#need more rewatches and will have SO many more thoughts

[idle-flower]

Amy Madison is one of those things which, like some of the subplots of DS9, I assumed that I'd missed something the first time around and that there was a lot more to it, and was disappointed on a rewatch to find that... no, not really.

Like, I thought it was super-cool that there was this tiny minor character with stuff going on in the background who would resurface seasons later instead of a "remember the new guy" plot! And obviously Willow cared about this girl and there was a whole story there, right? I wasn't religiously watching the show when it first aired so I'd probably just missed whatever her story was!

So then I did a big rewatch with a friend who'd never seen Buffy before and... ehh.

(Now, I never watched season 7 and have stricken it from my personal canon, so that already limits me.) I want Amy to make more sense and to have more story. In those few appearances there are just enough threads of a story that I can totally build a bunch of ideas, but they rapidly diverge from canon.

Because yeah, there's the "Amy decides to delve into witchcraft". Many good reasons why she might, protection from someone messing with her again being an obvious one, dark fascination and love/hate with her mother being another, but she's never given the chance to tell that story.

There's the "Amy back from the dead" which was HORRIBLY disappointing how glossed-over it was. Amy's real-world situation is more fucked-up than Buffy's was! Was she declared legally dead? How many people had any idea what had happened to her? (What happened to that Michael kid who was also in their witch circle? He knew, right? Did he used to visit Rat-Amy?) When she finally went to find her father how did she explain this to him, or did she panic and mind-whammy him because she *couldn't* explain? There could have been more detailed connections here with both Buffy's problems and Willow's problems, without having to go the ridiculous route of...

"Amy's magic druggie problem" Even leaving aside that this entire plotline is horrible, stupid, and horribly stupid, I don't for a second believe that a girl who's been stuck as a rat for years could instantly find the super-secret floating lair of the local druglord. She clearly didn't have that sort of hookup before and it wouldn't be that easy for her to find it now. She's years out of touch! And she should be struggling with magic now. She was not as powerful as fully-juiced Willow to begin with and the trauma of being ratted ought to be giving her the yips. Even if she knew this guy existed and never told Willow about it in high school for some reason, it ought to be a difficult quest on her part to find a way in.

"Amy wants revenge on Willow" A perfectly good plotline idea if they'd actually worked with it in the show, which would require making her more of a major character for a while. Because yeah, getting mad at Willow for 'ruining' her life is plausible, but we need to see Amy's life falling apart first. Even if it's almost-all offscreen because she's not a Real Scooby, it should take time for her to develop this hate-on for Willow. Because at first she'd be grateful for being saved, and then as she slowly realised how screwed she was, then she becomes resentful. Sort of an inverse of Buffy who wasn't happy about being saved and then comes to terms with it, Amy slowly gives up on trying to have her life back and decides to throw in with the dark side.

Just spitballing here. Willow, desperate to prove that she can do good things with her magic powers, de-rats Amy. Amy is thrilled at first but becomes more and more distressed as she realises that life has left her behind. How's she going to fix things with her dad? And Willow suggests magic. Willow takes her home, makes her dad accept everything with a mind-whammy, zap-zap-zap's Amy's long-turned-into-storage bedroom into something cool and modern and witchy, and leaves Amy there, feeling super proud of herself. See, it's easy! Magic really can fix everything! Cut back to Amy, alone in the dark, twitching in terror at the sounds of cats, trying to cast little spells and having them go wrong...

Reverse Unpopular Opinion: Amy Madison

[Reverse unpopular opinion meme.]

This is an interesting one because I think there’s a solid argument to be made that the character of “Amy Madison” does not, in fact, actually exist on the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

By which I mean … look, okay, yes, obviously, there is a character in an early Season 1 episode called Amy Madison, played by Elizabeth Anne Allen.  And there’s a character with the same name in a Season 2 episode, and [in an admittedly weird coincidence] she’s also played by Elizabeth Anne Allen.  And there’s one in Season 3, and a one in a few episodes of Season 6, and one in an episode of Season 7, and all of them are played by the same actor.

