#mostly because i feel like buffy has already been done

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Fandom things I'm looking forward to:

Kingdom Hearts IV and Missing Link

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy IX Remake

Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster or Remake (whichever it is. I've heard both things)

The fourth Madoka Magica movie, whenever that comes out (seriously. Where is it? First it was announced as the Concept movie. Then it was re-announced years later with a new name, and it's still missing)

The Percy Jackson TV show

The Infernal Devices TV show

Maybe the Twilight TV show. Maybe.

The animated Smallville continuation that Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum are working on, whenever it comes out

I was going to put Baron and Toluca on this list (that's, like, a spiritual successor to the OG "Roswell" TV show. Majandra Delfino who played Maria in the show wrote the script, and she and Brendan Fehr who played Michael star in it. They're also planning for more Roswell cameos in later episodes), but it came out and I didn't even know it? But I have no idea how to watch it, though, as I guess it only came out in theaters in Albuquerque. Here's hoping it comes out on DVD or something...

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

The alleged Firefly reboot

The new Daredevil show

The Batman Part II

The next part in Tom Holland's Spider-Man movies

The DCU, starting with Superman Legacy in 2025

The Five Nights at Freddy's movie and Help Wanted 2

The Iron Lung movie

The TV show that it sounds like Markiplier will be working on after he's done with the Iron Lung movie

The next Bendy and the Ink Machine thing being worked on

MAYBE the Hello Neighbor sequel. I know. I KNOW! (It's really only because the second game had to end on a cliffhanger.)

Five Nights at Candy's 4

Frozen III

Disney's "Wish"

The next and final season of the Clear Card arc of Cardcaptor Sakura

The new Avatar series (the one about the third Avatar in the cycle: the Earth bender)

The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series, perhaps

The Chosen season 4

[lesbianabril]

My S6 BTVS rewrite

I know this season has a lot of haters but I actually love season 6, I don't mind the depressing parts (meaning: most of the season) because I think it all makes sense for where the characters are at, and I think that after fighting a literal God having a season where the villain is Life really works storytelling-wise.

Having said that, though, I think that a lot of things could have been handled better and since all I have are correct opinions I'm gonna tell you what those are.

1. Willow's magic addiction

Basically I think they went too far when the magic became drugs in the most basic sense, when they start acting like she's "taking a hit" every time she uses it.

I think all of the important plot points could have been kept while making willow's addiction to magic about her need to be in control of everything (and everyone). Up to Tabula Rasa I wouldn't change anything, her use of magic is wrong because she starts using it to bend the world at her will, empowered by having successfully brought Buffy back to life.

After Tara leaves her she starts using even more magic while being reckless with it, she injures Dawn and she commits to stop using it because she realizes it wasn't healthy for her or for the people she loves.

I would eliminate Rack and his stupid crack house hide out, and everything that has to do with the physical withdrawal of going "cold turkey".

I think this also makes Willow responsible for her actions, while making magic = literal heroin absolves her of the blame, in the end. The fallout of having to deal with her dependence of it would also be way more compelling.

2. Spike's attempted r4pe

I would keep their toxic relationship and everything that led up to that god-awful bathroom scene, my only change is that I would make it so Spike is trying to turn her instead.

Hear me out. It would make a lot of narrative sense because all through the season he's trying to convince her she's a dark being just like him, he wants them to be equals because he doesn't think himself worthy of her so he's trying to lower her to his level. So, after Buffy rejects him again he's not thinking clearly and, in his desperation, tries the only thing he swore himself he wouldn't do since he loves Buffy because of her goodness.

After it happens, Buffy feels betrayed, Spike leaves and decides to try to get to her level, to truly change himself instead of trying to change her.

This is a minor thing too but in this rewrite after Spike leaves we don't know where he went and we don't see him again until the start of s7 when he already has his soul. I know this couldn't be done because of James Marsters' contract but in my dream s6 we don't know what happened to him so when we see him again everything about his sudden disappearence and current mental state is a mystery and we find out along with Buffy.

3. Xander dies instead of Tara

Ok maybe this one is based on my dislike of Xander and my love of Tara but I think this would work really well:

Willow and Tara haven't gotten together yet, Willow is working on her more controlling tendencies and they're just friends right now. When Warren shows up Buffy is in the garden with Dawn and Xander went up to Willow's room to talk to her, so both Buffy and Xander get shot, Dawn takes Buffy to the hospital and dark Willow is born after she's not able to revive Xander.

After that things are mostly the same, only this time we get a grieving Buffy trying to deal with the sudden loss of both of her best friends. She's devastated and a part of her says that yes, Warren deserves to die.

After everything happens and Willow is close to destroying the world, Tara is the one who shows up, she appeals to Willow's humanity and, through her love and compassion, saves the world.

[lesbianboyfriend]

tell me about this btvs sexual violence thesis…..

okayyy i’ve been talking around this on my blog forever bc i haven’t had the mental capacity to make a coherent post about it but let me try now!!! i have some older posts that touch on some of these ideas too—i’ve linked a couple of them where relevant but honestly i could not find a bunch of them…but they are somewhere in my btvs lb tag. also note: i’m definitely still workshopping these ideas so id love to hear thoughts/rebuttals/expansions/whatever !!! it’s also all right now mostly working off my own thoughts/observations so i definitely want to do some research….i hope to one day write an actual essay about this

basically the summation of the buffyverse sexual violence thesis is that there is a narrative of sexual violence that is haunting the story. it goes pretty much unaddressed by the narrative at large, but it’s the crux of almost everything that happens.

i think there are two very obvious standout moments in btvs that highlight this sexual violence (the theory at large also encompasses angel but as i’m not entirely done watching it yet im gonna focus on buffy here, though i did touch on it briefly in a recent post about cordy’s death) which are the first slayer story and the spike attempted rape scene. going to talk about the first slayer first cause i think it’s kind of the framework for everything but important to note in terms of info that we get we + the characters aren’t aware of the first slayer story until after the rape scene.

imo the story of the first slayer is deeply deeply coded as a story of sexual violence. it’s about a woman being violated by a group of men who literally chain her down and force something into her. already, we’ve seen how being the slayer has isolated and harmed buffy, kendra, faith….its treated as almost a desirable, enviable position of honor (somewhat similar to how being a victim of sexual assault is sometimes painted as meaning the victim was “desirable”) but particularly once given this context, it’s hard to view being chosen as the slayer as anything but an act of violence against these women.

this is important to note because in a sense, it’s the slayer who upholds the moral binary of the buffyverse where good=soul, human and bad=no soul, demon. now this binary pretty much falls apart upon the slightest examination, because the story would not be as interesting if it was that simple. so there are multiple demon or otherwise characters who straddle this moral boundary—INCLUDING the slayer who not only straddles but enforces it. the outlier characters are presented as just that, outliers to this system, not indicators of its flaws. they are only good insofar as their goodness is directed towards maintaining the system. assimilation, not liberation.

okay, so, the spike rape scene. what’s notable about this scene is that it is, to my knowledge (?), the only moment of sexual violence that is explicitly named as an act of sexual violence. even in angel, which i feel has more overt moments of sexual violence, it’s not actually usually named as such. but what happens in this scene is explicitly named as a rape attempt. it is by far the most significant moment of sexual violence in btvs. so what exactly is going on with this scene?

now, there’s a lot that could be said and discussed about like, spike as a character, his motivations, etc (currently cooking up some thoughts about this myself), but for the purpose of this analysis i want to look strictly at what role spike is playing narratively in season 6. so, looking at this on a doylist level but NOT to be conflated with me excusing his actions on a watsonian level. anyways if we think about it season six is kind of a rejection of the larger moral order previously presented by btvs…i’ve talked about this vis-à-vis the demon/human evil/good binary and how season 6 really troubles those binaries. a lot of the season is about buffy grappling with these notions that perhaps her moral worldview is not correct—which leads to her spike. she’s previously made allowances for spike in this worldview, so she uses him as a sort of vehicle for exploring alternate theories. unlike the other demons we’ve seen allowances made for, spike is not “good” in the sense that btvs posits goodness for demons. he has done “good” things and he can’t hurt humans, but he is pretty explicitly still doing a lot of evil stuff. so spike gets to exist in the greyest area of any btvs character—his chip troubles the binary of who is and is not good/evil, not to mention who is morally killable under this worldview.

through her relationship with spike, buffy joins him there in that grey area. HER humanity (goodness) is questioned, which is not something that’s previously been up for serious debate. i talked before about how the slayer inherently straddles that binary, but as i said, both the characters and the viewers aren’t aware of that at this point. all of a sudden, there’s a total moral upheaval that creates lots of conflict….and this rejection of the prior moral order and exploration of what lies beyond it is what makes season 6 so compelling.

