#lots of revelations

[immacaria]

10 fandoms / 10 characters / 10 tags

Tagged by the lovely, wonderful @virgo-dream, and so sorry for taking so long to answer this. Really, really sorry, dear.

I'm not going to tag anyone because I think everyone already did this so, for those who hadn't, this is your sign to do it (and tag me to see it).

1. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Start Trek)

My personality was based solely in this man for a long, long time. The sass, the "I don't care" caring type, his relationship with Kirk e Spock, the eyebrow lift. I love this man very dearly to this days and I'll never, ever stop saying so. I wanted to be a doctor for him, can you imagine?

2. Peter Pevensie (The Chronicles of Narnia)

Something something older siblings doing what they can for their younger siblings. He is here not only because he was hot as fuck in these movies, but because he was a good brother or, at least, tried to be. I sympathised a lot with him and his way of being for a lot of reasons but mostly because I was always the one to care for my friends and sibling when we were young.

3. Hob Gadling (The Sandman)

I found Hob Gadling recently and while in a dark period of my life. It would be a lie to say that this stubborn, possibly-crazy and completely charming man didn't charm me the instant I saw him (And I'm not saying only bcuz of Ferdie, okay?). His endless hope in humanity, in the future, in the little things made me happy for being alive again, you know?? Of sitting back and just enjoying the simple fact that I'm breathing. That I can listen to music when I wish to. That my family is one call away from me. That I can go to college. That I have food in the fridge. It may not be much for many or something so common that people overlook it, but I'm here, I'm alive and I can see the world changing again and again and I just guess Hob made me realise that, you know? So yes, Hob goes in this list.

4. Jiang Cheng/Jiang Wanying (MDZS)

Angry Jiujiu who cared too much, got hurt again and again for that, lost literally EVERYONE but kept going. Did he do wrongs? Yes, a lot. Does he need to go therapy? Yes, a lot. Do I love him still? Yes, a lot. It's just that, whenever I see this man, the only thing I can think about is how precious he is, how much he cared for his whole family despite always being compared to others, always being called angry and undesirable by society (That hit a little bit too close to home, but okay) but still helping it, still out there doing his part. Everytime I think of him, I gain strength to go through whatever it is that I'm going through because "If Jiujiu could do it, I can too".

5. Shang Qinghua (SVSS)

Shang Qinghua is just a little guy, a crazy little guy who writes porn for a living and gets dragged in his own world without wanting to. He is very unassuming, very overlooked, but he is fucking crazy and he will kill a lot of people if they as much as look at his King wrong. This man literally wrote himself the man of his dreams and THEN he got him. THEY GOT TOGETHER. If that isn't every writer's dream I don't know what that is. But, mostly important, I support Shang Qinghua's right, but his wrongs are much more interesting.

6. Kiki (Kiki's Delivery Service)

I love that little witch, okay? She is a little sweetheart with so much love, hope and wonder for the world!! She works so hard!! She is so brave!! I love her, okay?? And her movie is beautiful too!! The strength of learning how to rest, how to let things flow is amazing. It would be a lie if I said I don't see myself a lot in her, you know? Specially regardings on the resting side lol. That one is not easy.

7. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Top Gun)

He is crazy. He is unhinged. He is reckless. He is self-sacrificing. He loves with his whole heart (which means he grieves with his whole heart as well). When I first watched the movie, years ago, I promised myself that I would be like him (And Goose) as much as I could. That I would laugh freely, that I would be bold, that I would be as strong as that crazy little man who doesn't know when to stop and reaches for what he wants without fear.

8. Kaldur'ahm (Young Justice)

Do I need to say more? Do I? This mas was literally perfect. Good person, respectful, good leader, cared about his people, was hot as fuck. He was fucking amazing and would do anything to assure that his team would get out of their mission alive and as well as they could be, even if it meant sacrificing himself.

9. Mulan (Mulan)

Badass queen who made me who I am today. This woman wasn't afraid of anything. She was a badass who fought for what was right, fuck what people thought of her or of the way she was dressing. She would do what was right, no matter what. I love her for that (And Shang as well, I love Shang a lot. The couple that made me realise I was bisexual years later). Simply amazing.