But … I mean, come on.  There’s no way these can all be the same character, right?  They don’t have the same basic back story or the same relationship to magic or to Willow; they certainly don’t have anything resembling a definite personality or set of motivations or a consistent character arc.  No, surely what’s going on here is that there are several different “Amy Madisons” in Sunnydale – just like there are several different characters called Anne or Nancy on the show – and in a bizarre in-joke the writers simply decided to cast the same woman to play all of them.

Now, ordinarily, simply being written inconsistently over a handful of episodes and not having anything resembling the same personality from week to week would be no obstacle to having a few die-hard fans.  But – as far as I can tell, anyway? – there’s no “fandom Amy” either.  She never really gets mentioned when people want to talk about how all the Scooby Gang had awful mothers [even though Amy actually did, explicitly and inarguably, have a very, very awful and openly abusive mother!].  There’s very little in the way of Amy/Willow shipping going on here or on AO3 [even though witchcraft is heavily coded as a metaphor for being a lesbian and Amy, one of the first witches we meet on the show, is repeatedly linked to Willow throughout the show’s run].  There are no adorable drawings of Amy as a rat staring out of her cage at Willow and Tara (or if there are, they aren’t getting as many notes as they should be getting).  

No, it looks like most people who are still watching and talking about the show twenty-five years later have about as much interest in poor Amy Madison as the writers did.  She’s a plot device.  A punchline.  A cipher.  A blank slate.  She’s whatever the plot requires her to be to further the stories of the actual characters on the show, and she’ll never ever be anything else.  Which is a little sad, if you think about it.  I think Amy – or, well, most of the different Amys: The Killer In Me’s smirking evil-for-evil’s-sake Amy I’m not so sure about – deserved better.

[As I write this the thought occurs to me, belatedly, that I might be one of Amy Madison’s biggest fans.  Pretty grim news for her if so.]

OK. Enough stalling.  Five positive things about Amy Madison [with, as ever, the usual caveat about the comics, which I’ve still not read anything about and still don’t exist].

Witch, Amy’s debut appearance, is a solid episode!  One of that season’s best, I think (though not, of course, one of its very best).  And I think the duo of Elizabeth Anne Allen's Amy Madison (and Robin Riker as her mom Catherine) is a big part of why that episode works: no, they haven’t got a huge amount to work with, but I think they both do a pretty good job switching between evil witch Catherine and innocent victim Amy.  Catherine’s bodyswap spell foreshadows (albeit unintentionally) the bodyswap artifact that the Mayor gifts Faith in This Year’s Girl / Who Are You? and I’ll always have a soft sport for it because of that.  And I really like that the episode ends with Amy alive and hanging out with Buffy in a way that suggests that they are going to stay friends, even if we don’t see any evidence on screen that that happened.

Sarcasm aside, I’m really glad the writers brought Amy back in the second season.  To me, part of the appeal of the high school years are the recurring minor characters – I talked about Principal Snyder before, but also Jonathan and Devon and Percy and Harmony and … yes, Amy too.  The show obviously doesn’t care about her very much, and you have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to fill in the missing pieces of her story and make her arc make sense (why is she starting to do magic in Season 2?  When does she start hanging out with Willow?), but … well, I do care and I have done those gymnastics.  At least Amy didn’t end up like Marcie Ross or Buffy’s old flame Owen or any of those poor kids who must remember eating Principal Flutie. 

I’ve been reading a few old interviews Elizabeth Anne Allen gave recently (here and here, for example) which I think have some pretty interesting insights into how the character of Amy developed.  Had you ever heard there were persistent rumors at one point that Amy was going to be one of the starting regulars on Angel?  It’s mind-boggling to think about a world where that happened.  Allen seems to have put a huge amount of thought into her character, too, at least for her first few appearances, which … uh, I guess makes me feel a bit shitty about those opening paragraphs. [Not enough to delete them though…]  Also in one of the linked interviews she says that she “hopes she won’t be a rat much longer” – and that’s an interview she gave before the Season 3 finale had even made it to air, which made me pretty sad to read.  Forget appearing on Angel, imagine if Amy had been de-ratted in Season 4.  Imagine if Superstar was about Amy instead of Jonathan.