BUT season 6 isn’t the last season. and as we all know, season 7 kind of sucked!!! and went seriously hard on reifying that good/evil binary. so how did we get that wild shift between seasons? the rape scene.

as we know, “real evil” is only done by demons despite the countless terrible things we’ve seen human characters do. when spike tries to rape buffy, it cements him firmly back into the realm of monstrosity. violence, evil, whatever, they’re all signifiers of a monstrosity that removes the character of their humanity. we see this argument time and time again irl when people argue that people who do bad things are no longer human, thus rejecting the idea that they themselves are also capable of those bad things. this is why it’s so important that this moment is named as rape, as sexual violence, unlike the other instances. with the attempted rape, spike is ousted out of his grey area, back into “evilness”. buffy, as his victim this time, necessarily returns to the opposite side of the binary as him. buffy stops fighting against her role as slayer—she stops questioning the veracity of the system. in fact, she goes on to expand it, violating even more women in the name of “good.” spike realizes he has to conform to this moral order in order to “have” buffy (much to be said about that another time lollll) and regains a soul, the necessary signifier of his “goodness” and willingness to support the system he once troubled so severely. thus, the moral order is restored through an act of sexual violence, highlighting exactly how it predicated on the very sexual violence it claims to abhor.

some loose notes on other working parts of the thesis:

-general historical connection of vampire stories to sexuality (carmilla, dracula, etc)

-vampirism as sexual predation (penetration, vampires picking victims by seducing women at clubs)

-mystical pregnancy (in angel especially: cordelia, cordelia again, darla, cordelia…..) as a violation in and of itself and also a vehicle towards death

-angel and buffy in general. him being attracted to her since she was. 14

-sex with buffy returning angel to evil? not sure exactly how this would fit in yet but. there’s something there

-spike’s entire attitude for women

-xander’s whole deal

-as a matter of fact the way that pretty much every male character is misogynist

-episodes ted and billy (angel) -> presenting violence against women as stemming from an inherent monstrosity (billy somewhat contradicting this? but also reifying it. it’s left unclear tbh)

-darla in angel season 2 as a parallel to buffy in season 6…need to think more on this one as well

-dana….

[veliseraptor]

twenty questions for fic writers

tagged by @feralkwe - thank you! I feel like I've done this before but if I have it's been a minute so

1. How many works do you have on AO3? across pseuds I have 1,010 works. with my "current" one I'm at 607. that is more or less my entire oeuvre, though there's a fair number of short fics on tumblr I haven't gotten around to crossposting though I'd ostensibly like to at some point. eventually. maybe.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 4,873,723. aYIKES. but hey closing in on 5 million! wonder when I'll hit that. I bet I would if I posted my unfinished wips for the mcu tbh

3. What fandoms do you write for? ever or currently? the list of fandoms I have written at least one fic for (not counting ones where the one fic was a crossover) is [deep breath] the mcu, the untamed/mdzs, supernatural, the silmarillion, a song of ice and fire, black jewels trilogy, wheel of time, doctrine of labyrinths, death note, the caliban leandros series, avatar the last airbender, kinnporsche, doctor who, buffy the vampire slayer/angel, gentleman bastard sequence, marvel comics, harry potter, temeraire, good omens, code geass, realm of the elderlings, greek mythology, dragon age, sandman, dexter, lymond chronicles, the firekeeper saga, lucifer (the tv series), crimson peak, kushiel's legacy, the x men movies, chronicles of narnia, twilight, and a couple other small book fandoms.

i used to be a lot more multifandom than i am now in terms of what i wrote for, and have been writing fic for which is how this happened.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Not my favorite fics, for the most part. They are:

Life in Reverse (MCU)

With Absolute Splendor (The Untamed)

some good mistakes (The Untamed)

half a league onward (MCU)

The Villain Wrangler (MCU)

5. Do you respond to comments? I do not. I feel bad about it, but (a) I don't know what to say, (b) I feel unbearably self-conscious/self-important trying and (c) I already have too much I'm trying to do in my limited time/too many obligations I have placed upon myself to add another one that will just stress me out. Again, I have all kinds of guilt about this, though, which probably kind of defeats the (c) purpose of not doing it.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Almost certainly Mercy, though it's possible I could dig up others; that's the literal murder-suicide one, though, and I'm pretty sure I've only written one of those. I've written a lot where one character dies but another survives and has to live with the grief, which is arguably worse? but I still think Mercy wins. once there was a way to get back home might give it a run for its money, though.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I've actually written a fair amount of fic with happy endings! just mostly they have to suffer to get there. but trying to think of fic with a straight happy ending...I feel like I wrote some fairly fluffy fic in Black Jewels Trilogy fandom that I don't want to link to because I don't think it's very good. Maybe Life in Reverse, honestly? That's a fic where I tied up most things and resolved them in a pretty happy way.

Oh, or actually With Absolute Splendor might qualify.

8. Do you get hate on fics? I have in the past! Not a lot, but it happens every so often. Usually I just delete it, tbh; it doesn't feel worth leaving it there and I'm certainly not going to respond to it.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Sure do, primarily for pairings that are dysfunctional in one way or another, and for the most part I want the sex to say something about the inner life/psychology of the characters I'm writing. truly plotless smut does happen but I find it weirdly difficult. I have to do so much pre-justification work for my smut, at least in my head if not on page.

a lot of what I write at least has a little bit of kink or D/s flavor to it even if it's not explicitly written as such (and a lot of it is at least a little explicitly written as such). I also like to write about power dynamics (in sex) and sex that's sublimating some other emotion or desire, if that latter makes sense.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I used to, but not anymore, and I probably won't; I don't know why, but I'm just generally not a crossover fan these days. But I did write a Lord of the Rings/Cthulhu Mythos Morgoth/Cthulhu fic back in the day. No, I'm not going to link it, you can find it if you really want.

The Scarlet Pimpernel/Black Jewels Trilogy might be objectively weirder but it was because of an RP and therefore feels more reasonable to me.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I had forgotten about it until just now, but yes, actually. Including one that actually got reposted on AO3, which takes a particular kind of guts that's not the same as reposting on Wattpad or the like, imo. (I've also had fic scraped off AO3 and reposted on other sites.) The person took it down when I called them out on it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I have been fortunate enough to have a number of fics translated into a few languages! I was curious which ones so I went and looked, and it looks like I've had fic translated into Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I've started co-writing a fic but never finished one.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? Might have to give this one to xuexiao, though there's a lot of room in my heart for many ships! that's just one that hit an incredible number of my favorite things squarely on the head several times, leaving me concussed and helpless. It's so much, you guys.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? There's a number of my MCU wips that I look at and am like "yeah what I have of this is good actually, too bad I'll almost certainly never finish it", among which is Dead Superheroes Walking, the fic about everyone who died in Infinity War being trapped inside the Soul Stone and having to work together to fix the ensnappening from the inside. I have about 3/4 of it written if not more and the remaining quarter will probably remain unfinished. It was Wanda POV and a lot about Wanda and Loki bonding.

another one is the one where Hela decides instead of fighting Odin to strategically back down and plan to overthrow him later, and therefore is around while Loki and Thor are growing up. I really liked what I had of this one, and really enjoyed writing Hela's POV, but again. don't think I'm going to end up finishing it.

I have a whole folder called "MCU Salvage" that's basically my MCU wips that I parsed out because I was like "these are pretty good actually, maybe someday I'll have the motivation to return to them", which is probably delusional but, well. one never knows.

16. What are your writing strengths? I think I'm pretty good at dialogue - I love to write characters having conversations, probably to a fault - and, when it comes to fanfiction, characterization.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Worldbuilding for sure is one. I hate it, I don't think I'm very good at it. also description - I feel like I lean heavily on dialogue in fic and tend to go light on descriptive language. this is probably partly because I'm not a very imagery-focused reader, so I don't think a lot about creating a "visual" with my writing, but also because I just don't like doing it as much as I like writing about internal thought processes and interpersonal verbal exchanges.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I almost certainly would not do it, as someone who is monolingual and has zero confidence in my ability to do it right in a way that wouldn't read absolutely awfully. The one exception to this is in Lymond fic, and that's because the canon did it first, so it is fully justifiable for me to have this guy spout off in five languages in one fic. Otherwise...not since I tried writing a fake Phantom of the Opera fic mocking bad Phantom of the Opera fics.

19. First fandom you wrote for? I always say Wheel of Time because that's the first fandom of my heart but technically I wrote a crack Harry Potter fic before I wrote for Wheel of Time. But in my heart it was Wheel of Time. That was certainly my first fandom in any meaningful sense of the word.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written? This question is my nemesis. My favorite fic I've ever written changes at least once a month. I have a series for this on AO3 that I'm going to link to as a lazy answer to this question even though that's sort of 50 of my favorite fics, so sue me, I've written a lot of things over the years and I actually do like a fair number of them, even if you have to make me say so.

tagging uhhhh @highladyluck, @curiosity-killed, @ameliarating, @gloriousmonsters, i'm not sure how many people i'm supposed to tag for this but if you want to do it, go ahead?

[cbrownjc]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Well, I now have time to do things like this, so thanks for tagging me @nalyra-dreaming, lol!

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How many works do you have on ao3? -- 5

What’s your total ao3 word count? -- 122,062

What fandoms do you write for? -- Interview with the Vampire/Vampire Chronicles

Top 5 fics by kudos -- Well I only have 5 fics up on AO3, so:

Now or Neverland

Half-Forgotten Dreams

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Promises, Promises

Where the Truth Lies

Do you respond to comments? -- Yes, I try to respond to all comments I get and have done so for the most part. (I've only got one sitting in my inbox that I need to reply to at the moment).

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? -- Where the Truth Lies. First posted it less than a week ago, so I can't elaborate on it, just . . . yeah.

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? -- Well, in the relative scheme of things, I guess Now or Neverland's ending would be considered "happy." IMO it's really more wistful than happy, but not as bittersweet as the ending of all my other fics are. Excepting Where the Truth Lies' ending, of course, as I noted above.

Do you get hate on fics? -- Only on one fic. (And it was rather. . . telling . . . that it was on that fic too, IMO.)

