2Ct&keep_r=true&s.cmd=#!/search?ho=t&fvf=ContentType,Newspaper%20Article,t%7CContentType,Book%20Review,t&l=en-UK&q=Doing%20Your%20Research%20Project%20

https://library.herts.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=249618

https://thevinylfactory.com/features/pauline-oliveros-legacy-deep-listening/

Image:

https://www.pexels.com/search/magnifying%20glass/

[ywhiterain]

@anotheralix wrote a post that can be summed up as “how about we ditch the double standards surrounding how we talk about female and male protagonists.” She even admit she does this herself with Clarke Griffin (100) and Elena Gilbert (The Vampire Diaries). It’s not a particularity nuanced post - but it wasn’t meant to be. It was a vent. A vent, in particular, how women are judged differently than men.

This is not a shocking rant. This is a self evident perspective shared by many women across time in different cultures. Look, I could get into the science and cite different articles and meta-analysis that back up the idea women are held to higher standards than men. But not everything is about meeting high standards when creating an argument. Sometimes you want to make short rant on your tumblr about sexism and move on.

But, see, @candyumberella responds to this post. Not a problem in itself. But how and what she says reveals that her issue is not with creating inter sectional spaces for women to talk about feminism. No, I think she hates that female fans sometimes really love female leads.

I’m going to take apart some of her arguments under the cut.

“I think it’s pretty telling that whenever people get uncomfortable with seeing a female character (espically the most privilaged white female character in a ‘verse whose narrative is based on and constructed around her privliage) criticized in any way, they knee-jerk respond with, "You wouldn’t do this with a white man!”

Let’s unpack this. There are two claims in here that I disagree with: female leads are constructed around her privilege and being critical of the knee-jerk response. I’ll with the second first, because it’s easier to address. Yes. Women, particularly women who have been influenced by feminist thought, tend to get frustrated when women are held to a higher standard than men. It happens. It’s annoying. And I believe it’s understandable. The fact that @candyumbrella doesn’t acknowledge that female heroines are held to higher standards is a glaring omission. If she took into account how misogyny and sexism hurts all women, her arguments about how women are treated in fandom would fall apart. I mean, even more so than pointing out the existence of The Golden Girls and its large fandom does.

The second part is that her claim, espically the most privilaged white female character in a 'verse whose narrative is based on and constructed around her privliage is not backed by any evidence at all. Now, @anotheralix doesn’t give powerful evidence herself, but that’s because it was a short vent about sexism. @Candyumberlla takes issues with this vent because of a weird ass Interpretation of All TV Based On One Sitcom. If you’re going to take issue with someone complaining about sexism, and how this post complaining about sexism is a problematic trend in fandom as a whole, you need some convincing arguments. Otherwise you look like a sexist apologist.

But here, I’m going to argue against her claim by pointing to Buffy. White female lead - skinny and blond to boot! But the premise of the worldview of Buffy isn’t that she’s the most privileged character in her world. She spends a good portion of it struggling against the Watchers Council (aka patriarchy) in order to use her own power on her own terms. Buffy being pretty and tiny and girly is the fucking point - because society sees women who look like her as empty shells. Buffy being the undisputed heroine of her own story is and was an attack on that worldview.

Buffy didn’t do great about race. It’s treatment of Kendra Young has not aged well, to put it politely. It’s peek manufactured whiteness. As for queer issues, while Willow/Tara was groundbreaking, but there’s as much to critique as there is celebrate. Fans of Buffy do this all the fucking time. There is nuance to be had and Buffy’s got plenty of academic and fannish work exploring that nuance. It’s failures and it’s successes.

But

It’s not about the injustice of misogyny so much as people wanting their female fave to not be criticized and using her gender as a catch-all reason why she shouldn’t be.

That’s a pretty unfair statement. Loving and being fannish about female characters can be an exercise in frustration in fandom. I don’t know how many times I went in the tags for Elena Gilbert only to see fans calling her a two-faced and manipulative in very gendered ways. Slut. Bitch. Whore. I’m glad a dude is beating her up and putting her in her place. Speak true to that ungrateful bitch, male character I like! This exists in fandom. It puts a lot of people on guard.