There is a second or two in Season 6’s Smashed – no more than that – when Buffy and Amy are catching up again (“How have you been?”  “Rat.  You?”  “Dead.”  “Oh.”) and you can, if you’re quick, delude yourself into thinking that the show is going to do something interesting with the obvious parallel it’s just set up. Willow has now not only brought Buffy back into the regular human world [and left her struggling to live and find meaning as a college drop out with a dead mother and an absent father last seen on screen about five years ago], she’s also brought Amy back into the regular human world [and left her struggling to live and find meaning as a de facto high school drop out with a presumed-dead mother and a presumably-now-absent father last mentioned about five years ago].  Surely this must be deliberate?  Well, no: the show doesn’t do anything with this idea ever again, because Marti Noxon had very different [worse] ideas for Amy’s character this season, but if you pretend it might be about do something like that it’s a pretty exciting couple of seconds.

The fact that “Amy Madison” exists as a (technically!) canon character means that I can write (or daydream about writing) fanfiction in which Willow has a friend in high school who is also a practising witch. One with a vague but miserable home life, who is secretly in love with Willow but too afraid to admit it (and so she keeps professing to be interested in men who she can’t possibly ever expect to date, either because they’re unpleasantly vile toward women or openly gay or both). And I can do that while, just about, pretending that I have not created the most embarrasingly psychologically revealing OC you ever heard about in your life.  Thanks Amy!

[luke-o-lophus]

I like Crowley's grey bad-boi-deep-inside-good persona as much as the next person but let's not pretend he's above hypocrisy.

Miss ma'am criticizes the overkill of making angels fall for asking questions, but (apparently) obliterates his plants at the first sign of disobedience/failure/disappointment.

(then again the shredding happens off screen so who knows?)

[catabasis]

i can't stop thinking about how the relationship between Jones Hall and Conrad Earp is the heart of Asteroid City, how their one and only encounter (that we see) influences the entire film: Conrad writing a play about connection between people and the immediate connection between Jones and Conrad the moment they meet; the character of Augie becoming Jones, and Jones having his heart broken with each performance, a prelude to Jones' heart getting broken after Conrad's death; Jones initially knowing why Augie burns his hand but then doubting his interpretation and looking for an answer and meaning for the play and looking for the validation of the play director, just like he found Conrad's validation after his monologue when they first met; Conrad's play being also about death and grief, a grief that Jones has to perform without fully understanding it until that grief becomes real with Conrad's death, and so Augie and Jones truly become one man grieving the loss of his loved one; the scene with the actress playing the dead wife and the dream that would parallel both Augie and Jones, how they both feel lost and unable to move on, but the wife (and Conrad through the writing of the wife) urges them to move on and find love again; Conrad dying (what if Conrad was always meant to die? what if Conrad was doomed by his own narrative?) and in his death, giving Jones the grief he needs to play Augie and ultimately understand the play.

“use your grief.”

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[nikolas-ghostbusters-fixation]

Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is how everyone thought Egon had gone insane. What Happened that made them think that. They've fought a gigantic Stay Puft Marshmellow Man TWICE (counting the 2009 video game because iirc it's canon? Correct me if I'm wrong), fought an interdimensional god, fought a blood thirsty ruler that killed thousands and was hated by all that was trapped in a painting (and managed to get in to beat him by making THE STATUE OF LIBERTY start walking down the street with slime that reacted purely based on vibes), found an underground abandoned transit system full of the moodslime, had a bathtub try to eat Dana and her baby, fought a giant murderous black widow lady, fought the fisherman ghost who turned an entire hotel floor into the bottom of a ocean, and that's not even mentioning them getting trapped on an island that randomly raised up from underwater that had been abandoned for decades created by Ivor Shandor who worshipped Gozer. So what did he do or say that made everyone else think he'd gone insane?? All I can think is maybe he was acting strange / eratic before, but he's always been like that to some degree.

I don't know. It's something that I've been thinking about. The correct answer is 'it's not that deep and they needed a reason that the others weren't together anymore and weren't aware of Egons death or know what was going on,' but also. What Was He Saying that prompted everyone, including Ray, to think he lost his mind when he'd been right almost every time before that.