Do you write smut? -- 😏 But, so far, no PWP kinds, as what I've written are all scenes within larger stories being told.

Craziest crossover -- Um, none. Unless you want to count real-world history that some of the stories bump up against as a "crossover." Which, personally, I don't. However, I did write a real crossover fic once, but it's not on AO3 . . . nor would I call it crazy.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? -- No, not that I know or heard of.

Have you ever had a fic translated? -- Again no, not that I'm aware of.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? -- Well, I've co-written a series, not just one specific fic. So I guess that works for this question.

What’s a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? -- LOL! Okay, I know for a fact that I'm never going to finish this fic I'm about to talk about. I started it back in 2005, and 10 years later I put up a note saying I wasn't going to finish it. And it wasn't for IWTV Fandom, nor is the fic posted on AO3, but I want to mention it anyway. Because there will always be a part of me that wishes I could have finished writing this fic, and has wished it for years.

It is a Buffy/Harry Potter Crossover fic called Harry Potter and the Mystical Key. It's posted and still up on FF.net, and it's the one and only fic I have posted on there.

It was the first real fanfic I ever planned and started writing. I wrote and posted up to something like 56K words of it too, before I abandoned it, mostly due to losing my passion for writing because of real-life things that were happening to me around that time. And no matter how much I tried, I just had no interest in trying to finish it. But it's always kind of haunted me over the years, and made me wary of ever starting another fanfic project again over the fear of losing interest and never finishing it.

And now, I've completed 5 fics within a 200K (it's looking like) series, writing 122K of it in one year. I'm happy. 😊

What are your writing strengths? -- I think I have a good and natural feel for how to structure a story so that it will be interesting to read. I, personally, have always had to at least know the skeletal structure of a story and where it's going before I start writing it . . . otherwise, I just feel like I'm wasting my time on writing something with no point to it. I'm also not afraid to change things in the middle of writing something if I come up with something better.

I'm also not afraid to skip around when I'm writing. Makes writing the stuff I may not be as interested in writing easier to write if I've already written the things/scenes I've most been looking forward to.

I've also been told that my writing style is very vivid. I also am totally fine with someone editing my stories to hell and back because I do that very same thing myself. Nothing is perfect, but I always try to make sure a story is the best it can be before I post it.

What are your writing weaknesses? -- If you may not have noticed, I suck when it comes to spelling. Also, I can be way too vague sometimes when I'm trying to hide a later revelation in a story, but still set it up beforehand. I always have to remind myself that just because I understand the hint I'm trying to lay about something, that doesn't mean I've made that hint clear enough to the reader.

And I suspect I may be too wordy since many of my fics tend to be long. (Over 10K.) I never set out to write long stories on purpose, but I know the length of the stories I write can probably be off-putting for some people.

Also, just sitting down and writing can be hard for me to do. I can get distracted and procrastinate easily. I have to have the correct focus -- usually light focus music or writing sprint videos -- playing to get things done. (And, when I'm writing at night, I usually light some candles as well.)

Thoughts on dialogue in another language? -- As long as it fits the character, I'm up for it.

First fandom you wrote in? -- Strawberry Shortcake. I was around 5 years old or so (so it was like 1982-83). My mom let me use her blue Brother typewriter but I had to use lined paper instead of typing paper because she didn't want me to waste that kind of paper on what I was writing. I didn't know that I was writing fanfic of course, but that was totally what I was doing. I sat and hunted and pecked out the letters. IIRC I typed about two pages of my little story too (over like a weekend).

That said, the first fanfic I ever wrote after first coming online was a short Star Trek: Voyager fanfic that I can't even remember the title of now. Or if it's still up online somewhere.

Favourite fic you’ve written? -- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, simply because I think it's the most tightly written of the five fics I've written so far. I also just really love the structure of it, which I planned out in linear order, but then wrote non-linerally. I don't think that story would feel as tightly written as it does if I had just written and posted it in linear order.

--------------------------

Okay, that was super fun to do. 🙂 Glad I now have time to do things like this. I'm just going to tag @faerywhimsy, @girlwithakiwi, @virginiaisforvampires, @doublehex, @elsakey, @impressionism, and @faerywhimsy if any of you would like to do this too. And, of course, anyone else who wishes to do this too go right ahead. :-)

[gh-0-stcup]

@girl4music Oh, I actually don't think it's an inconsistency! Certainly not bad writing, either. I rave so much about Darla's arc because I think the way ATS managed to blend and expand upon BTVS canon was a truly stellar bit of writing.

Both shows have a tendency to discard of or ignore things that came before when they want to switch gears and explore something new that might contradict past events. This isn't one of those cases, imo they did a wonderful job melding everything together in a way that felt consistent. It makes what happened in BTVS feel more meaningful.

Darla in season 1 of Buffy made perfect sense - another hokey, nearly comically evil vampire. When they decided Angel was going to be a vampire, her purpose became to represent Angel's discarding of his past. It makes sense in the context of that season that he killed her and never seemed to think about it again.

Then Angel got his own show and they needed cool ideas to help expand his character, which had been pretty thin on BTVS (also for understandable reasons). Darla was a perfect way to do this - she was his sire, they used to be in love, she wanted to lure him back to evil.

So they knew what they wanted - Darla back and trying to start shit, Angel conflicted over what to do. But since Angel had already "gotten over" this on BTVS by killing her, they needed to do some character work to make it consistent.

Angel had to care about Darla to give the plot meaning. So Angel is a person capable of killing someone he cares about, under the right circumstances - easy enough, he's a hero and he'll do what's right even when it hurts.

But the relative lack of significance in BTVS, the absence of shown emotional conflict and Angel's silence on the subject for the rest of that show, created a bigger character question.

What kind of person is Angel that he can kill someone he cared about and have it seemingly not matter? There's a multitude of roads they could have taken that would have made sense, all of them forever impacting the way he behaved both with this situation and going forward throughout the show.

Angel is somebody who is emotionally closed off. He doesn't like to have in depth discussions about how he feels, especially when the feelings are complicated. He has high expectations of himself, strives to be better than he is, and is ashamed when his emotions conflict with his morals. He can be impulsive, acting quickly when he has strong feelings in the moment without always thinking through the consequences. He can also be very cold, he'll shut down emotionally to cope with hard times.

So they took this: Angel kills his sire when she tried to murder his not!girlfriend. He does so without hesitation, because what she was trying to do was evil and he didn't want Buffy to get hurt. His sire no longer means anything to him because he's changed as a person. He's someone Buffy can trust and will be an ally going forward. He's absent in the next few episodes because he's a minor character and is no longer needed because they've done his major thing and figured out what his deal is.

And they made it this: Angel kills Darla, his sire and the woman he'd spent nearly 150 years with, without hesitation because it was the only way to stop her from killing Buffy. He did the right thing because it was necessary. He didn't attempt to kill her prior to this, despite knowing exactly how dangerous she is. It was something he was trying to avoid having to do because he has a lot of complex emotions about her.

He avoids talking to or seeing Buffy in the weeks that follow, likely trying to sort his own head out. The emotional significance of Darla mostly went over Buffy's head, which is understandable given that she's 16 years old and a Slayer. Angel avoids talking about Darla, along with the rest of his past, because it's painful and complicated.

It works very well as an expansion. Angel's disappearance towards the end of season 1 also helps add to it - originally, it was very focused around Buffy and his relationship with her. He might have been feeling awkward now she knows he's a vampire, maybe thinking things were getting too intense with the hot 16 year old and so he needed to actually back off for a while, or he's just kind of a douche who likes popping in and out without thinking about Buffy's feelings.

With the context of ATS, his killing of Darla rather than the vampire reveal or his increasing closeness with Buffy become the focus. He went from being in nearly every episode to missing 3 in a row. When he came back, it was to tip Giles off about the prophecy - he was still avoiding seeing or talking to Buffy.

From the impact we see Darla have on him in ATS, the most likely explanation is now that he was going through it and withdrawing from social connections. Buffy also had some pretty huge heart eyes for him at this point and it was probably hard for Angel to match that energy. He had stuff to work through and didn't want to hurt or confuse her while he was doing so.

Like, I highly doubt the Buffy we see in s1 would have been able to properly understand Angel feeling depressed about killing his sire to save her. It would have caused a jealous meltdown and broken the trust he just managed to earn.

Which of course, isn't her fault at all. She has zero frame of reference for what Angel could have been going through. I'm not sure Buffy would have even been able to begin grappling with the complexities of Angel and Darla until at least after the Angelus fiasco. And I think she wouldn't been in a position to fully understand until after everything with Spike, so like 7 years after Angel had actually killed Darla.

[coraniaid]

I've been talking a little recently about the way that the show sometimes deliberately makes Xander unsympathetic, and I think The Wish is a great example of that.

I mean, it's actually kind of impressive that Xander manages to jump straight to "Look, you want to do guilt-a-palooza, fine, but I'm done with that" about ten minutes into the episode, cleverly skipping over any of the actual wallowing-in-guilt phase. Or even, as far as we see, the actual admission of guilt phase.

Yes, we know that he made a big effort in the week between Lovers Walk and The Wish to try to talk to Cordelia but, as Oz says to Willow a little earlier "I can't help feeling like the reason you want to talk is so you can feel better about yourself".