10. Reyna Avila Ramirez Arellano (HOO)

A queen. Never did nothing wrong, always has to put up with everyone's bullshit. Adopts a lot of little siblings, an amazing person. I love her and I had a MASSIVE crush on her when I was younger.

Honourable mentions (because they deserve it)

11. Porco Rosso (Porco Rosso)

I love that idiot, okay? He pretends not to care but he cares so much, he loves so much and he just wants to help. He is tired of the capitalism and everything, he just wants peace and to be left alone with his own things and plane. I love him a lot.

12. Merida (Merida)

I always saw her relationship with her mother a bit like mine with my mom. Merida just wants to be free, to do what she wishes to, be seen by what she is. She loves her little siblings, her mother and her father and even though she has no patience, she is never unkind to anyone. She is simply amazing.

13. Adam (Frankstein)

He was a monster (literally) but he was more human than many people out there. There was so much wonder in his being, he loved so much, cared so much and he just wanted to be cared and loved in return, but even his creator turned him down, even his creator recoiled from him and that made him suffer so much.

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I love the fact that cannonically Martin considers that the thing that makes Jon recognizable to strangers it's not the myriad of scars but that Jon looks like someone that has not sleept in ages. He could not more enphatically make the point he wants Jon to just take at least a nap already except he makes his point to a total stranger Jon just traumatized instead of saying it to Jon.

[milkybishop]

"- but with whom can you sit in water?"

and who can hop in the bath with you to make a show of not caring about your tattoos, and how can you not find it hard to hide your disdain at the attempt.

because either this is a trap you have blindly walked into again . . . or he really does love you and could have loved you all this time. and despite all that-

you cannot turn from the path that you are on.

[whetstonefires]

Underrated element of where Jiang Cheng is re: wwx after everything is that they always had a sort of dual relationship. Two different relationship premises, superimposed on one another.

There's the one where they grew up together, as close as brothers, beating each other up and complaining and being one another's closest companions, sharing a bedroom as kids and eating at the same family dinner table, actively encouraged by Jiang Fengmian to interact as equals.

And then there's the one where Wei Wuxian was in service to Jiang Cheng's family. Not as a servant--Jiang Fengmian absolutely refused to do that, even if he couldn't adopt him. But as a disciple of Jiang Cheng's father and recipient of his charity, as Jiang Cheng's future right hand and most trusted subordinate.

It's a vertical relationship, intimate in its own way but with very strict expectations about what obligations flow in what directions; they are not identical and reciprocal as between friends and equals.

(It's my opinion that Jiang Fengmian's core deal was a deep-seated discontent with the hierarchies he was at the top of, without access to any way to actually deconstruct them or even coherently articulate his opposition. Wei Changze was his dear friend, and no one thinks that's a good enough reason for him to treat Wei Changze's son like his own, because Wei Changze was also his servant, and you can't make that circle square. That's not a way you're allowed to love.)

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were like brothers; Wei Wuxian served Jiang Cheng.

The personal relationship was always the most important one. To them, in their hearts. But it was the other one that was real, that had weight in the world.

And it's important to understand that neither can be held up as more factual than the other, even though they conflict. Both relationships existed, and had power.

So then when Jiang Cheng chose to hate Wei Wuxian and articulate his grudge against him, he chose to do it in the language of fealty. Because as far as he knew, his case there was secure, watertight, and it wouldn't expose him emotionally or politically.

And those are the terms in which he's been condemning him all this time: for abandoning the Sect, for ingratitude, for lack of loyalty.

For fuckups, too, and poor judgment, but some of that now turns out to have been justified and some of it was mostly the fault of enemies behaving badly, or even Jiang Cheng himself allowing himself to be pushed into making unworthy choices.

And it was all for his sake.

The thing, the thing in my opinion, about what Wei Wuxian did, about the core transfer and his silent self-destruction around keeping it secret, is that that is a hideous thing to have done between two people who love each other, as an act of love. Beautiful, but awful. As the man who was like a brother to him, Jiang Cheng has a great deal of standing to object to it.

