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Sapphic Gif Meme

[8/10] Sapphic Characters: Willow Rosenberg

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In light of some of the many things happening across the world this year, I thought this Pride Month needed a special illustration.

Happy Pride Month, may we all stay safe, look after each other, and keep painting our rainbows, no matter what. 🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

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I’m not saying that Willow needed to be single forever after Tara, but there was no narrative need to push her into a random relationship in season 7 with a girl whose only character traits are…rich, likes being in charge and calling young teen girls maggots, blew off important training to flirt, and has a tongue piercing.

if they really needed her to be more relevant, Kennedy could’ve flirted heavily with Willow and been gently turned down with Willow realizing that though the attraction was there, she needed time to distance herself from the memory of Tara before starting something new. (Or an examination of during war times there are people who need easy relief and people who are scared of loving only to lose again.) Kennedy could’ve been paired up with another potential yet still wanted to be in charge and that conflict could have created strain - further showing the burden of leadership on relationships. or she could’ve been someone who looked up to Willow as a mentor, which would add potentially more magic power/give Willow the opportunity to firmly establish magic knowledge and boundaries by teaching another.

I don’t know, it just seemed to fall flat as a pairing. like oh? Willow is gay? here, have a girlfriend! as opposed to thinking more of her character and time in her life.

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am taking perverse pleasure in reminding people it's 2025. that's a star trek year. silly little science fiction number. except it's happening, and DANG ain't it underwhelming!

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TARA x WILLOW: MY TEARS RICOCHET (uploaded 7/22/2022)

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An AU idea (set somewhere, probably, in early season 7) where Tara is still alive and under instructions by Giles, both Willow and Tara return back to England to finish Willow's healing.

It's the last place that Willow wants to be, especially with some big and evil brewing in Sunnydale, but Tara persuades Willow that it's an important step in her healing, that it's important for her to go, and that Buffy and the gang can handle them being away for a little while.

Being there... it's almost as nerve-wrecking as coming back to Sunnydale was, to remember... everything. How she felt, what she did, and what she almost did.

Tara does her best to remind Willow that being here doesn't have to be all bad and makes plans for special trips while they're out, like going for walks among the beautiful English countryside, the cold mornings where they make tea (instead of coffee) and cuddle up outside with extra blankets and watch the sun rise, and the sound of rain as they fall asleep in each other's arms. Tara makes sure that their trip will be remembered for more than just Willow's suffering, and while there are definitely days spent with Willow in bed or struggling to forgive herself, Tara is patient and gentle with her. There's no rush to move on from anything until Willow is ready, and Tara reminds Willow that healing is not linear.

One morning, while making tea for both Tara and herself, Willow finds a camera resting on the countertop. It's Tara's way of showing that not everything needs to be bad, that there will be good memories to be found here and so, experimentally, Willow takes a couple of photos of the English countryside and of Tara. She's really proud of the one that she took with the statue in the background, a trip somewhere to a botanical garden.

The number of photos of rings of toadstools, however, that Willow notices on the camera makes her feel... uneasy. She can't remember taking them and soon, strange occurrences start happening in the house that Willow and Tara are staying at. At first, they're easy to overlook but overtime, moments like 'where did my toothbrush go?' and other objects disappearing or being moved to other areas of the house starts to turn into something more...

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I’m going to do a Buffy and Tara gifset and talk about the significance of their relationship/dynamic - the little of it we get. I’ll talk more about it then - for now enjoy this Taffy character study video by Faith Victoria (known as @willnotacceptalifeundeserved on here).

And yes: before you ask, I will be involving the gay/queer allegory for Buffy’s ‘Slayerness’. Just because they actively removed the line that explicitly confirmed that they were paralleling and pairing Buffy and Tara because of how they understood and related to each other over their gay/queer sexuality - thinly disguised by their identity as a witch/slayer - doesn’t mean that they still didn’t go this route with them. They just left it down to audience interpretation.

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I do love Faith's tactic of 'dance with vampire, get vampire outside by suggesting a shag in the alley, stake vampire'.

While a lot of Faith's hypersexual persona is implied to be a result of some truly hideous trauma I am not remotely equipped to fully unpack, that's a pretty slick hunting tactic, turning the vampire's way of finding prey against them.

