dawnsie

[dawnsie]

me, clicking on a video titled “in defense of the most hated buffy season” thinking it’s gonna be about s7 but instead it’s about one of my favorites (s6)

[dawnsie]

i’m knocking on your door because i can’t stop thinking about “you wanna know what i’m scared of right now, spike? me. right now, glory thinks tara’s the key. but i’m the key, spike. i am. and anything that happens to tara is ‘cause of me. your bruises, your limp - that’s all me too. i’m like a lightning rod for pain and hurt, and everyone around me suffers and dies. i must be something so horrible to cause so much pain and evil.”

[dawnsie]

the borrower.

dialogue prompts from the borrower by rebecca makkai.

i might be the villain of this story.

reckon i'm headed for hell, just like you.

you're the most terrific liar i ever saw in my life.

i have a hereditary proclivity for running away.

you told me to give you hell if you ever wore a cardigan again.

you'll do fine, no matter what.

don't make things worse.

was it freud who said there's no such thing as a mistake?

you pretend i overreact, even if i don't.

don't do it. don't get involved.

were you trying to escape, or coming to find me?

i'm looking for the booze.

you have good breath and beautiful eyelashes.

you need to think about something else.

so what are we supposed to talk about?

it's like from the time i was born, they've been taking away pieces of me and plugging them in with fake parts.

it's like they took away my heart and gave me a chunk of lead.

it was my fault, as much as it was anyone's.

how long did it take you to figure it all out?

i was more hapless than selfless.

don't tell. please.

you slept overnight here?

i watered your plants.

you need to relax a little bit.

go with the flow. improvise. be spontaneous.

chocolate is my one true love.

where are you going, really?

if this were a movie, i'd have to kill you.

i don't believe in keeping secrets about the past.

when we have false assumptions about the world, we make the wrong decisions.

do you have any pictures?

it's unclear what home i'm sick for.

sorry, honey. they won't let us smoke.

we care more about being right than about doing what is right.

only come get me if i'm in trouble.

i can't even see straight.

i think what you did was very brave. i wanted to make sure i said that.

we need a story, and it needs to be a good one.

you just have to have a sense of humor about it.

should i hug you?

that was your bat signal. i need your help.

you're all vigilante and risking your life and shit.

did i do good?

you're amazing. and you will never tell anyone about this.

i make too much of a mess of things.

i do still believe that books can save you.

there should be special stickers for books with happy endings.

i'm practically a ghost here already.

i haven't stopped moving for months, not even in my sleep.

[dawnsie]

shy.

dialogue prompts from shy: a novel by max porter.

express how you're feeling.

the future is here. it's yours.

sneaky little dickhead.

you really are intent on crashing your own train, aren't you?

i always imagine how things will be and then get upset when they're not just like that.

i don't think i like your attitude.

why are you doing this to me?

i love _____. much more than i've ever loved you.

don't bother me next time. just leave me alone.

it's a cosmic miracle we ever get through the night.

is everything okay in there?

i called you twenty or thirty times.

i won't have you defined by your past.

you can be honest. did i upset you?

classic only child.

i know you're awake. i know you can hear me.

why do you want to hurt me?

you need to have another think.

is it ever exhausting to be you?

time must be passing.

the night is huge, and it hurts.

look at me when i'm talking to you.

what a shit-show.

it's a multi-season job, knowing yourself.

does that make you feel ashamed?

does this ghost voice sound like you?

do you worry what the others think of you?

we'll never forget this.

things are looking pretty good for you, right?

i don't want to think about what might be out here.

you like to self-sabotage. isn't that right?

stop pretending to know me. you only know what i tell you.

admit you love the drama.

i wish i'd never been born.

what are you trying to escape from?

i could do with a bit less bullshit from you.

time is something to get wasted and escape from.

it's hard work, getting harder.

you won't be defined by who you are now. you won't even much remember.

i'm not especially sorry about _____, to be honest.

you've only got one body.

does everything have to enjoy the same things you do?

little things get so big in my head.

if you dish it out, you've got to take it.

you've got the voice of an angel.

education is salvation.

you're not usually lost for words.

i don't like being trapped between sleep and awake.

i'm not lost. i'm right where i got myself.

no frightening the locals.

they should tell kids stuff like this.

is this a totally stupid idea?

did someone do something to you?

how did you die?

smash every last window if you need to.

[dawnsie]

dawn becoming a watcher and helping break the cycle of how slayers are treated? yes thank you for coming.

[dawnsie]

sometimes therapy looks like being trapped in a literal grave with your recently resurrected sister who’s been struggling with wanting to be alive while you’ve been struggling with her death and then her mental absence afterward and you guys end up crawling out of said grave together having decided to reclaim her will to live

[dawnsie]

Thinking about how Dawn goes to sacrifice herself and Buffy doesn’t let her. She is not at fault for her existence. Thinking about how Buffy chooses to stop her sister from being eaten by the same world that foretold her own death when she was only a year older. A meaningless death she walked into because she didn’t have all of the information. And the tragedy of The Gift is that Buffy dies, but the triumph of The Gift is that Buffy decides to die and have her death mean something - both the world and her sister are saved. She has all the knowledge, for once, and she wins.

And the horror of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that it is a world in which one teenage girl, plucked from innocence and ignorance, is sacrificed for the rest of us. Whether it’s Dawn or Buffy or one of the many slayers that came before. The tragedy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for me is the dehumanization of these girls. Dawn selflessly acting to sacrifice herself is an act of heroism; Buffy stopping her is the moment the show tells us that Dawn *is* a person, actual and whole. And Dawn’s life is worth the world because all of our lives are.