But as an act of vassalage, it's basically perfect.

If Wei Wuxian were only what he formally was to Jiang Cheng, if he is interpreted through a lens of fealty and obligation, he did exactly what he should have done, and went beyond what duty actually required. And went to his death silently, allowing himself to be judged, taking all the burden on himself rather than let harm come to his lord.

Like, obviously Jiang Cheng was harmed by the part where Jin Zixuan got manslaughtered and Jiang Yanli walked into the line of fire in situations where Wei Wuxian was resorting to violence and probably shouldn't have, but those are one step removed from the core issue. In terms of Wei Wuxian's intentional choices around Jiang Cheng himself, at the times he was feeling betrayed and abandoned Wei Wuxian was in fact being impossibly, poetically loyal, an absolute cliche about it.

But only in terms of the hierarchical form of their relationship.

Which means that even though Jiang Cheng has a lot of reasons to still be mad at Wei Wuxian, his actual complaints that he's centered for thirteen years are basically wiped out by the revelation of Wei Wuxian's sacrifice.

Wei Wuxian was in fact doing the tragic hero loyal vassal thing, which very much includes being misunderstood and slandered by the world. (Chenqing as a name choice absolutely references this expectation, and the idea that Jiang Cheng specifically will never understand that Wei Wuxian was trying to help him first and foremost all along; he is not subtle.)

The debts Jiang Cheng has been spitefully calling in and considering defaulted were already long paid.

So if at this point Jiang Cheng keeps pursuing that same line of rhetorical attack, now that he knows, he'll be putting himself morally in the wrong, and he knows it. But if he pivots to something else, he'll both be signalling the shape of that secret to the entire world and looking like a prize idiot.

Which is already how he feels.

To actually address the remaining grievances between them, which are considerable, would require releasing those safe, open grudges to Wei Wuxian's face and then reclaiming him as a loved one. Which is, one could fairly say, more than anyone could expect.

Which is why Wei Wuxian told him he didn't have to.

Which leaves Jiang Cheng at something of an impasse.

[crimescrimson]

Albert Wesker in Resident Evil Remastered (2002)

[vaguely-concerned]

it probably says something either sad or deeply unfortunate about me as a person, but I'm darkly amused to see some people react to the reveal of the ultimate permeability of souls in tlt as a triumphant thing -- the "you can't take 'loved' away!!!" side of it all -- when my first reaction was such an immediate wave of 'oh, oh so this is why this series is horror, I truly understand now' distress haha. ngl the final confirmation of the self not being inviolable in the deepest way freaks me the fuck out far more than any moment of body horror in the series has managed. (these two elements are of course the two sides of one thematic coin; it's about the horror of our bodies and minds and selves not being inviolable things, and about the effect of violence on them on so many different levels. violence psychological and interpersonal, physical, subtextually sexual, emotional, medical, political, a whole unlovely smörgåsbord of indignity and violation a person can be exposed to, and on a broader scale the spectrum of violence colonialism wields). The world and other people being capable of leaving indelible marks on us for good or ill through their presence in our lives is of course a pretty self-evident demonstrable truth in the real world, but somehow having it be proven metaphysically just uh. Fucks me up! 

It also drives home to me just how perfectly Muir has captured the dilemma at the heart of human connection and intimacy: the fact that the thing that gives us life and meaning is also capable of harming us so deeply. the same thing that can be so beautiful — even in a bittersweet, violently transformative form like with the creation of Paul — when done mutually and consensually and compassionately, is the same process that means someone like John can touch someone else's soul and 'after he's put his fingers on something, you'll never find anyone else's fingerprints on it; too much noise'. I think the text itself — the whole series, because to me this is what it is ultimately about, this tension between individuation/self vs. love/connection/enmeshment — is far more ambivalent in its treatment of it than saying it’s inherently a good thing or inherently a bad thing. The only thing it says for sure is that it is always a thing, that thinking you’re ever getting away from it is the height of futility, and that through being alive (or even through being dead lol) it is something you have to engage with in some way no matter what. Contact with other people is deeply necessary — without it we sicken and die. it can be the most beautiful and meaningful thing in a human life, and the most unspeakably horrific. All of these people are searching for some way to be whole, whether in total self-contained sufficiency on their own or in melding with someone else as their ‘other half’, and stumbling around in the dark they reach for each other and score deep wounds into the thing they’re trying to touch even when they don’t mean to. Taken to horrific extremes with the form of lyctorhood John guided his disciples to when they were ‘children — playing in the reflections of stars in a pool of water, thinking it was space’, because while people hurt each other all the time with differing levels of intentionality behind it, what John did was deliberate. It weaponizes the misapprehension of what closeness must be and destroys everyone involved in the process… and all because it leaves John the one sun their ruined lives have left to orbit around, because that’s the closest thing his soul will allow to connection. He doesn’t understand that to truly touch something you have to truly let it touch you back, and then wonders why he’s never satisfied.   