I'm genuinely so curious as to what he was up to before this. What was he doing. What insane idea was working on prior to this or was he even working on anything at all??

Also want to clarify this post isn't negative 😭 I really love the newer movies and their lore / the newer storyline / characters, I just like thinking about small stupid things like this. Gives me something to think about / speculate about / figure out an answer to.

[tindove]

God I’ll be more eloquent tomorrow i swear.

Or when finals are done anyway. So I can rewatch and make a few meta posts, mostly, because I really wanna have thoughts but my brain is to tired right now.

But I just wanna say how much I fucking loved dead boy detectives. Like that was such a genuinely good time. I was delighted—even through the sadder bits—it was just so fucking fun. That’s the main thing I keep getting hung up on, it was just such a joy to watch.

Highly recommend it, seriously, normally don’t binge but I just watched all of it with the best company so that always makes it even better.

I just really really really loved it and I know what I’m going to be recommending people nonstop for the next while so I can share that adoration lol.

[fromemotoangel]

if anyone cares have an angel and vic anecdote because i miss her! when we got home on the 19th we were all really tired, we lowkey weren't even thinking about dan and phil at that point because we desperately needed rest. i think at this point everybody else was in the middle of changing or packing. vic was just sitting on the floor folding something and i was compelled to tackle them. a second after we both simultaneously realized that we Did The Thing and we started laughing hysterically about it (because it was funny and also we were exhausted). and in our fervor vic knocked our heads together and hit their nose on my forehead. it was still red the next day. i have been rotating this moment in my mind since friday because pinof day and that was So fucking funny

[higgs-the-god]

wanted to do the hev suits like this started out to be but! well! gordo lineup

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

If youre ok w sharing then i would love to hear your thoughts on lotor........ Hes such a weird guy. Dissecting him like a frog

If i get hate for this, i am blaming you/j but in all honesty i apologize if this kinda messy, as i have said it has beem awhile since i saw any of the episodes about him. Most of it is my personal interpretation and opinions of his character-

First of all i personally hate both "L0tor is evil rapist imperialist who did not have a single redeemable quality" and "L0tor is uwu poor baby who did nothing wrong", because yeah he had good intentions and he seemed to genuinely love Alura and care for Alteans but also he very much did do a lot of things Wrong. I am pretty sure a lot of his actions fall into category of Very Wrong

Lot0r to me is an absolute control freak, he has to be 10 steps ahead of everyone, he needs to be control of the situation no matter what. Whether it be through a silver tongue or by his blade (see N@rti's death, him vs White Lion). This is as much as a ruthless strategy as it is a trauma response. Being raised under Z@rkon, a father who only saw him as inferior half-bred, he had to learn survivor tactics. He will do anything to survive whether it be beg, lie, manipulate, and kill. He is a survivor of some genuinely godawful abuse he suffered for 10,000 years, combined with racism he suffered for being half altean

However this need to be in control extends to his allies and people he cares about. I am sure Lotor may have loved Alura, it doesnt change the fact that he very much abused her trust. Their entire relationship was based on a lie. He knew Alteans were still alive and not only did he not tell Alura about it he leaned into the "last survivors of Altea" for their relationship, which is why it was doomed since the beginning. And if it had not been this, then it would have been something else. Cause lying and manipulation are very much core of his character, that is how we are introduced to him

Like i see people going "Oh Lot0r could have been good if he had therapy and a hug", and i am not really not sure about it, cause like would he? Would he choose to be vulnerable and actually let his feelings out and be truthful in a an unbiased reliable way that will neither serve him in any way nor make him look better nor is a part of some machivilian scheme he cooked up because he doesnt trust the therapist he is paying? No

And thing is he does desire connection. He looks for connection in people who are similar to him. Half galran, altean survivors, Alura these are the people who he chose to get close to. He looks for similarities, people he can relate to, people who he sees as like him, people who he thinks can give him a sense of belonging. He is deeply lonely. However his desperation for control, absolute mistrust in anyone and everyone, and his inability to be actually honest dooms any relationship he'll ever have

