#willow’s character development

[witchothewest]

Still thinking about the post that said btvs season 3 was objectively bad and I’m still mad about it. What!!

[sepublic]

Willow became a strong leader who looked after others, but also understood that it's okay to be looked after, too.

Amity figured out she didn’t have to be the best and was more than what she could do for others, choosing those who made her happy.

Gus was reassured that there was nothing foolish about his kindness, and that there will always be those who reciprocate.

Hunter got to escape his abuser and survive, deciding a future he wanted with a family he could feel safe and belong in.

[roz-ani]

Classic Hunter - attracted to confidence

Honestly, the boy has a great taste. The real strong girl should know her worth!

[spikedru]

dont understand people who are like "i dont like willow shes selfish and manipulative and a hypocrite!" like yeah she is <3 thats what i like about her. thats what makes her interesting <3

[girl4music]

Ooooo fucking ACE response @nownow-noneofthat !

Exactly.

She’s my favourite character but EXACTLY. 👍

A big reason why Willow has issues with consent is due to the fact that she never learned to take accountability for her own misgivings in life.

She seems to always project it on to other people.

The girl flat out just doesn’t have any self-awareness.

[someonetooksendnoodles]

i’ve had this in the drafts bc i haven’t made a poll before but i am super curious into what everyone’s answers are. also sorry if this has been done before!

[theoverlookedoneedits1997]

girly didn't mean to go evil | my first edit, so it's kinda rough

[lavellenchanted]

also still thinking about the fact that airk has tried so hard to be what he thinks a good man should be and that that’s basically the opposite of madmartigan (which, ouch)

and that he’s tried so hard to resist the evil of the city and the crone because he knew something wasn’t right and he only gave up after being physically broken down and almost dying of thirst multiple times

and if elora and kit can’t save him after all of that I’m going to be so mad

[darkacademiaarchivist]

you know the greatest films of all time were never made (the full-length season three of the owl house)

[cherrymoonvol6]

.

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

tbh i always thought amity should have been the one to give hunter a haircut. aside from being snippy/standing next to each other they haven’t really had time to interact after eclipse lake. and like, that episode was phenominal in building up their dynamic and picking at both their characters. even after the rest of season 2 and thanks to them i feel like although they haven’t interacted much, theyre definitely one of the pairs out of the gang that has the most potential to be super close.

but they don’t talk post eclipse lake, so the most we’ll probably get is a short exchange in the finale where they’re like “we cool?” “we are” “sick” *epic battle sounds* and that’s disappointing! they probably would have planned more with these two in a longer season 3 but man it would have been so cool to have amity see hunter freaking out over how much he looks like belos and help him with it. amity furthered her reconciliation with willow by helping her with her hair. it would be a nice parallel to see her reconcile with hunter by helping him with his hair as well. love is stored in amity’s hairdressing and whatnot.

like all season 1 she was under the influence of her mother and her green hair symbolized that. and in season 2, she changed her hair with the help of her siblings to symbolize how she isn’t under her mother’s control anymore and how she’s ready to grow for the better. hunter struggling with belos’s control over him parallels her. and amity would recognize herself in hunter’s desire to stop looking like belos by changing his hair. by thanks to them, she already resolved most of her baggage with her family, so she could help hunter resolve his baggage as a sort of “passing of the torch,” doing for him what her siblings did for her.

hunter went through a similar arc to amity where he realized the way he’s been taught to treat people isn’t good, and the kindness from his new friends taught him to change for the better. it’s not exactly like amity’s arc since his actions were more forced by dangerous situations while amity had more choice in befriending the gang, but theyre still similar. but anyway by eclipse lake, hunter was going through something similar to amity, but he was like 4 or 5 plot points behind her in character development. so when amity offers to be friends with him during a time of crisis, he doesn’t take her help and instead doubles down on helping belos. but by thanks to them, hunter has basically completed his “redemption” arc and is fully on the gang’s side. so at this point, when amity offers to cut his hair, he would be comfortable enough to accept her help. it would be a peace offering from hunter as well, accepting amity’s help when he attacked her for it before.

if they had a full season 3 they might have spent an entire b-plot of an episode on just the hair cutting scene. and if amity was the one cutting hunter’s hair, it might even be important enough to their character arcs to be an a-plot, with a few related scenes added. but alas, there are so many other prioritized arcs in the shortened season 3 so we probably won’t get a lot with amity and hunter becoming friends. i certainly wouldn’t want them to focus a whole subplot on it if there’s so much else to tie up. ah well. the hunter-amity reconciliation arc is canon in my heart. and in my ao3 account.