‘The horrors of love’ has been memed to death, I know, but… yeah. That is what it is, isn’t it.

[feroluce]

Love thinking about Sampo's possible early days after just infiltrating Belobog. Like imagine Sampo hiding out, spying on the captain of the guards, trying to learn all the important people's names and faces on this weird new planet if he's gonna make this whole thing work.

He likes watching the blonde one, he apparently has a thing for blondes now. There's also two idiots down there though, privates by the looks of them, and even from all the way up here, Sampo can tell just from watching their movements that they're talking while the captain is giving orders. Amateurs-

And then he hears that blonde captain guy yell for them to drop and give him 20 in his harsh voice and his military discipline tone and Sampo just. Freezes. Goes completely stock still. Slowly turns red and drops his face into his hands where he'd dropped almost face-first into the snow because ohhhhhh holy shit.

Sampo, looking up at the sky, face STILL red: You're doing this on purpose. You must be. You think this is fucking funny, don't you. Aha: 🔔🔔🔔🔔

[lookingforhappy]

fr i need the tua fandom to get a lot more normal about sibling relationships...

literally i would never cry to my siblings, i would never seek comfort from them, i would very rarely be vulnerable with them (and only when i had to be)

but i still fucking love them and would be devastated if they died/were hurt

the brellies never cry over each other or ask for hugs or admit weakness bc thats such an incredibly romanticised view of sibling relationships

the only exception i can think of is allisons near death but that was when her and luther were still.. yknow so i dont count it

[fictionadventurer]

We need to bring back the tradition of everyone memorizing a whole bunch of two-to-four line poems to write in people's autograph books.

[weepingtalecowboy]

Legend has lots of issues

Fanfic prompt: I just realized that Legend would have problems with every single link in the chain

It isn’t just Warriors for being a knight

He would be tense towards twilight for being a wolf and kind of jealous because he wasn’t as lucky to be a predator

no, he was just prey for everyone a small rabbit and a wolf’s easiest prey

He would fear four because during four swords palace his ripped soul was trying to harm him four WILL harm him one day and he doesn’t even know yet

He would feel extremely guilty and uncomfortable towards Hyrule because he would think that it’s all his fault for not being good enough and failing at getting rid of ganon and every time he looks at the barren wasteland's hero he hates himself more

He would be upset at time because he was the one that failed in the first place (while fearing that Hyrule also hates him the same way) but his predecessor is living a life with his wife who he loves very much and retired as a farmer

Legend desperately wants to do the same but he can’t care for his apple trees because hylia keeps sending him on missions

He would hate sky for creating the royal family and for DARING to praise the vile goddess in front of him that ruined everything for him

He would look at wild and only see his own failure that he will too one day experience

because Wild failed and he would too

Wind would remind him off his lover Marin

a child that lived on a small island with his sister both loving seagulls

Wind knows about the wind fish he knows just like Marin

(He will disappear just like her when he eventually wakes up because meeting heroes that know his struggles sounds too good to be anything but another vile joke from the wind fish)

[xxplastic-cubexx]

i finished reading krakoa era and comic cherik are amazing SO i wanted to ask do you have any favorite issues/series i still don't really remember how to call it where cherik are also cool?? some iconis comic moments with them maybe??