Critiquing a character like Elena is not as easy as doing one like Klaus. Because there is baggage there. Misogyny is a thing. It informs how women are framed and treated in the text. It informs audience expectation and reaction. Elena being white didn’t stop her from ending up with her rapist.

So actually, I see plenty of people accusing male characters of making everything about themselves–usually when they want to deflect from criticism directed against their One Special White Girl and do so by perpetuating the lie that ONLY White Men are the REAL Enemy, We Are All Allies Against Them, blah blah.

Because, shockingly, men and women are treated differently in both canon and fandom. I’ve seen @candyumberlla spend more time talking shit about Clarke, Elena, and Donna (Suits) than Oliver (Arrow), Angel (Angel), or Sam or Dean (Supernatural). Even Ted, the privileged white dude who informs all of her meta these days, is not treated with such distaste. She is gleeful about her interpretation of Clarke (she’s being humiliated and dethroned!) She gushes about the Fall of Elena and the Rise of Caroline. She might mock, say, Stefan Salvatore, but she doesn’t the same use belittling and angry language.

Misogyny is informing her meta. Because misogyny is a threat. It’s real. Her attack on female characters is built on centuries of female oppression.

Also:  –usually when they want to deflect from criticism directed against their One Special White Girl

Women and girls can’t just be tired as hell of white male dominance in their world? Critiques against male dominance in media are About Protecting That White Women. 

MOST privileged woman in a ‘verse appropriating and parasitizing those LESS privileged and LESS institutionally elevated than she–so she’s not the victim in this scenario, she’s the oppressor.

Prove it. When and how did Clarke, Elena, Veronica, Buffy, Rey, or any other white female characters target more vulnerable women. Hard mode: look their stories in context of a male dominated society with white dudes being the ones who generally created their stories. Remember internalized misogyny is not just those Bad Female Fans Who Like The Wrong White Female Leads and how much female creators in Hollywood and TV have to balance to just get women to talk to each other without it being about a dude. Honest mode: take into account how the leads have both built up and torn down the women in their lives. Put the narrative into a cultural and historical context.

so this parasitic stanning impulse is just white male worship transmuted in a different form that ~feels more like ~feminism and thus more morally acceptable ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Tell me more about how Clexa fans just love Finn. Or Xena/Gabe fans just thirsting for that dick. Bias is a thing. It influences how we think, feel, and react to things. There is no story that doesn’t fail on some level when it comes to systems of oppression.

But people finding personal power, meaning, or joy in female lead stories doesn’t mean they just really want the dick. Korra/Asami fans don’t tend think too much of Mako. Buffy/Faith shippers may have an opinion about Angel and Spike, but they’re generally more interested in the charged relationship between Faith and Buffy. Sailor Moon fandom does have a good chunk of het, but lesbian content and focus on friendship between women is one of the reasons it’s still beloved by many people.

Or, hell, maybe actually allow for the idea that maybe a het shipper is more invested in the female half than the male half and it’s not due to her status as a guy who was killed off and the fandom as a whole cheered. 

[tialovestelevision]

I Was Made to Love You

Apparently, before we get to the conclusion of that two-parter in Angel, we watch some Buffy. This one’s about a robot girlfriend.

… Okay.

1. Very long Previously On. Buffy is beating up Xander in a giant padded suit. He’s giving her advice. He’s actually being helpful for once. Meanwhile, there’s a car arriving in town. A pretty girl in a pretty dress who talks a bit like Anya and is looking for true love got out. Opening credits. Still no Tara.

2. Dawn and Buffy are making Joyce spin around. She does have a nice dress. Joyce has a dress. He’s probably not an evil robot. Buffy is self-conscious about the grand total of two breakups and she’s had and three men she’s slept with.