Also this is probably just me, but for someone who is this morally complex character he has tendency to see things in black and white? Like it is His dad and empire= bad, alteans=good. He idolizes Altea to the point of seeing it as an Utopia, and this ideal was more important to him than any Alteans who are alive and with him. I also cant remember him ever caring about someone outside of the Dichotomy. Like at most i remember is after he became the emperor Lance pointing out how other planets need to be freed and he just brushed it off

Overall he gives me the "smart people dont always make good decisions, but they are good at justifying their bad ones" vibes. We dont know exactly why he decided to use alteans as batteries but i am choosing to go with my interpretation- "Lottor saw something fucked up in that future showing space whale thingy, decided the only way to solve was altean batteries except in true self fulfilling prophecy greek tragedy way it only made things worse and started a series of event that will cause the thing he saw causing real trouble a few years after his death.

Another thing! I think it should have been him being the focus of Evil Altean episode instead of A//ura. I hate that episode and everything it stands for but like if there Had to be an evil alteans episode then it should be around someone who is you know? Obsessed with Altean culture? Is big on control and manipulation? Is more geared towards big picture and "greater good" over individual? Is worried about turning into just like his galran father and so desperately wants to connect to his idealized version of his altean mother? Yeah

[frankiebirds]

JJ: It's something we call the buddy system. That means, you always go everywhere with a friend. MORGAN: That's right, because bad men and women are more likely to talk to us only when we're by ourselves

this is likely unintentional, but i like to read into things, so.

for context, they're speaking to a room full of children in a town with a serial child murderer, and are giving them some precautions to follow to stay safe (on a lighter note: the scene is intercut with a scene of gideon doing the same to a room of adults, which i really like)

jj addresses the children as "you" while morgan addresses them as "we". i dont like the term "freudian slip" because i hate freud, but thats the shortest way to describe what i think/headcanon is happening here. im sure they had a script, and i think morgan's part was "bad men and women are more likely to talk to you only when you're by yourself" and the "us/we" came out accidentally. or i could believe that morgan wrote his part of the script and wrote "we" because he sees himself in the victims.

obviously the way morgan was victimized during his childhood was very different to what's happening here (there is no sexual assault and we later learn that the violence was done by a peer, not an adult) but it's made clear several times that morgan takes any case where children are harmed very personally. they all do, because that's just how people are, but again, morgan specifically sees himself in the child victims they encounter. he was victimized differently, yes, but he knows what its like to face violence as a child, he knows the fear they felt, and, considering in this case they profile that the children know their attacker, he knows the feeling of betrayal

[elegyofthemoon]

ok but do i want to actually sit and read through all the clockie animation stuff so i have better foundation for what i want to say? i guess

[itsalongwaytotipperary]

ok so I rewatched Krester’s first appearance in the show for research purposes (I forgot what he sounded like) and here’s some notes about what I observed! (it’s a lot and also rambling lol) (let me put this under a cut it's a bit long)

Maura moves to help Krester, yes, but she’s standing up before the men even grab him. She senses the danger and immediately wants to help

Ángel moves forward when Krester is grabbed, I know we all know this but djasjhfvakkasllflfdhd!!!! (is it because he feels an innate need to protect him from harm? Does the body remember even if the mind forgets? What does Ángel think is happening?)

Ramiro and Ling Yi seem to have similar plights; they’re both scared for Krester and themselves. I think Ling Yi is more scared for herself (which makes complete sense, she’s in a bad and strange situation and i think the entire time something along the lines of 'what if this happens to me?' is going through her head and that's a scary thought), and Ramiro is probably more worried for Krester. Idk, his eyes just have more sad in them while he watches Krester being dragged away, while Ling Yi’s have more fear

interesting and also something I didn’t notice before: Lucien also moves, not when Krester is grabbed, but just as he’s being dragged away. I can’t tell whether he’s moving forward, shifting in his seat, or sitting back from moving forward, but I think it says something about his experiences or his character. Idk

another thing about Ramiro vs Ling Yi in this scene: even before Krester is grabbed, and then later as he’s being dragged away, Ramiro’s leaning forwards, towards Krester, while Ling Yi is leaning away to try and distance herself from the situation