[sepublic]

I think a defining issue/arc of Willow’s is definitely Denial; Repression, willful ignorance, etc. There’s the obvious example in Understanding Willow, in which she outright declares “Out of sight, out of mind” and purposefully turns over her memory photos with Amity to not face the trauma. And then of course, her Inner self insisting on destroying those memories outright, after being prompted by Amity’s fire spell; Inner Willow replacing the repairs Luz and Amity have done with new damage to undo that.

You can even see it in a smaller joke like in Escape of the Palisman; Willow and her friends are stepping on bones, but as she herself happily declares, as long as she doesn’t look down, they’re not bones! Then there’s stuff like Willow insisting that she wants people to see the real her, with adversarial examples like Hermonculus or Boscha, but also with friends like Amity. Ignoring how she actually feels for the sake of peace (“This is fine”), but eventually having to acknowledge those feelings and have others realize them as well.

And of course, the most symbolic gesture; The fact that Willow is taking photos in the human world. She’s designated herself as the photographer, and is gleefully commemorating and immortalizing past experiences in physical form. Before, she outright denied and even destroyed photos of past memories, because of the regret and pain attached to them; But now, Willow is happily making the most of a bad situation.

She’s accepting and making new memories and moving forward, and cherishing them, just as Willow decided to hold onto the memories she had with Amity regardless of the trauma. I think Willow definitely denied and regretted her time with Amity in hindsight, for a while; But after reconciling with her, Willow was able to come to terms and accept what happened, and still appreciate the good parts of the past. And for months, Willow was trapped in the human world, estranged from her home and dads;

But she didn’t let that stop herself from having fun. And, obviously that’s all anyone could do in such a situation to survive; But I think Willow really is becoming the kind of person who’s just glad it happened at all, and wants to hold onto that as a meaningful part of her, instead of leaving it behind. She’s embracing memories and what she gets from them, and choosing to preserve that, and it’s a rediscovered sentimentality that I think speaks to Willow’s bravery in facing mistakes and disaster and learning, continuing to move on instead of being afraid to step forward. 

There’s a bit in Any Sport in a Storm in which Willow DOES make a bad call as a leader, in trusting Hunter; She shouldn’t have done that, she shouldn’t have tried, she’s a Half-a-Witch Willow and should’ve stuck to what she knows. There’s definitely a lot of Regret to Willow, in conjunction with her Denial; She shouldn’t have tried and Willow shouldn’t have dared, which fits someone whose core trauma was being so horribly betrayed and hurt for ‘stepping out of her league’. So it really comes to this sort of Acceptance, that yeah she’ll mess up, yeah there will be times that don’t work out, some things will suck. 

But in the end, she’s choosing to live with this and whatever bad memories she might have, so she can appreciate the good. Willow’s choosing to grow from these experiences no matter what, she’s not afraid to try new things and experiment, fuck around and find out, and speak for herself. No more safety in the familiar, not only is Willow glad to have had these memories at all, but she’ll keep making them because of that.

Even when Belos potentially ruins the human world for Willow (because of course he’d try to drive this foreign witch away), Willow nevertheless thanks the human world for the memories it gave and promises to come back for more regardless. And that says a lot, that Willow won’t led bad memories estrange and ruin something for her.

Boscha is her bully and tied to Grudgby, but Willow still enjoys sports and Flyer Derby. Her mistakes as a captain doesn’t ruin the Emerald Entrails for her; Amity’s mistakes won’t ruin the happiness of Willow’s past. And the circumstances of entering the human world, Belos inflicting death on Flapjack, won’t ruin this curious place for Willow either. It’s not that she’s denying the bad; Nor is she resigned to agonizing over it. Rather, Willow is accepting it so she can still appreciate the good. She’s so used to people telling her no, she can’t do or be this, so this time Willow is reveling over how nobody can stop her.

(I wonder if this arc of facing what happened is tied to her glasses changing; Going from their regular color to gold, as if to signify a new level of sight in looking at the past and future, and ensuring she can continue to do so with photos.)

[xmascritter]

OWL HOUSE FANS, HOW ARE WE FEELING TODAY?

[veeslug]

SHES JUST LIKE ME FOR REAL

[girl4music]

I love how Hannigan plays that sacrificing the deer scene. Apprehensive but determined. Very much a “I don’t want to do this but I’m doing it for her” vibe. Of course she lies. Tells the Gang she got the deer blood at the black market. Never tells them that she killed the poor thing with her own two hands and drained the blood from its corpse herself. I suppose in a way it is safer than going to the market. But still, the fact of the matter is SHE FUCKING KILLED BAMBI! And you’re meant to view it as a very disturbing moment.