im FARRR from finishing all of krakoa (ive probably barely even made a dent in this series), though i do think following the HoX + PoX issues themselves are great if we're talkin cherik-focused issues/books. i already said one of my fave aspects of cherik is their moments working together, so having a whole Omnibus dedicated to them Working Together and trusting each other (bonus points for Protective Erik with the Something Sinister bit) is already guaranteeing a sure spot in my Faves collection

one of my fave cool moments i've read so far- which is a moment i wager a lot of people can agree is Sick As Hell Visually if i may be so daring- is ABSOLUTELY this sequence from Inferno #4

any time erik and charles get to do some bamf shit together it is IMMEDIATELY peak to me this cannot be disputed and i'd be lying if i didn't say i bought this run solely for this moment here (ignore the fact they fumble this fight horribly that dont matter they looked cool as hell for five seconds !!!!!!!!!!!)

i can't wait to read more and find even more moments i love and want to tape to my eyelids <3 !!

[anghraine]

In addition to the I'm Guessing Tolkien Had Some Hang-Ups About Pregnancy post, I also ran over some interesting but even more unrelated factoids in The Nature of Middle-earth that even I couldn't justify including in the main ramble.

So I made a separate post about those, which includes my favorite:

Arwen would have been even more exhausting for Celebrían to bear than a pair of twins because: Arwen was a "special child" of great powers and beauty The beauty I got from LOTR, but—without being dismissive about the banner—I really wish we had a clearer sense of Arwen's unique stature in her own right in LOTR. She's presented so much in terms of Elrond and Lúthien and occasionally Galadriel and Celeborn, but Elladan and Elrohir are Elrond's children and Galadriel's grandchildren just as much as she is. Yet here she's clearly framed as special and powerful in a way they are not and which drew so much from Celebrían's (and possibly Elrond's) spiritual reserves that they couldn't have any more children. That seems like a big deal! Tell me more! Epilogue: he did not tell us more

[zarstarss]

the realistic transition goals in question

(pose credit to the re fandom wiki gallery for lady hunk, was gonna draw him in the dress but copped out mid render)

[moistvonlipwig]

Eternity, Growing Up, and Why Buffy Keeps Dating Vampires

Vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, on a most basic level, represent stagnation, a desire to stay young forever, the refusal to grow up. The show emphasizes this several times: in the show's very first episode, Buffy recognizes a vampire by his outdated outfit, and in 2.07 "Lie to Me," Ford claims that becoming a vampire will allow him to "die young and stay pretty," the dream of "every American teen." Buffy's role as the titular vampire slayer can thus be read as a metaphor for her choosing to grow up and become an adult in the face of temptations to do otherwise. So what does it mean, then, that Buffy's two most narratively significant love interests are vampires -- that she repeatedly, across seven seasons, courts eternal immaturity? I would argue that Buffy's relationships with Angel and Spike represent her inner struggle to accept the reality of growing up and getting older.

Buffy and Angel's relationship is marked by repeated references to the concept of "forever" or an eternal relationship: "When I look into the future, all I see is you" (2.12 "Bad Eggs"); "Love is forever" (2.19 "I Only Have Eyes For You"); "Forever. That's the whole point" (3.01 "Anne"); "You still my girl?" / "Always" (3.17 "Enemies"); Buffy's "Buffy & Angel 4ever!" doodle on her notebook (3.20 "The Prom"); "How's forever? Does forever work for you?" (5.17 "Forever"). At first glance, this may appear to be a romantic cliche, but taken in context of what vampires represent, the motif takes on new meaning. To be eternal is to be like a vampire -- to stagnate, to never change or grow or mature. Indeed, Angel's final line on the entire show, in his and Buffy's last scene together, is, "I ain't getting any older" (7.22 "Chosen"). In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, immortality is synonymous with immaturity. To want a "forever" relationship, then, is to want to never grow up.

(This idea is revisited in the Angel episode 2.13 "Happy Anniversary," a disturbing tale about a man who responds to his impending breakup with his girlfriend Denise by attempting to freeze them both in time mid-coitus forever. Lorne's response -- "I can hold a note forever. But eventually that's just noise. It's the change we're listening for. The note coming after, and the one after that. That's what makes it music." -- is a perfect summation of the Buffyverse's stance on the concept of eternity. To last "forever" is not romantic or beautiful; it is simply to be in stasis.)