Xander certainly didn't seem particularly contrite when he was talking to Buffy and Willow earlier. Willow was talking about her plans to beg for forgiveness, but Xander was talking about kissing Willow being "a mistake" and how it "bugged him" that they were caught when it was definitely going to be the last time it happened. Nothing we hear in Xander's "sixty or seventy" answer machine messages to Cordelia -- which we see she did listen to -- contains any actual acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Maybe if he'd actually said some variant of "I'm sorry" at any point instead of just asking to talk, things would have been a little different.

And, to reiterate, I do think this is a example of the show knowingly have Xander act terribly. The Oz line I quoted above makes that obvious, I think. Indeed, Xander describing the kiss as "a mistake" must be intentionally echoing Buffy describing her kiss with Angel in Revelations as "an accident", something Xander himself was hardly sympathetic to at the time ("what, you just tripped and fell on his lips?".

We are surely not meant to be on Xander's side here.

(Which is good, because I'm not.)

This episode is really a culmination of two arcs that I'm not crazy about: the Xander/Cordelia subplot and then the Xander/Willow cheating subplot. And, having reached the end of both, I still don't think either one works. But the weaker of the two is probably the first one. It is just not credible to me that Cordelia would be attracted to Xander, and I'm not sure any amount of handwaving or headcanons is going to change that.

Yes, the show has established that Cordelia is often lonely or isolated despite her superficial popularity, and her romance with Xander kind of builds on that. I think the writers just forget (or ignore) that they've already shown us that Cordelia is capable of forming meaningful relationships with people that make her happy and don't threaten to undermine the social status she cares so much about (even if the last example of that happening was eaten by vampires way back in Season 1). The idea that she'd be happier dating somebody she has almost nothing in common with (except, possibly, a shared childhood history that is only ever hinted at) -- somebody who is barely even civil to her in all the times we see them on screen-- is just not serious.

And the show itself is never sure if it's being serious about their relationship: it never really moves beyond the punchline it was in What's My Line?. So there's a kind of bathos to the whole thing at the end: yes, it's sad that Cordelia got her heart broken, but the show was still playing her feelings for Xander as a joke as late as the Season 3 opener.

On the other hand, I know a lot of people dislike the Xander/Willow cheating subplot on an almost visceral level -- I've seen people talk about how it feels wrong and it's not enjoyable to watch, and I'd agree with that -- but I think that reaction is mostly (maybe even entirely) deliberate. We're meant to think that what Willow and Xander are doing is wrong and inappropriate and foolish. We aren't exactly supposed to be rooting for Xander and Willow to end up together at this point. We're not meant to think they have good chemistry. That ship sailed at least a season ago.

And as a vehicle for breaking up Xander and Cordelia ahead of her departure to Angel, and as a tool for commenting on Buffy's own secret-keeping with Angel that takes place over the same few episodes -- which, really, is all this particular subplot is at the end of the day -- I think it works well enough.

What I'm a little less persauded by is whether it makes sense for either Xander or Willow as characters, especially since Becoming Part 2 seemed to mark the end of Willow's unrequited attraction for Xander pretty firmly. On balance, I suppose it's not too out of character for either of them, even if it doesn't paint either of them in a particularly flattering light (Xander is so shallow that he finally notices how attractive Willow is the first time he sees her in a flattering outfit; Willow thinks resorting to magic is a more sensible approach to her romantic problems than talking about it to literally any of her friends). It's not too hard to believe it. But that doesn't mean I like it.

My more serious complaint is that, after this episode, the Xander/Cordelia split will see Cordelia self-exiled from the Scooby Gang too. That feels like a waste, to me. But at least she'll get to fufill her dream of moving to LA next season and put Sunnydale behind her for good, after which nothing bad will ever happen to her again.

[prettyflyshyguy]

Alright for the freaks who are oldschool Supernatural tumblr people, or just normal supernatural people, and for the rest who are just like me and don't know shit: I'm dumping all my garbo takes under the cut.

Mostly gonna be me either being really enamored or really upset.

No in-between. These things are either great or the worst. My tastes are specific and I'm picky with vampire fiction and rarely do I find media that ticks the boxes yet, I still watch almost anything I can find obsessively.

Who knows maybe this'll become a new casual TV series if I like the dynamics. Anyway, long post warning under the cut.

They got Bela Lugosi's Dead playing in a room full of nu-metal heads LMFAO

truly the alt communities have always been done so dirty in media

least they did their research on song choices

-

jesus christ

flashbacks to my steampunk phase circa 2011

-

I LOVE that this woman looks so normie and looks so delighted when she meets this equally normie looking dude in an alternative bar (i want to go there the people seem chill and the vibes are impeccable)

anyway who is this guy he seems familiar

love that they made the most normal dude in the bar the real monster good on them :)

christ they just took one look at twilight and went yeah lets TV parody this shit just for a laugh didnt they

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SHE'S 17

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO(DID SHE HAVE A FAKE ID I WASNT PAYING ATTENTION)

OK ok ok you get big bonus points just for this bit. Just for this bit.

Thank you supernatural go off

-

"I'm just scared I'm dreaming and I'll wake up in math class" girl me too

im sorry this woman looks so much older than 17

POINTS DEDUCTED

POINTS DEDUCTED

BAD TEETH

great eyes, horrendous teeth. very dissapointed. I'm only here for the fucked up canines because we already HAVE them and whats better than perverting the existing human form into something subtly wrong

-

This show has such an aggressive title screen compared to buffy and the x files LMAO

-

ok i can get behind the chevvy, the chevvy is nice

-

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

POINTS ADDED - holy shit points added for this cheesy poster alone really capturing the schtick of the late 2000s

ok i get it, i get it guys, they're fun, they're funny, they've got a great sibling energy, the periodic 'screaming' happening in the background of this scene is sending me

-

this has been too fun so far i feel like somethings gonna ruin it

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Ok this is so self aware yet the degree they're committing is just.

its marvelous. this is peak. I'm into it.

there are so many ads please i want to see dean have a bad day

Holy shit is that Skinner from the x files i love that guy

-

the fashion. iconic. if anything I'll be coming back to this for inspiration for myself.

-

the way Dean just slammed that guy on the car yelling "OPEN YOUR MOUTH"

yeah instant favourite.

you've rounded a corner, a dude has just beat the shit out of your brother and now he's about to force feed him blood and your response is: stand there staring like the shocked pikachu

oh so you wait till after he's done to scream "no!" in a half hearted tone

is there something I'm missing here, i know Sam gets a bit cooked at some point (does he get possessed??? idk) so I'm gonna assume thats whats going on

this is the best 'turning' scene I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing in all my years of trawling through vampire media

holy shit the team that wrote this episode fucking get it

the audio design, the acting, is so on point

Supernatural Crew you cooked so hard and I'm deeply thanking you for it

this was fucking made for me what the fuck what the fruck what the fuck what the fuc

Nooooo dont have an emotional breakdown in the bathroom looking at your fangs, but you're so sexy aha

The constant heartbeats anytime Deans in a room with someone got me grinning like :]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

ok points deducted, again, for bad teeth but my god

the "I gotta go-" scene GOOD SHIT GOOD SHIT

someone get this kicked puppy a sippy cup

a red fanta chug jug

where is his sippy cup

look i know its probably not fun, at all, to drink red mystery meat juice on set but its gotta be cheaper than CGI teeth. Please.

Please let more relunctant vampires reluctantly chug jug (with you)

Oh Never Mind they wrote it in that he can't drink or he's stuck >:(

im still having a good time, just a bit less of a good time

YEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

-

using a large serrated knife to cut appart a horde of vampires seems like a great idea and getting covered in blood you're not supposed to drink is inevitable

but watch out

Sam: thats a pretty mentally stable thing to do

I REALLY WANT TO

CHUG JUG WITH YOU

ok this scene of him makes up for the lack of authentic blood chug jug I'll take what I can get

-

Ok final thoughts: that was a solid 7 and a half out of 10

thank you Supernatural you hit almost all the high notes when most stuff falls flat for me. Still, you came soooooooooo close. And got so far. And Yet in the end it doesnt even matter.

Still, this one's going straight to the pool room, and I can comfortably say I'm throwing it on the shelf of 'comfort media' that I can go back to on a bad day.

This had some fucking BANGER scenes that surpassed my expectations and deeply pleasantly surprised me. Good shit! As someone who is hard to please, this was a riot. Still; a shame they arbritrarily rules-d him taking a chunk out of someone. Would have been sick. Could have had the great slow build up of the initial turning scene - him and the love interest, holding back - then him cracking it after holding out and snapping.

It is not too much to ask, I swear. It's a good trope.

Do I dare take the risk of trawling through fanfiction to find another horribly specific weirdo like me, because Supernatural seems huge and a scary place to fanfic trawl.

[steely-eyedmissileman]

The Vampire Diaries, Ep. 1x07

Haunted

this episode has the same title as a taylor swift song. amazing!