WILLOW: “All I know is that we have to have it to finish the spell so it’s good stuff in my book.”

It’s the whole methodically planned out deception to make sure Tara doesn’t know just how dangerous it actually is because she knows she’d never go along with it if she actually knew what the resurrection spell required. And Xander pretty much confirms that when he asks Tara in the next episode whether she knew about it and she immediately says “No”. So as far as she’s aware, Willow never knew about the risks or consequences either. It was a surprise to the both of them. Except that’s not quite true. Of course Willow didn’t know what was going to happen with the chaos of the Buffybot and biker gang breaking the urn of Osiris and disrupting the whole ritual. But she did know how dangerous it was. She did know of the risks and consequences. She just didn’t care about them because desperate times call for desperate measures.

Spike - when he found out - he immediately knew Red was the one behind Buffy’s sudden appearance and to blame for the absolute traumatised state she was in. That the rest of the Gang were merely just coerced and while knowing the goal, had no real idea of what Willow was doing and how far she was going to meet that goal. And the dishonesty of it all is telling of that.

SPIKE: “Listen, I’ve figured it out. Maybe you haven’t but I have. Willow knew there was a chance that she’d come back wrong. So wrong that you would ha- that she would have to get rid of what came back and I wouldn’t let her. If any part of that was Buffy, I wouldn’t let her. And that’s why she shut me out.”

XANDER: “What are you talking about? Willow wouldn’t do that.”

SPIKE: “Oh, is that right?”

Spike seems to be the only character that can see darkness in Willow this early because he deals with it in himself. Spike is scared of Willow because he recognises in her that hunger for power and a willingness to inflict pain and cruelty to get it that he constantly fights in himself as an evil demon. He sees right through her lying and manipulative tactics. He notices that she’s playing them all for fools because that’s what he has done and it’s what he can still do if he lets the darkness within him win the battle. He is afraid of what he sees in her because it’s something that he is afraid of in himself. Her energy is very frightening for him. And I’ve always said how I wish there was an interaction between Spike and Dark Willow but I’ve just realized something just now in writing this. He already was interacting with her the whole time. Dark Willow is already there right from the first episode of Season 6. There’s just no “makeover of the damned” because she’s not fully embracing the darkness yet. She doesn’t do that until Tara dies because that was the catalyst to push her over the precipice and fall. She doesn’t embrace the darkness because she’s convincing herself she was doing good.

It’s very clever what they do with Willow this season in that nobody even realizes that the Big Bad is right there with them. Hidden within the ranks of the good guys. Like a viper hidden in harmless vegetation. Something that’s purpose is to nourish and sustain you. Not bite and poison you. The only character that seems to realize this sudden change in Willow is Spike and that really is so interesting to me narratively and thematically because there’s layers upon layers of complexity with Willow that the only character that sees that in her is just as complex himself and I can’t imagine it’s very fun to see his reflection so he spends practically the whole season avoiding her because he can’t stand it. He can’t stand looking at himself. What he used to be. How he used to behave. How he still can if the dark side takes over and drives him over.

And you would think it’s because they’re just characters that wouldn’t interact because there’s no reason for them to why they don’t. I mean they don’t inform each other as characters usually. But rather - at least in Season 6 - I think that it is purposeful. It’s the point. He doesn’t want to interact with her because she scares him. She scares him because she reflects what he doesn’t want to see in himself because despite everyone still treating him as if he is (including the narrative), he isn’t evil anymore. He can still do evil things but his nature has changed because of his love for Buffy and Dawn. Because he cares for them and wants to protect them. I just think it’s so interesting that what was once the purest member of the Scooby Gang is the one member that Spike actively avoids now because he doesn’t want to deal with darkness anymore. He is looking towards the light. At least that was the plan. To change. But it doesn’t work out that way precisely because Buffy is brought back to life by Willow. So in a way she foils his plans by giving him exactly what it is he wanted. Which probably just made him even more scared of her come to think of it.

I really do think it’s interesting how Spike is with Willow in Season 6. To me they are the paralleled characters of the season. Even if not intentionally. It just makes sense to me given how I interpret them and their arcs. How they both struggle to hold on to who they believe they are and should be. And Spike’s had much more experience with darkness than Willow. He knows well what can happen if all control is lost when his anger flares up and he lets his dark side win.

[willosword]

god. steven universe future <3 cannot express how wild it was to witness all that happen live as the world's #1 Steven Understander