3. Tara and Anya are talking about computers. Anya is older than Angel. Or the Protestant Reformation. Anya is good at investing. She’s thinking about buying an antelope. They met the girl who got out of the car. She wants to know where Warren is. She’s asking everyone where Warren is.

4. Now we’re at… somewhere. A party. Buffy is dancing with Xander. Anya is expecting a karmic award. Buffy sees Ben. She’s going to flirt with him. She doesn’t know Glory shares his body. He does. She’s bad at faking laughter. There’s a giant clam shell full of punch. I saw giant clams a couple of weeks ago! I’ll talk about them more. She’s asking Ben to dance with her, but he’s bad at rhythm, but he will anyway. He’s dumping his punch so nobody drugs him. If someone does drug him, I wonder if Glory would end up drugged too? And how that would work? Anya is eating woven food. Chex. The girl looking for Warren is here. She might have found Warren. A guy is running away. Yep, Warren. He left with another girl. Xander and Willow are both attracted to looking-for-Warren girl. Spike’s there too. He’s being creepy. Spike doesn’t have a green card… does he? Ben is offering to get violent with Spike. Spike sees Buffy flirting with Ben. Ben is giving her his number. He knows Glory shares his body and Buffy doesn’t. Ben likes coffee. He would like to get to know coffee better. Spike is leaving. Looking-for-Warren-girl is named April. Spike hit on her, so she threw him all the way across a room and out the window.

5. Now April has thrown Buffy too. She then apologizes to her. Everyone’s going to check on Buffy.

6. They’re having a meeting. They all agree that she’s a robot. Willow is going to try to find Warren. Willow’s vocal patterns make Tara smile. Buffy is going to relieve Giles from watching Dawn. Giles has been suffering horribly by listening to pop music and talking about boys. Giles is fascinated by the robot. Giles is fleeing before Joyce starts talking about her date.

7. April is now going door to door asking for Warren. At 3:30 AM. There are no Warrens at Sunnydale. Giles has no robot books but likes making Xander nervous. Willow found Warren Meers and a local address where his parents live. Xander is creeping everyone out, including Anya. Buffy is in the training room now after they talk about how sad loneliness is. She’s calling Ben, who Glory is changing into. She’s asking Ben, who knows he shares a body with Glory but hasn’t told her, out to coffee.

8. Warren is getting ready to flee with his girlfriend, whose name is Katrina. He opens the door to find Buffy outside. He told Katrina to shut up, and she left. Warren immediately asks if April has hurt someone. He tells Buffy April is a robot. Buffy is wonderfully unsurprised.

9. Willow and Xander and Tara are telling Dawn about April. Dawn remembers Ted. Spike just came in with his blanket over his head. Anya wants to throw him out the window. Dawn doesn’t want to talk to Spike. Giles is going to throw Spike out. He told Spike to get over it, which I really wish he would. He’s leaving.

10. April is in a diner, asking people about Warren. They’re sending her out, but they don’t know who Warren is.

11. Buffy is talking to Warren. He ghosted the obsessive robot girl with superstrength who he built. He thinks she must be recharging her batteries somehow. And April just ran into Katrina. And Katrina told April that Warren’s her boyfriend. So April’s got her in a bearhug and is killing her.

12. Spike is throwing out all his Buffy paraphernalia. Buffy and Warren found April… Katrina is unconscious. Or worse. Warren told April to give Katrina to Buffy. She’s alive. Buffy told Warren to actually break up with April. She has no subroutines for rejection. And he just set April on Buffy, because he’s apparently psychotic. Now April and Buffy are fighting. Buffy broke April’s shell a bit to expose some electronics. Katrina is breaking up with Warren again, because he is a serious creep. Buffy’s outfighting April, until April goozles her, but her battery is dying. Now Buffy is sitting with April and talking to her while her battery gives out, offering comfort. This is creepy, but Buffy is being very sweet. And April is dead.

13. Xander is repairing the window April threw Spike through. And talking about windows, and April, and love. “Robots are the strangest people.” “People are the strangest people.” Buffy has decided that what she needs is to be comfortable being alone with herself, and that makes me smile a bit. She’s calling Ben, and leaving a message on his machine to cancel their date. But Glory was listening in. Her feelings are hurt that Buffy turned Ben down.