'fuck-face unfortunately has a very nice camaro,' said my girlfriend about the first scene. i did not have a reply as i do not know the breeds of car. then vicki tries to kill fuck-face. unfortunately, she fails.

then, vicki says the most relatable thing that has ever been said on television ever, 'why do i have to pee? i thought i was dead.'

in discussion on the layout of the gilbert house, elena and jeremy share a jack and jill bathroom, which has to be the worst concept ever invented in the world. you think you're safe in the bathroom, but there's this whole other door you have no knowledge about that is also vulnerable. how can i guard myself from two directions?

now everyone's going to the school for a halloween party. how is it halloween already? i swear that all the episodes start right after the one before, so it should have been at most three weeks since the start of school. how are we at the end of october? and these school scenes are terrible: too much flashing, deeply impossible to tell who's who. they are drinking, inside their high school! who allowed this? this entire town is off the rails.

meanwhile, damon is flirting, heavily, with lydia martin's mom, who is dressed in a terrible flapper outfit. he tells her that he can get her vervain. the scene is entirely too long.

back at the high school, vicki's trying to find jeremy, and she's almost definitely going to bite him. matt tries to fight stefan because he's a good big brother who has tragically misunderstood the circumstances. blah blah blah, terrible slow chase through the high school. then, vicki starts drinking from elena, who has pulled her off jeremy. stefan kills vicki rather than watch her drink from elena. in this universe, unlike buffy, vampires do not turn to dust. instead, they turn into dead bodies, horrifically grey dead bodies. stefan summons damon, the cleanup crew. he takes jeremy home.

elena sees matt on his way home. she tells him that he is good brother and then cries alone in her car. this is the saddest scene in the show thus far, and one of few moments where the characters garner actual emotion from me. elena has a huge secret that she cannot tell. and matt will spend the rest of his life wondering what happened to his sister. he will wonder and wonder and wonder, until he begins to forget, until the memory of vicki fades from him as he moves forward in his life.

in my notes, i have written 'vicki literally never had any agency and now she's dead,' which pretty much sums up my thoughts on the situation. she was a pawn, not only of the story, but of many of the characters within the story. none of her decisions ever felt authentic. and very few of them actually felt like decisions. i don't think vicki as a character ever had real interiority. for full clarity, this is in general not a bad thing. not all characters can be fully fledged. some will always have to fade in the background. however, the problem with tvd, at least thus far, is that all the characters (particularly the female characters) seem to lack interiority. also, most of the decisions that shape the plot are made by damon, then by stefan, then by everyone else. so it's hard to really feel for vicki, or most of the characters, because they haven't really done anything. and that sometimes makes the show difficult to watch.

to further illustrate my point, a few comparisons. in the first seven episodes of buffy the vampire slayer, there exists a character named darla. darla does not only appear in those seven episodes, since we see her in a lot of flashbacks, but we do see her die. she is not a major character. in fact, she has little to do or say. however, what she does do and say is incredibly impactful to the show as a whole. her choices have impact, and she does make (some) choices. mostly she's a pawn, moving where she's sent, but the way she chooses to do her errands has a major impact not only on buffy the show but buffy the character.

also in btvs, we have the character of harmony. she is in more than seven episodes by the end of the show, but her part is never very big (it does get bigger). she is cordelia's friend, and mostly exists to support and/or counter cordelia. however, she has a character. it's not a great character, mostly made of stereotypes. but, it's a character nonetheless. it's something. there is something to like and care about in this young blonde girl, despite the fact that she is incidental to the plot. however, her plot irrelevance does not prevent her from making choices. she is making choices all the time. they mostly affect cordelia, but they have an effect! (see bewitched, bothered, and bewildered for clearest examples.)

my final comparison is allison argent from teen wolf. yes, she is the female lead (so this will shed light on elena as well), but she doesn't have a super active part in the first season, certainly the first part in it. she is not capable of making relevant decisions at the beginning of the story because she does not yet know about werewolves. she cannot truly step into the narrative without proper knowledge of the consequences. even when she doesn't know about werewolves, she feels like a real character. we spend those first episodes learning about her as a person, her hopes and dreams, her life. we see her befriend lydia, we see her befriend scott. in those moments, we see glimpses of who she could (and would) become. vicki never got that. elena has gotten precious little of it.

then we go to the gilbert house. i have a brief flare of caring about jeremy. then, we get to see elena make her first big decision! she decides that jeremy's memory should be erased because she doesn't think he can survive this. nowhere in this discussion does anyone suggest asking jeremy if he thinks he can cope or if he would choose to lose his memories. his bodily autonomy is not considered. she first asks stefan to do it, and he says that he is not strong enough and could not guarantee that it would take. then damon offers, and elena accepts. damon goes upstairs to change jeremy's memory and stefan sits down on the bench outside the front door. then 'i have a feeling that elena has just made a decision that has drastically changed how stefan feels about her.' transcribed directly from my notes, i think it sums it up. she has made a decision, a decision not only to change her brother without his consent, but also to trust damon. trusting damon is the one thing that stefan would never do, and i'm sure he still doesn't. surpassing my expectations, elena and stefan do not get together again in this episode.

(i also had on my notes: 'talk about bonnie and her grandma,' but i think i'm going to save that for the next episode because i have already had much to say.)

[ckneal]

Hey! Thanks for the tag, @nalivaa! I'm so sorry it took me so long to get around to this. Things have been so busy lately.  

Three ships: Am I allowed to count midam and midamoul as one? I feel like every midam concept that comes to me these days has an optional midamoul add-in. The line is like an illusion that only exists in some lights--every fic idea has a parallel ghoul version!  None are safe! Meanwhile, when I have time to read lately, I've mostly been reading WangXian fics, so that should probably be my second ship. And then for my third. . .You know the book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne? I just finished it the other day, and the whole time that I was reading it, I just kept getting the feeling that Captain Nemo very clearly has a crush on Pierre Aronnax. Right up until the last chapter or so, it just seemed like some sort of Beauty-and-the-Beast-Under-the-Sea stuff was happening. So much so, that I actually started writing out a concept for a midam/midmaoul parody of the story on more than one occasion, but never got around to posting it.

First ever ship: Oh man, I guess Spuffy? Spike and Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I wasn't producing content for it or involved in the fandom or anything, I just watched the show and wanted these two characters to get together. Which is what shipping is in my mind.  

Last song: "Sweet but Psycho" by Ava Max. The line "her people say run don't walk away" makes me think of Joon-Woo from Vincenzo, and it's been stuck in my head for weeks. Currently reading: Well, I just finished Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, and I'm about to start reading the novelization of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, which I've heard really good things about. 

Currently consuming: Officially, I'm watching The Owl House right now. But, I've had so much on my plate lately that I haven't really been able to watch more than an episode of it. Instead, I've been watching 1 min long youtube videos of this adorable woman who makes her husband bento lunches every day, because they're so sweet and the lunches are so pretty, and I can usually force myself back to work after watching about 5-10 of them in a row. 

Currently craving: Not to dwell on my stress levels too much, but some down time would be amazing. I miss working on things for fun so much. (Though, you know, I would settle for an adorable bento box lunch.)

It’s been a little while since I was tagged in this, so I feel a little awkward tagging anyone else, not knowing who’s already done it. If anyone sees this and wants to fill this out though, please consider yourself tagged! 

[templeofshame]

did you ever get around to fully finishing stranger things? what did you think of the ending? love hearing your Thots and Onions lol

To be honest my friend and I are waiting on the second half of the s4 finale until s5 is out.  Yeah, that's weird, but I know most of what happens and it's mostly a bumner, so we haven't felt motivated to finish after she fell asleep mid-ep, and we got into Yellowjackets instead.

I do still have opinions though...

like I think Mike sucks this season and I don't buy him and El this season; they were so cute in the beginning but now they're all performative, lies and superheroes and I'm not sure he even sees her as a person, it's Very Important that El has people who care about her as a person and not as a magical deus ex machina. I do know he's gonna say he loves her like 6 times, I'm sure he believes it, I don't buy it.

I also feel like this season has a plot about trauma/survivor's guilt (via vecna/victims) and abuse (via el and a bit max) and I'm not sure very thoughtful about what it's saying about them. Forcing El to go work with her abuser, Max grieving hers, the relationship between Max and Nancy and El and others in terms of survivor's guilt... these are super complex interesting things that get barely touched on. And with Chrissy's apparent trauma seeming relatively mundane compared to what literally every major character has been through (and I forget what Patrick's is, is his name Patrick?), vecna's choices seem kinda weak. Maybe he says something in the second half but I'd rather them have all been dealing with survivor's guilt specifically.

I felt like the guitar scene was anticlimactic and weird for how much buildup eddie the guitarist had, and the plan seemed kinda bad? I guess it's harder for me to say how things should work though because the rules of the Upside Down have substantially changed since s1, like in this Upside Down Will and Barb could've just hid in someone's house with barely any tentacles, there seem to be lots of safe places.

What else... I think Jason was more worried about people thinking Chrissy was cheating on him than Chrissy's death. I think the jock death mob has vibes of that hyena episode of Buffy, and overall I think we could have a lot less of them (I like Lucas being caught in the middle but otherwise they're uninteresting). I wish Eddie was a little less musical theatre in that first scene, it just felt like he was in a totally different show than anyone else (possibly Rent, or Glee). The issues for Nancy & Jonathan feel very contrived and the show trying to throw Steve at Nancy is just annoying. There was no logical reason for her to date him twice, let again another time. Also could've done with less Hopper torture porn, like we get that it sucks. Similarly with the bullying, it's so over the top that it took me out of things rather than really hitting me. I think I've posted already about how the characterization of Robin changed so much and while she has great lines, it doesn't feel like her (and like is it because we know she's a lesbian now that she can't be snarky coolgirl anymore and has to be dorky mess?).

The positives! Love Argyle. The scenes with Will & Mike and Will & Jonathan are lovely heartstring pulls, so well done. (Will deserves better than Mike, but he's young and stupid so). I don't overall love how separate everyone is this season but for that setup, love the whole pizza freezer thing. I love Murray, I love Joyce&Hopper (even though irl I would 100% tell her not to touch a man with that much assault history with a 10-ft pole). Lucas finally gets material to work with and his acting has gotten so good! Running Up That Hill is obviously a great song. I am biased by fic but after that initial scene, I like Eddie and his face. I love the humor.