Dawn in The Gift is the through-line for me to Buffy in Chosen - the choice to break the cycle of forced sacrifice. The choice that looks at all those girls and makes the world recognize they are more than cannon fodder. More than objects to be used and abused and discarded. The potentials become slayers who have the ability and the free will to be heroic, to choose to fight - to have the knowledge and the power to decide what to do with it.

The same way Buffy does on that tower, staring at her brave sister. The sister who doesn’t know there is another way, and who is willing and ready to walk to her death.

[dawnsie]

yeah dawn’s got the “wanted by a demonic entity to play a role in an apocalyptic ritual” package, it came free with her “younger sibling in a monster of the week style show”

[dawnsie]

i’m knocking on your door because i can’t stop thinking about “you wanna know what i’m scared of right now, spike? me. right now, glory thinks tara’s the key. but i’m the key, spike. i am. and anything that happens to tara is ‘cause of me. your bruises, your limp - that’s all me too. i’m like a lightning rod for pain and hurt, and everyone around me suffers and dies. i must be something so horrible to cause so much pain and evil.”

[dawnsie]

You told me I had to be strong, and I've tried. But it's been so hard without you. Buffy the Vampire Slayer | 6.02 “Bargaining: Part 2”

[dawnsie]

“Don't look at me. This is a Summers' thing. It's all very violent.”

[dawnsie]

#dawnsie : a writing blog for dawn summers of btvs. anti-whedon, and highly critical of canon characters. rules under the cut.

DOSSIER.

VERSES.

ASK MEMES.

dni : minors, incest shippers, racists, transphobes, et cetera. also do not come at me with any delusions of xander/dawn, ew.

other rules :ㅤ this blog is mutuals only, meaning that i only write with those who i follow and those who follow me. i enjoy shipping and plotting, but i have a full time job and a life outside this website. sometimes my responses ic and ooc will be sporadic, but it's not indicator of my interest. i do tend to be more likely to reply to things that are actively plotted and discussed. i also encourage you to curate your own spaces - if you need something tagged, my dms are open. if you no longer want to follow, i ask that you hardblock in order to prevent me from refollowing. this is a highly canon critical space, especially for xander and the scoobies - even buffy sometimes. this doesn't mean i hate the characters, but i think it's worth interrogating the way dawn is treated by the others. she's not perfect either.

blogwide trigger warnings : derealization, self harm, blood, human sacrifice.

[dawnsie]

Honestly don’t get people who don’t like Dawn and don’t understand her okay she is Buffy’s sister she is Buffy’s daughter she IS Buffy she is an unspeakably ancient mystical eldritch being capable of bringing hell to earth she is 14 years old she is barely a year old she is angry and emotional and annoying and does bad things sometimes she is pure and beloved by all WHATS NOT CLICKING??????

[dawnsie]

dawn and the knowledge that no one would have attempted an extremely dangerous ritual to bring her back from the dead if she’d been the one to die.

[dawnsie]

did you ever hear about the girl who got frozen? time went on for everybody else, she won't know it.

[dawnsie]

so have had a couple conversations with people about dawn that have made me think that maybe my take on dawn is worth bringing to the table! it's best framed by my convo with my mom, who was expressing general dawn frustration -- not just with dawn's characterization, but more specifically with the retcon in. and dawn's characterization, as we all know, is very "baby teenage girl" + "was originally written as younger than fourteen," so that's a straightforward explanation, but the retcon to me has always felt emblematic of dawn's status in the narrative as buffy's childhood innocence.

dawn is buffy. she's a part of buffy. the show emphasizes this in season five: that to buffy, dawn feels like more than just a sister and therefore more vital to protect. i've seen this framed as dawn being sort of like buffy's spiritual daughter, but i think that's a little off base: dawn is buffy's innocence, her girlhood, personified. she shows up in season five because if we're charting buffy's emotional journey, season five is the season where buffy feels like she is calcifying and becoming unfeeling because of everything that she's been through -- so of course this is the season where dawn springs into being but simultaneously Has Always Been There! buffy has reached a point of emotional distress so severe that the little girl in her has sprung away and out of reach, becoming a literal other person who is somehow always getting into trouble and causing problems. dawn is this little girl. dawn is a part of buffy.

and this contextualizes EVERYTHING that buffy goes through this season re: dawn. everyone in the entire world is bearing down on her girlhood, and it is her responsibility as the slayer to kill it. like from a pragmatic standpoint, killing dawn would (as giles points out) solve the big-picture problem, because killing dawn means that glory no longer has access to this Exploitable Thing that will allow her to end the world. killing dawn is also what the knights of byzantium are trying to do, and they're presented as just as much of an obstacle as glory, despite having the fate of the world in mind as well. she is posed with this essential choice, and it is so horrifying to her that the penultimate episode shows her literally retreating into her mind, playing over and over all of these moments where she was told it's her responsibility to protect this vital part of her, and the one moment she entertained the notion of just Giving Up. just Letting That Part Die.

which in turn makes her choice at the VERY end of the season so heartbreaking -- she is posed with this question and she chooses, instead, to die. she does not want to let go of her innocence. she does not want to live in a world where she has been forced to kill that part of herself, and so she tries to kill herself instead.

[dawnsie]

ㅤㅤDawn is a nerd. ㅤShe loves comic books, science fiction, fantasy  -  all of it. She’s a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which she used to sit and watch with her dad when she was a little girl. She likes to catch re-runs after school.