Buffy and Angel's relationship is also frequently associated with death, and Buffy's death in particular: "When you kiss me, I wanna die" (2.05 "Reptile Boy"); kissing against a gravestone reading "In Loving Memory" ("Bad Eggs"); Angel's dream of Buffy bursting into flames in the sunlight like a vampire after marrying him ("The Prom"). The implication is that, if Buffy stays in the relationship, it will metaphorically kill her, cut off her future, freeze her in this moment of teenage love until the end of time, like the first episode's vampire whose fashion sense was stuck in the past or, indeed, like the fate that almost befell poor Denise. To borrow a metaphor from Revolutionary Girl Utena (another show very concerned with the dichotomy of eternity vs. growing up), Angel and Buffy's relationship is their coffin. They can choose to stay trapped in it forever, to never grow or change, and thus to metaphorically die; or they can choose to leave, to grow and change and mature, to gain "the power to imagine the future" (Ikuhara Kunihiko, Utena DVD commentary), where before they could only imagine each other.

It's no coincidence that the second season's finale, an episode all about "becoming," about growing up and maturing, is when Buffy finally finds the strength to kill Angel in order to save the world. In doing so, she rejects her desire to stay young forever, trapped in her coffin with Angel for all of eternity, and chooses to continue to grow up instead. But, of course, growing up is never quite so simple; Angel comes back, and Buffy falls back into her relationship with him, falls back into her desire to pretend the events of the second season never happened and she is still the same young girl who never lost her "innocence" at his hands. Even when we consciously choose to grow up, it is all too easy to seek comfort in the idea that maybe, if we try hard enough, we won't have to. In the end, it is Angel who recognizes the harm their relationship is doing to Buffy, and he departs, taking Buffy's childhood with him. Her youth leaves her, as it leaves us all, whether she wants it to or not.

But Angel is not the last vampire she has a relationship with. In the show's sixth season, Buffy emerges from her literal coffin only to climb right back into a metaphorical one. In the time since she said goodbye to Angel, Buffy has attended college, had to drop out of college, had another romantic relationship fail, lost her mother, essentially become a parent to her newly-acquired sister, died through suicidal self-sacrifice, and been resurrected only to find that she is still just as depressed as she was before dying and is now swamped with bills she cannot pay. Her problems are firmly in the realm of adulthood, and at many points throughout the first half of the season, she longs for the grave she left instead of the life she has: "I was happy. [...] I think I was in heaven. [...] This is hell" (6.03 "After Life"); "There was no pain / no fear, no doubt / 'til they pulled me out / of heaven" (6.07 "Once More, with Feeling").

It is at this point that she begins a sexual relationship with Spike, her second dalliance with eternal immaturity. Buffy and Spike's relationship is also marked by references to death, with an emphasis this time on graves: Spike notices and verbalizes the shared experience they have of clawing their way out of their graves ("After Life"); Spike and Buffy fall into a grave together during Spike's song, during which he beseeches her to "let [him] rest in peace" ("Once More, with Feeling"); several of their sexual encounters literally occur inside the crypt Spike lives in; this crypt is brought into focus especially in 6.13 "Dead Things," in which Buffy and Spike place their hands on either side of its door, separated by her status as living and his as dead. Buffy additionally uses Spike as a proxy to call herself "dead inside" ("Dead Things"). Buffy may have literally risen from the dead, but in a metaphorical sense, she is still trapped in her coffin, unwilling to leave it.

There are, of course, multiple layers to the grave and coffin motif in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's sixth season. But I would argue that one such layer is that it serves as an extension of the death metaphor from Buffy and Angel's relationship, in which death signified Buffy never growing up. In this reading, Buffy's longing for the "heaven" granted to her by the grave is really a longing for the innocence of youth, now lost to her as she must continue to grow up. In Buffy's confession to Spike in "After Life" about where she was in death, she makes particular note of how "time didn't mean anything" in the place she labels "heaven," whereas in the real world, it's hellish "just getting through the next moment, and the one after that." Unlike Lorne, who saw beauty in the progression of time, Buffy sees only suffering, and longs for a time in her life when time itself seemed not to march forward at all.