I'm probably forgetting a lot! I'm sure I'll be bummed about how only Dustin and Wayne seem to care about Eddie's death, and how much of the season was about protecting him just to have him die anyway. I'm sure I'll be annoyed they don't kill vecna. I'm sure I'll be worried about Max.

[zorilleerrant]

I was talking about one of the other times Cordy broke up with Xander; I meant that neither of them really conceptualized each other as people or treated each other respectfully until after they broke up and realized there was more to it. Like, yeah, it was terrible that he cheated on her, but the problem was ongoing throughout the entire relationship, because neither of them actually liked each other while they were dating.

As for Anya... yes? Literally word for word, scene for scene, if you replaced Anya with a man and Xander with a woman, you would have absolutely no question that it was an abusive relationship. It's framed as funny, so it's hard to see immediately, but there's a lot of stuff going on in their relationship.

Anya is an adult and has been an adult for centuries when she begins a relationship with Xander, a high school student

she repeatedly talks about physical harm she's done to boys and men. Xander states explicitly to his friends that he's too scared not to take her to the dance

when she shows up again, she asserts that they have a type of relationship they've never discussed or agreed to, and when he tries to push back, she pressures him into agreeing

she initiates sex without asking

when asked not to have sex with him, she makes it very clear she's unhappy about it, and that it will happen eventually anyway, regardless of the outcome of the conversation

she demands he have positive feelings about sex in all cases, and then uses that to imply further consent

when he doesn't want to have sex, she shames him and accuses him of harming her

despite indicating his discomfort with it, she continues to bring up their sex life in front of his friends

whenever she's angry with him, she brings up torturing and murdering men for similar behaviors

these behaviors include simply not returning someone's affections in the first place, or wanting to break up with them

she regularly treats him like a sex object. while this would be fine in general, it's narratively situated in a way where, if a man were doing it to a woman, it would be a clear attempt to indicate disrespect and a lack of emotional investment. even when he's sick or injured, she's concerned mostly for the sex

all of their relationship milestones are pushed by Anya, disregarding all of Xander's hesitancy

Xander is always making excuses for Anya's rude and inappropriate behavior and awkwardly defending the relationship, behavior you would expect to see from the victim

It's harder to see, because in general people think only men can be abusers and only women can be victims of abuse, which is why stuff like this is played for humor so much across many genres of TV. So even as the narrative presents abusive behaviors, it does so with the idea that they should be funny, cute, relatable, etc. but they're still there textually. I mean, BtVS has a lot of problems with this, anyway, regardless of gender dynamics. Riley grabs Faith-as-Buffy even after she asks to be let go, and it's presented as caring and comforting rather than a violation of boundaries. And, really, every time people try to date someone who's already declined it's treated as romantic. So it's not that surprising in context that it's just ignored.

xander is a character i have many complicated feelings about, because on the one hand i think there is something profoundly harrowing about his deeply-rooted fear of both his abusive father and of becoming his abusive father, and his struggle with his own masculinity and insecurity and anger issues in light of that, and something profoundly beautiful about the fact that he does not necessarily achieve a unilateral victory over these more negative impulses but still makes a concerted effort to be better and always retains so much love in his heart for his friends especially his bff willow who he is toxically codependently platonically unconditionally obsessed with and loyal to. but then on the other hand. there is something so unbelievably grating about a man who hurts the women he's in relationships with and then has the gall to get mad at them for not wanting to be with him anymore. like his missteps are not unforgivable to me as a viewer but the way he reacts to cordelia and anya's reactions to his missteps is so deeply intolerable to watch. but then on the third hand. he is a fashion icon for the ages and this cannot be denied

[cellsshapedlikestars]

prompt fic

Prompt from @hilarychuff - pick one of your fave movies or tv shows and shamelessly force jonsa into the plot

I have *technically* done this twice already - once with my Supernatural AU we’ve got crosses on our eyes and once with my Secret Garden AU signs but really, can one ever get enough of shamelessly forcing jonsa into other media? No.

And since I’m not actually a big movie person (almost all my fave movies are from my childhood, like the Secret Garden or Howl’s Moving Castle or Labyrinth), I went with TV show for this drabble/ficlet. It was super fun to write, so thank you for the prompt!

.....

“He's staring at you.”

Sansa tries not to react, keeping her fingers on the fountain soda press, watching the cup fill up with Coke.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” she sighs and finally looks at Jeyne, who's draped over the counter to whisper to her. “When did he get here?”

“He's been here for an hour,” Jeyne says, which startles her.

“Dickon's been here for an hour?” She absolutely had not seen Dickon today. The Crashdown isn't really that busy, a few tourists, a few locals, she thinks she would have seen him.

“Not Dickon,” Jeyne huffs. “Jon Snow.”

With that, she almost does drop the cup she's holding, but she manages to place it on Jeyne's tray instead. “One Cosmic Cola and an Abtuc-tea, table 2,” she gestures at the tray, which already had the tea ready.

“You're not even a little curious?” Jeyne doesn't take the tray and leave like she's supposed to. She's still bent half over the counter, sly smile on her face. “He's been like, staring at you. He's always staring at you.”

“Jon Snow is not staring at me,” she hisses, though she can't help when her eyes flick up to the table where Jon Snow has been sitting for the past hour with his friends (and sure enough, he's looking at her, though his eyes dart away the minute she looks up). “I barely even know him. I don't think I've ever talked to him.”

“Well,” Jeyne slides back and down onto her feet, straightening her apron, hands smoothing over the silver alien face, “that doesn't mean he's not staring at you. And I doubt he wants to talk.” She giggles and takes the tray over to table two – two men who must be tourists because Sansa has never seen them before. She's glad Jeyne has that table because the men had been fine when they came in, but over the past half hour, they've gotten progressively louder, like they're arguing about something.

When she hears Theon call out order up from the back, she sighs and takes her own tray and loads it with the Comet Chili and a Sigourney Weaver and she tries not to think about Jon Snow as she takes it over to another table of tourists, a man and a woman who she knows she can wrangle a great tip out of.

(She doesn't need to think about boys, she's had just about enough of them, thank you very much. Last year she'd briefly dated Joffrey and over the summer she'd gone on a few dates with Dickon Tarley that weren't terrible, but just so boring. Even his kisses were boring.)

“Have you ever seen an alien?” the male tourist asks, looking over her uniform (she wants to think he's eyeing the alien apron, but most men seem to use it as an excuse to stare at her legs under the short skirt. Why her parents picked this uniform, she'll never know).

She slips into her believer persona and bites her lip and looks around suspiciously before giving a shaky “no”.

“You have!” the woman falls for it immediately and Sansa makes a show of shifting from foot to foot. “You have to tell us!”

“I don't know anything,” Sansa hedges, drawing it out because playing with tourists always makes boring days at the diner more fun. She knows Jeyne is likely watching, too.

“We aren't government,” the guy reassures and she wants to laugh. No shit, she thinks. If they were undercover CIA or FBI or MIB like in those Will Smith movies, they'd be the best undercover agents ever. No respectable human would ever wear what this guy is wearing.

“Alright, but you can't tell anyone,” she breathes, eyes going wide like she's sharing her deepest, darkest secret. Then she slips her hand into her apron and pulls out a photo and hands it to the tourists. “My grandmother took this photo of the crash site before the government cleaned it up.” She lets them stare at it in awe and they don't notice as Jeyne passes by with an exaggerated eye roll. “Don't tell anyone,” she whispers and takes the photo back and leaves the table, suppressing a smile when she can hear them furiously discussing the photo behind her.

When she's near the back at the refill station, she begins to shove more straws into her apron so she always has one handy when someone inevitably asks for another because they have magically lost theirs. Jeyne comes by to grab a pot of coffee and lowly sing-songs “he's staring at you again!” before heading back out. Sure enough, when Sansa looks up, Jon is just looking away from her and she feels something twist low in her belly that she tries to ignore.

She's technically still dating Dickon and sure, he's boring, but he's nice enough and has done nothing to offend her and-

Shouting snaps her out of her thoughts and she looks up just in time to see the two men who had been arguing stand up from their table. Their shouts are louder now, a full fight, and she watches in what seems like slow motion as one of them pulls a gun out of his jacket. She distantly hears screams and all she can think is good, Jeyne has ducked down, that's safe before there's a sharp crack and it feels like someone has punched her in the stomach.

“Sansa!” she thinks it's Jeyne calling her name and she should respond, but she can't seem to.

“Call an ambulance,” a voice she doesn't recognize is saying and then suddenly there's a dark figure over her and she realizes she's laying on the floor. How did she get there? “Sansa,” the voice says and she can't quite focus on the person kneeling over her, but she thinks it's a him. He does something, his hands moving near her stomach, something jostles her body, but she feels sort of numb and so she can't tell what's happening. She turns her head a bit and Jeyne is on the phone, looking paler than Sansa has ever seen.

“Look at me,” the voice says and then a hand is on her face, turning her head away from Jeyne. She blinks to try and clear her vision and the blurry shape turns into Jon Snow. A very worried looking Jon Snow. “Sansa, you have to look at me, ok?”