14. Warren is calling Katrina, who has firmly broken up with him. Spike’s there… he wants a Buffy robot. Ohgod so creepy.

15. Buffy comes in to find a bunch of flowers from Brian to Joyce. Joyce is laying on the sofa… not moving while Buffy talks. She is very dead. Buffy is just starting to catch on to that… “Mom? Mom? Mommy?”

Overall: A lot to unpack here, too.

I’ll start with the end… so, Joyce is dead. I think Joyce came across a lot better when the show was airing an episode a week with about half a year between a season closer and a season opener than she does on even the sort of relatively slow binge watch I’m doing here. We’re a bit more than halfway done with season 5, so watching as the show aired you’d get two and a half years or so between the scene where Joyce threw Buffy out in an obvious, if possibly unintentional, allusion to the way so many queer teens have become homeless in Becoming and her death here. In this watch? It’s been about a month, I think. Joyce looks a lot worse when all her episodes (Ted, Becoming, Anne, Gingerbread) are piled together. Still, Buffy obviously cares about her a lot, so while Joyce’s death as an event might not land emotionally, Buffy’s reaction to her death - and to finding her body - does. It’s heartwrenching.

Second… the realization that Xander is one of the least creepy men in Buffy’s life at this point (second only to Giles) is startling. It’s not just how much the creep factor of men has jumped up over the years the show has run, either… Xander somehow, toward the tail end of Season 4 and into this season, has actually… grown. Slowly, almost invisibly, but it’s happened, and at this point I’m often finding his scenes endearing rather than creeptastic. Him getting together with Anya definitely helped with that - that he’s no longer constantly pursuing Buffy is a huge gain for his characterization.

That isn’t to say that the creep factor overall hasn’t gone up. Spike’s obsession with Buffy makes my skin crawl, and continues to not get less utterly disturbing to watch as this season continues. Riley was basically Sergeant Fragile Masculinity, defining his relationship with Buffy around his own lack of superpowers and her ex. Ben has enough information about what’s going on this season - he seems to have basically the whole dataset, unlike anyone else - to know that pursuing Buffy at all is dangerous to her, to people she loves, and to the world, and neither ceases to pursue her nor gives her that information to make her own values judgement with.

And here we meet Warren. One episode, and he’s already at the top of my list of characters I’d be happier never to see again. April is essentially a human, sentient, FEELING incarnation of what Warren - who IS toxic geek male culture, writ large - thinks women should be. I’ve known Warren. I’ve been harassed by Warren online. I’ve been hit on by Warrens who didn’t know I was trans. And threatened when I turned them down. Warren is the very, very worst. If you’re a male geek, please watch this episode. If you see Warren saying or doing or thinking (with April as his mouthpiece) a thing, stop saying or doing or thinking that thing, because if you don’t stop, you too will be the worst.

God, I’ve written so much already, but still have two points I want to get to.

I’m just going to say it: I’m not sure if the show is playing the moments when Ben appears onscreen in a dress for laughs. It’s definitely not telling us it’s not doing so, and “men in dresses are funny” is a sufficiently common trope that if you’re not playing it you need to actively reject it. If it is playing it for laughs, that’s transphobic; if it’s not, it needs to let us know.

April. I actually felt for her, pretty strongly. Warren, the very worst that he is, seems to have made her just sentient enough to feel rejection and betrayal and loneliness, but designed her in such a way as to make the only escape from those feelings be through him, then denied her that escape. That’s… twisted. Generally, a person isn’t responsible for what others feel about them, but when you literally build a person to feel a specific thing, that IS your responsibility. I have immense empathy for April - perhaps more than I’ve had for any other single-episode character - and, while dying was probably for the best because it got her out of the trap of despair Warren built for her, I felt bad to see her die.

That’s it! So much writing about an episode where a nerd’s robot girlfriend breaks things.