Virginia (Mrs Wilson) is also uncharacteristically (at least I think so) disturbed at the scene. She's an intriguing character all around and doesn’t show a whole lot of emotion up until she almost jumps of the ship(???) and is pretty unsteady for the rest of season 1. I’d say the emotions on her face are fear, confusion, and maybe a little disgust? Idk, I'm not the best at reading emotions and also disgust might just be her normal face

also to support my Ramiro/Krester agenda: Ramiro is so worried for Krester in this scene? He cares so much for the people around him, even if he doesn’t know them at all. Truly a good man. But also: good ship material

also I want to talk about the costuming of the extras in this scene? Almost everyone is wearing something I also would like to wear. Kudos to the costuming department

also also just want to mention the mural thingy on the wall in the dining room? That’s… an interesting choice for somewhere where people are eating breakfast and chatting

also how smooth the transition is from Krester being dragged away to Ángel’s face as he watches it? cinema

[twinstxrs]

boo *exu calamity au’s your bad kids*

[phagodyke]

always so embarrassing to call someone and realise the audio was coming out of ur speakers the whole time so u were prolly disturbing everyone in a 20m radius from ur room

[hylaversicolor]

remember when tobirama (age 10 maximum) was like "adults are so stupid. there'd be no more war if they'd just suppress all their emotions." he s so normal

[quodekash]

WAIT A SEC

HOLD TF UP

THIS IS AKK’S ENTIRE CHARACTER, EXPLAINED RIGHT THEN AND THERE, IN THE FIRST FREAKING EPISODE

he’s so certain that following the rules is equal to your worth, that only by doing everything as you are instructed can you be deemed a “good student”. and he wants to deserve to be in the school. he got a scholarship, he was chosen as a prefect, and its all because he follows the rules. so he’s sure that if he doesn’t follow those rules, then he doesn’t deserve any of the things he’s been given, and he doesn’t deserve to be in the school, he doesn’t deserve to be given opportunities. he probably doesn’t even think he’s worthy of love if he doesn’t follow the rules. (this isn’t true ofc, this is just what im pretty sure are akk’s thoughts)

and it’s kinda glossed over in parts (either that or I just wasn’t paying attention), but I think I’m akk’s mind, one of the rules of life is you either have to be straight or you have to not be in a relationship at all. he tells himself that he doesn’t want/need a relationship because he’s “at school to study”, he’s there to follow the rules and be a good kid and never do anything out of line. but he doesn’t think it’s out of line for other students to date. he just thinks it is for himself to date, probably because he hasn’t yet confronted with himself that he doesn’t want to be with a woman, but he can’t let himself be with a man, because that’s against some kind of subconscious rule that he has. “don’t be on your phones at school, don’t cause trouble, don’t hurt others, don’t use the teacher’s bathrooms, don’t be gay, always wear the uniform correctly and perfectly”

so he plays it off as “I just don’t want a relationship rn” but really it goes so much deeper than that, and I think he knows that but isn’t ready to confront it. his thoughts and feelings are so conflicted and complicated, and if he can’t figure it out, then he isn’t worthy of love, but if he ever does figure it out and end up with a man, he isn’t worthy of love because that’s against the rules (again, his thoughts not mine)

his thoughts that it’s imperative for him to follow the rules to be worthy or deserving of anything at all are the driving force for every single thing he does. “if you can’t follow the rules, you don’t deserve to be in this school” translates to “If you cant follow the rules, you don’t deserve a good education” to “you aren’t worthy” to “you are worthless” to “everything you do is wrong”.

and also I think him faking the curse was him trying to exercise some form of control? so that he could be in command of something in his life, and not in constant confusion and conflict and worry and uncertainty. if he truly believes that if you can’t follow the rules you don’t deserve to be in this school and therefore deserve to be punished, then he’ll see kids misbehaving, and he’ll want to be cause of that punishment, to reinforce and validate his belief that he HAS to follow the rules or he’ll be punished similarly, but also to feel like something is finally going how he wants it to

or maybe im reading too far into one line in the first episode where he’s just talking to a kid using his phone in school. idk.