She does, she keeps her eyes on his because she can't seem to not and then his hand moves down and she feels a vague pressure on her stomach and then the diner is suddenly gone and she's in the desert and she's walking and she's so tired and she's scared and hungry and naked and alone. Then she's in a trailer with a large man who smells like alcohol and cigarettes and he's yelling and throwing things and she's still scared and alone. Then she's at school, but not the high school, the elementary school and she's watching herself play tag with Jeyne and Beth on the playground in that horrible dress Aunt Lysa had bought her and mom had made her wear because it was polite. She hated that dress, but watching herself now, she doesn't hate it. She thinks it's cute.

Suddenly she's back in the diner and Jon Snow is leaning over her and he sits back and she doesn't feel numb anymore. She props herself up on her elbows and notices two things at once – one, Jon's hands are shaking and covered in what appears to be blood, and two, her uniform is unbuttoned and open down to her apron.

She watches Jon look around and grab a ketchup bottle that he smashes against the floor and then he dumps the rest of the bottle onto her. “You broke the bottle,” he says like he's trying to keep his voice steady. “When the gun when off, you tripped and fell and broke the bottle and spilled it on yourself.”

She nods dumbly, and he gets up and when she looks past him, she can see his friend Aegon standing by the door gesturing wildly for Jon and they both head out of the diner and get into a Jeep that she can see Rhaenys is driving and it speeds away the minute they're all in.

“God, Sansa, are you ok?” Jeyne sobs as Sansa stands. “I thought you got shot!”

Sansa holds her uniform together with shaking hands and tries as best she can to button it up.

There's chaos in the diner until Sheriff Tarly arrives and she answers his questions as best she can. The men were arguing, no she doesn't know who they were, they must have been tourists. They were fighting and one pulled a gun and it accidentally went off. She got scared and she tripped and she broke the ketchup bottle she'd been holding. Yes, she's ok. No, she doesn't need medical attention. (The whole time Jeyne stares at her, but she doesn't say anything with the Sheriff around.)

Her parents arrive and send her home to get cleaned up as they handle everything and when she's in the bathroom, she pulls off her uniform and holds it up and finds the small bullet hole in the fabric and she manages not to cry until she's in the shower under the hot water. She calms down by the time she's done and she steps out and puts her hair up in a towel and instead of grabbing a second, she goes to the mirror and wipes the condensation off because she needs to make sure there's no bullet hole in her stomach like there should be. And there's not.

Instead of a bullet hole, there's a large silver handprint spanning her stomach, right where Jon Snow had touched her.

[takaraphoenix]

I don’t understand people who think that BTVS should have ended with “The Gift.” That would have made Buffy into a martyr instead of an autonomous hero taking control of her own future and breaking the chains that dictated her life for so long.

What in the fresh hell that's the season 5 finale. That's the one where she dies (for the second time).

Who in their right mind watches BUFFY the Vampire Slayer and then goes "man, it's too bad it didn't end when Buffy died". Like who does that.

Sure, in a way, killing off the protagonist is a sure-fire way to end something definitely. It's the ultimate way of wrapping things up. But in like 90% of the cases it is also the most unsatisfying?

In this case, even more so than usual. Because Buffy's entire struggle - from season 1 on - was her lack of autonomy. Her fear of dying; she already dies in season 1 and the lead-up to that, her crying and trying to bargain, her wanting to live and to live long. That's been her struggle from the beginning of her narrative and the season 5 finale would just... make it all kind of pointless. Because guess what, even after all you have done, you are still just The Hero Who Does, you are still just another one of those short-lived Slayers, your attempt at building a life for yourself was completely pointless after all.

(And don't even get me started on how much of a plothole I find the ending anyway. So that'd have made this stupid plothole she fell through an even worse way to end the show. I can look past it because the show continues after it.)

The season 7 final is one of hope. She lives. The shackles of the Hellmouth no longer bind her, the entire world lays ahead of her. She fought, she won, she lived.

Ending it at season 7 defies the overarching journey of the show for me, because the main message that BtVS has is that if you fight all alone, if you are the sole Chosen One, you are destined to die, because the burden is too much. You have to share the burden, if you choose to fight with others, you can survive, because you're stronger together. Never mind the underlying defying of the in-universe patriarchal system; the first Slayer enslaved by the Council, the Slayer line kept on a short leash by the Council. She defied the Council and the season 7 finale is her ultimate middle-finger to the Council, to the rules, because no, it doesn't have to be just one Slayer to suffer at all times.

And that's not even bringing up my personal bias of what the fuck, seasons 7 and 6 are literally in the top three of best seasons this show has why would you cut the best out. And season 6 features Once More With Feeling and Tabula Rasa, the best episodes of this entire show, after The Body.

I love season 6 so much, because it steps back from the Big Bad. It has three minor inconveniences (until things escalate too much in Seeing Red and yeah that entire episode was a mistake), but it is mostly focused in the characters, most of all Buffy. It's an essentially character-driven season and you get to see something like that so rarely in TV. It deals with Buffy's trauma, it allows her to act out, to despair, to cope in whatever way she wants, even if it's unhealthy coping mechanisms. Which is also something you get to see too rarely in TV; characters die and get resurrected all the time, characters get tortured and traumatized but because actually dealing with the emotional outfall of this would mean the writers had to put in some work, most characters just shrug it off and I hate that so much, I hate when writers are so cheap, they want the drama of the death/torture but not deal with the trauma of it all. Season 6 is amazing because it does that, it hits emotionally hard and it is such a great Buffy season for that, for her struggles.

And it goes beyond Buffy too. Spike's journey and redemption - which I assume is the main reason these people want to cut these seasons out; the Spuffy and the Spike, because truly I can not imagine another reason. Willow embracing her powers - yes, I hate the addiction plotline in season 6 with a burning passion, but season 7's Willow, when she turns white-haired and embraces her goddess like powers, it felt like her character finally fully came into herself after all the struggle she had with her identity and self-worth. I love the Faith-Buffy dynamic in season 7 and I love how much it wraps things up between them instead of leaving this major plotline just dangling around as the season 5 finale would have had. I love Robin Wood and Andrew Wells and without season 7, we wouldn't have gotten them as a part of the team.

Even if season 6 isn't perfect and even season 7 has some issues, they bring so many good things to the table for the show overall and for Buffy as a character and it genuinely disturbs me that people watch a show about Buffy Summers and would rather have it end with her death than with the powerful leader who gets to live.

[we-pay-for-everything]

So I know you’re not the biggest fan of Angel’s appearance in End of Days/Chosen but I’m curious to know your thoughts on whether you think that interaction was disrespectful to Cordelia?

I don’t really understand why Cangel shippers get so bent out of shape when Angel and Cordelia were never in a relationship at any point in time. They want Angel to tell Buffy about his feelings for Cordelia when Angel had never even sat down with Cordelia herself and discussed his supposed feelings with her. They act like Angel cheated on Cordelia by kissing Buffy (who he had an actual romantic relationship with that spanned years and who he will always love) and acting jealous about Spike (as he has always done with any of Buffy’s romantic entanglements, in addition to just being told that Spike has a soul - also Angel is a jealous and petty person even when it comes to Cordelia, this is nothing new nor is it a regression like many of them like to claim (see Groo in S3 and all of s4)).

They also act like Buffy and Angel were talking about getting back together tomorrow and professing their eternal love for each other, when in reality, it wasn’t that serious. It was a simple conversation about Buffy’s future where Angel asks her if she has anyone in mind and Buffy acknowledges that although she’s not ready and won’t be for a long time, she sometimes does envision a possible future with him. Like, It’s true that Buffy and Angel had moved on from their relationship at this point in the series and were able to live separate lives and not pine after each other anymore, but they never got over each other because they didn’t break up due to a lack of love….they couldn’t be together because of external forces. There will never be closure for that relationship for either of them - they will always wonder about the “what if” and you can see how they pick up where they left off every time they reunite - that’s how I see this interaction: two people who love each other, picking up where they left off and wondering about a possible future. Angel had absolutely no obligation to Cordelia here (or anywhere else tbh) and just because he had feelings for her, doesn’t mean he didn’t still love Buffy - he’ll never not love Buffy…..It’s not that hard to understand.

Sorry this is so long but I am frustrated and needed to put it into words and I always love reading your thoughts on these things lol

Don't apologize for venting to me! You must know how long-winded I am, haha. Thank you for coming to me with your opinion and for valuing my input! You can always share your thoughts with me :)

I agree with you in general. Angel acting jealous and petty, especially about Spike, means very little, and he had no reason to disclose his feelings for Cordelia or what had happened to her. Maybe Buffy would've liked to know her friend was in a coma, but did she really need more bad news? Angel himself had been through so much that he must've wanted to put it all behind him for a second.

I don't believe Angel acted out of character at all regarding Cordelia. If anything, it was him acting so relaxed and carefree after losing his son again that felt weird. Still, he must've been happy and relieved that Connor was well and with a nice family, and that feeling would've triumphed over all others. Mostly, I believe Joss Whedon couldn't care less about AtS, so being truthful to Angel's characterization was not a priority for him. It was all about Bangel.