It is no wonder, then, that she seeks comfort in someone who is frozen in time, who can never grow up. If Buffy's relationship with Angel represented her childhood desire to stay young forever and never face the hardships of adulthood, her relationship with Spike represents her adulthood desire to return to that period of youth and never leave it, to curl up in her coffin and close the lid. But unlike Buffy and Angel's relationship, which is littered with references to eternity, Buffy repeatedly insists on the temporary nature of her dalliance with Spike: "What we did is done. But I will never kiss you, Spike. Never touch you, ever, ever again" (6.08 "Tabula Rasa"); "Not gonna happen. Last night was the end of this freak show" (6.10 "Wrecked"). Buffy is furious with Spike for his hold over her and hates herself for wanting him, but returns to him again and again. She believes she shouldn't want to return to her unattainable youth, she knows she should accept her adult life and face its difficulties head-on, yet when confronted with its difficulties, she repeatedly goes to Spike to escape them, as in 6.11 "Gone," 6.12 "Doublemeat Palace," and 6.15 "As You Were."

If Angel represents Buffy's youth and Spike her nostalgia for that youth, then of course it follows that Angel must leave Buffy, but Buffy must leave Spike. Nostalgia, unlike youth, does not depart from us so easily. But she does leave him, and in the sixth season's finale, she finally crawls out of the grave she's been trapped in, represented by her leading her sister out of a literal grave and smiling at the world before her. As Buffy tells Dawn: "Things have really sucked lately, but it's all gonna change. And I wanna be there when it does. [...] And I want to see you grow up" (6.22 "Grave"). Change, the inevitable forward march of time, the reality of growing up -- these things no longer strike Buffy as hellish, but rather beautiful. She is an adult, and she is living in this ever-changing world, and she embraces that reality fully, leaving the coffin of youth behind for good.

What to make, then, of Buffy's relationship with Spike in the show's seventh season? I would argue that her evolving feelings towards Spike in the final season represent her reconciling with and forgiving her past self, the Buffy that didn't want to grow up, before finally letting that part of her go. She comes to recognize that Spike, like her past self, was capable of change, eternally immature though he may seem. She forgives herself for wanting him. When he offers to leave, she tells him she is "not ready for [him] to not be here" (7.14 "First Date"). She has already chosen to embrace and accept her adulthood, and she no longer resents her desire to return to childhood, but she still needs her inner eternal child with her.

It is in the very last episode of the series that she lets go, demonstrating her full-hearted and joyful acceptance of ephemerality in the process. Buffy has not told a romantic partner she loves them since Angel, although she told Angel she loved Riley in Angel 1.19 "Sanctuary," and from episodes like 4.03 "The Harsh Light of Day," it is clear how much the unexpected transience of her supposed-to-be-forever relationship with Angel has haunted her. But in 7.22 "Chosen," Buffy tells Spike she loves him in a moment when she knows for sure that his death is imminent and that their joint existence together is temporary. She no longer fears a love that is not eternal. Through Spike, she expresses her love for her past self and for the part of her that never quite grew up, and then she lets that part die with him, and with Sunnydale itself, the place where she spent her adolescence, another representation of the grave that was her dream of forever childhood. Despite this destruction and loss, Buffy only smiles in its face, and it is this smile we leave her on. She has grown up, she has forgiven herself for not wanting to grow up, she has let go of the last remnants of the childhood she once hoped would be eternal, and she has come to not only accept the ephemeral, ever-changing nature of life, but to meet it with love and joy. "The power to imagine the future" is hers to wield. And her smile tells us that she is finally ready to wield it.

[rookflower]

just like heaven

[tears-of-taelia]

This day still terrifies me. To my core. With the strange weather that happened before, I expected something to occur. I could have never predicted the magnitude of that event. I assume you're here to wake me up then? You want us to face that evil again? I'm… We're afraid... Of everything. Of everyone. I don't know what I'm supposed to do! WE DON'T WANT TO GO BACK!