As for Cordelia, Angel's romantic feelings for her ended the moment he realized Cordelia wasn't Cordelia and the moment he had to kill his own son to stop him from blowing himself and other innocent people up. I see seasons 3 and 4 Angel as someone living a fantasy. He had a son, so the next step was finding a partner, and Cordelia was the perfect candidate for the job. She was already a good friend and Fred and Lorne were shipping them together. He held on to Cordelia so tightly in season 4 because everything else had already been taken from him - his son, Wesley, the peace and happiness he'd build for himself. Cordelia was all he had left of that dream - that dream in which he had a son, a woman, friends. But that fantasy couldn't hold for long, especially when he realized he'd been fighting for a woman who wasn't herself anymore and that he'd been fighting his own son for her. Angel couldn't hold on to the fantasy any longer, as it was destroying both him and his son, so he tried to create a new one for Connor. He gave him a nice family, a future, safety. He did something similar for his friends. But all Angel was left with was the truth. He could no longer deceive himself after doing it to those he loved.

In the end, his feelings for Cordelia were weak at best. She was beautiful so there was some attraction, but not a whole lot. And she was a great woman in his eyes so he admired her and wished he could be with someone like her. He wanted a life with her more than he wanted her. When Angel met Buffy, he already knew this. The truth would've been especially obvious in the face of someone he loved against all reason, someone he could have no future with because he loved her too much. His future with Cordelia hinged on the fact that it would never be perfect. He would never be perfectly happy with Cordelia, because she wasn't who he really wanted.

I didn't like Angel and Buffy talking about getting back together, or Angel being the one to ask Buffy if she saw a future with him - like I said, Whedon didn't care about Angel's characterization, though you can interpret Angel's behavior as him putting on an act for himself and Buffy, to give them both some hope. Whichever the case, I don't believe there were any real feelings for Cordelia to talk to Buffy about, and he'd already had time to say goodbye to Cordelia. Also, Buffy was the one who kissed him, and, in the moment, he was taken in by her, no other thoughts allowed. That's what usually happened when Buffy and Angel reunited - their feelings for each other would overwhelm them and they'd forget their rocky past and let go of their worries.

Thanks for the ask! I hope my answer was helpful in some way! Let me know!!

[buffster]

Restless (BTVS 4.22)

This is part of my ongoing Buffyverse Project, where I write notes/meta for every episode in an attempt to better understand the characters and themes of the shows. You can find the BTVS list here and the ATS list here. Gifs are not mine.

I can’t say Restless is my favorite finale. It seems to be one of those episodes that people either love or hate, and I think the first time around I was in the hate camp. I’ve grown to feel meh about it over time. Many of the issues it “reveals” were shown throughout the season already, and the depiction of the First Slayer was just all kinds of uncomfortable.

Though it’s not a traditional finale, we still get a few loose ends being tied up here. One is Riley’s army man status. He has to go in for a debriefing but is confident they won’t be pinning anything on him or making him disappear. I get the feeling that’s mostly because of his ties to Buffy. 

Anyway, on to the dreams. Before we start, I do remember reading that Joss confirmed the cheese man was thrown in just to make it seem more like a dream, which contains random things that mean nothing. So, I don’t have any interesting theories about what he means. 

One overall theme we see is that each character is reconciling who they are with who they feel they should be. In that way this is a tie to the season as a whole, which largely deals with identity. Let’s do this by character.

Willow

Willow’s dream is about hiding her “true” self. Tara is her safe space, the one place she doesn’t have to wear a mask. The dream begins peacefully, with just her and Tara locked in a room that Willow doesn’t want to leave. I would have been interested to see a storyline where this turns into Willow controlling Tara and becoming abusive (and fixing it). I feel like we did get hints of that in season six...but it turned into a magic issue instead of one where Willow’s trauma caused her to act in unhealthy ways. 

We then see Willow’s anxiety as she is forced into a play that she hasn’t rehearsed for. Buffy tells her that her costume is great (even though she isn’t wearing one). Willow has started to grow into herself in her first year of college but still feels that everyone will see she’s just that high school nerd.

It’s interesting to think about the deep scars Willow carries from those years pre-Buffy. From an outsider’s perspective, Willow’s fears seem unfounded. Her group doesn’t care if she’s a nerd or doesn’t wear the right clothes or whatever else. But those years and years of ostracizing and bullying have left her with permanent feelings of unworthiness that no amount of reassurance can fix. I wish we’d gotten the chance to see how Willow could address her trauma.  

Buffy: What did it look like?

Willow: I don't know. I don't know why it's after me.

Buffy: Well you must have done something…

Willow: No! I never do anything! I'm very seldom naughty. I just came to class, and then the play was starting…

I find it interesting that Willow is both most comfortable hiding and also deeply resentful of her role as the invisible sidekick. Buffy finally rips off her “costume” and we see she is back in season one Willow clothes. Even Tara is mocking her, with Oz no less. Despite her comfort with Tara, she still fears everyone will turn on her when they know the “real” her. What Willow really struggles with is the idea that her personhood isn’t enough. Years of bullying taught her that people will not value or care for you if you possess certain qualities. I think she believes that Buffy accepted her because of her computer skills, and later her witch skills. I don’t think Willow can believe that Buffy just likes her. She is on a constantly mission to prove herself so that she remains worthy of her friends and lovers. If she slips, even for a moment, back into that “loser” state, she’ll lose everyone. I don’t think any of that is true, but it’s what she believes. This must also lead to feelings of resentment for those around her. 

Xander

Xander’s struggle with identity, unlike Willow’s, largely has to do with societal notions of gender and masculinity. Xander is the most incapable/least experienced with the supernatural out of everyone in the group. He never gets to play the role of protector or be seen as the strong one, ergo he never gets to feel like a man. 

His struggles continue as he excuses himself to pee and finds a bunch of scientists watching him intently. The metaphor is pretty obvious here. 

Xander finds himself in his parent’s basement multiple times throughout the dream, signifying his stunted feelings and general discomfort with where he’s landed since high school. We also get a couple of subtle nods to some of his issues, with him admitting he wanted Giles as a father figure and being bothered when Buffy refers to him as a brother. Xander sees himself as inferior to pretty much everyone in the group. We see more of this when Giles and Anya start speaking in French, highlighting his inability to keep up intellectually. Xander’s dream mostly goes in circles, showing us how stuck he is in life. It ends with him confronting the father who embodies all he doesn’t want to be in life and is trying to get away from. Once again, we never saw much of a resolution to these issues in the series. Maybe that’s true to life?

As the heart, Xander loses his at the end of the dream.

Giles

Like Xander, Giles feels a bit stuck, albeit for entirely different reasons. He tries to be both father figure and Watcher to Buffy and therefore feels he can succeed at neither. A part of him also wishes for a separate identity, a life of his own, but he hesitates so briefly on that in the dream I don’t think it’s even a real contender. His duty and love for Buffy is strong. 

The watch at the beginning of his dream can symbolize both time passing him by and his wish/inability to control Buffy. He grows impatient with her and her antics throughout the dream, commenting that he “doesn’t have any treats” when she does well and turns to him. There’s a distinct parent-child theme to their interactions. We also see his conflict in this scene because it’s a carnival that takes place in a cemetery. He feels the need to protect and guide Buffy as a father, but as a Watcher he must thrust her into danger. It’s a conundrum that leaves him feeling like a failure in all senses. 

When Olivia says he should go easier on Buffy, he responds with “This is my business. Blood of the lamb and all that.” He sees it as his duty to sort of put Buffy up for the slaughter even as he wants to protect her. Giles can’t seem to figure out when he should protect Buffy and when he should push her. If he protects, he worries he’s only making her weaker and more likely to be killed. If he pushes, he feels guilty because he knows she craves a father. Spike even tells him that he needs to make up his mind, but he can’t.

As the brain, Giles is lobotomized at the end of his dream. 

Buffy

Buffy’s dream, of course, begins with the infamous “be back before Dawn” warning that foreshadowed her coming sister. But the main theme of her dream is her inability to reconcile her identity as the Slayer with her identity as daughter, girlfriend, and friend. The first metaphor is pretty obvious as Buffy finds Joyce literally living in the walls. She makes a vague comment that her mom probably shouldn’t be living in there, to which Joyce responds that she could let her out. Buffy is distracted before she can. Ultimately, Buffy feels Joyce is safest in the walls. But that severely damages their relationship.

Her next scene finds her running into Riley and Adam, who are planning world domination. Buffy asks if this is a good thing, but they shut her out in a way that signals she doesn’t have a place at the table (seemingly because it’s a man’s table). There’s a gun pointed in her direction and Riley refers to her as a “killer”. Buffy is dreaming of Riley’s discontent with her inability to be the feminine role he wants in his life. She senses how much he wants to prove his masculinity. When Buffy covers her face in mud and gets in touch with her Slayer roots, Riley tells her she is on her own. He doesn’t accept her as a Slayer.

Buffy is the only character that seems to conquer their identity issues in the dream. She argues with the First Slayer and refuses to be just a machine designed to kill. She is both Buffy and Slayer, and she is determined to reconcile that. 

When everyone wakes up, they sit in shock for a bit and accuse Giles of not being prepared for this. Joyce takes the news they were nearly killed with a shrug and offers hot chocolate. I’m not entirely convinced by those that entirely blame Buffy for the state of her relationship with Joyce. I think Joyce is comfortable in the walls as much as Buffy wants her there. For some reason I was thinking this episode was when the origins of the First Slayer are revealed, but that isn’t until s7. I guess I’ll have to wait to discuss that. 

Character Notes:

Joyce Summers: She notes that she is *finally* meeting Riley. Joyce is still being kept in the dark about most of Buffy’s life. 

Rupert Giles: If you’re looking for it, you can still see how Giles must feel a bit lost in the world right now. His sitting down to watch movies with the “kids” feels a bit weird. I don’t think they’ve considered it, but from his POV he’s got to feel out of place.