I do rather regret that Faith had the turning-evil plot, because honestly, I feel like she and Buffy could make an absolutely astonishing tag-team takedown of all your slasher movie tropes - surprise! Both the blonde damsel-in-distress final-girl type and the dark-haired 'slutty' foil who's supposed to be the first to die can and will kill anything that comes after them without even really breaking a sweat! Andalsomaybethey'redating- Ahem. Who said that?

Oh, well. Maybe post-canon.

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One of my favorite ironies of the Buffy fandom going back to the OG forums:

Is that while the show explicitly goes out of its way even then to show that putting Tara on a pedestal and reducing her worth to the relationships around her was literally wrong and an evil demon cult thing was the people doing that, the fanbase has done this the entire time. It's one thing with Willow even when this is literally the reason at both a Watsonian and a Doylist level that the relationship was at minimum going to be sailing full speed into shallow rocky waters.

That, at least, is a case of misguided blends of enthusiasm and that the relationship and the show had that particular bit of its contribution to history and culture precisely from it, which leads people to reflexively defend and extend things from inertia when all things change and we change with them. Even then it is still the healthiest relationship on the show....because all the others, even Willow's with Oz and Kennedy, fail to exceed the bars it set. Everything else is worse more than it is good, to put it simplest.

But the irony there in how much Tara's arc ultimately hinges around her worth being in direct proportion to her being a relationship trophy for Willow, Buffy, or Faith (and back in ye olde days sometimes for Spike, for some bizarre reason, or Xander for predictable but sad ones) is that it is literally the mistake that drives her and Willow both off a cliff in universe.

If she had been asked this in Seasons 4 and 5 she might have agreed with it, not growing out of it was how and why things went badly in Season 6. Leaving her to stay dead from 7 onward meant that her growth arc and Willow's were left half-finished and she never got to complete her own and to re-establish a relationship on her own, better terms. Nor did Willow, who escaped by the cruelest means accountability to her worst deeds with the person she most needed to show it to.

And yet the fandom literally misses the point that even the toxic misogynistic bully Joss Whedon wrote and these are the people who consider themselves Tara's fans when they're more like the Season 6 Willow who rewrote her memories or her family in-universe than the kind of fans she'd actually deserve.

Media illiteracy is unfortunately a lot older than people wish to think, social media might have worsened it but it's been there a very long tim.

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That embarrassing moment when lack of sleep and no filter lead to you being the goober who gave away show spoilers.

Old show or not, oof.

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“First of all, I’m engaged. To a woman”

“I promised Tara we’d have the night to OURSELVES”

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Day 28 - 30: Addams Family and Enid with Snoods on Hallows Eve

Thing took the picture! He has his own snood bundled up on his wrist lol

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Give me the speech again, please. ‘Faith, we’re still your friends. We can help you. It’s not too late.’

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do you ever think about the billions of Kryptonians who died when Krypton exploded, completely blindsided, never even knowing that this was a possibility. only kara and kal-el getting out in time, astra, a general being sentenced to the phantom zone, where some of the worst criminals in the galaxy are sent since krypton doesn’t have a death penalty, for trying to get the information out there and not complying with the counsel’s orders to be passive, to just let it happen.

Almost no one knew that Krypton was about to die. Hell who knows for how long Kara knew, or if she was even told at all before they sent her in that pod. Kara would have wanted to tell everyone and well–look at what they did to Astra.

Lmao “kryptonians can be arrogant” trust me i think kara learned that lesson long ago, while she watched everything and everyone she ever cared about go up in a swirling ball of flames (and if she didn’t know as a child? she now has alura’s hologram. “why am i the only survivor, besides kal-el” is something she has definitely wondered)

Kara is someone who watched a world die because politicians decided to play god, to decide exactly what her people could and couldn’t know about their own livelihood. Do you ever think about in that context, Kara wanting to be a reporter–someone who serves the public, someone who reveals secrets powerful people do not want the world to know–and remember that Kara has very different reasons than her cousin for following that career path?

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Supergirl the show poses a question: Who is the real Kara?

Kara Zor-El, Kara Danvers, Supergirl. Who's the mask?

In the beginning, Kara doesn't even know. In the aftermath of Krypton's and Kenny's deaths, she did everything she could to appear as normal as possible - there was little room for her own innate traits to shine through when she was being as nondescript and people-pleasing as possible.

But that's not who Kara is.

We get the first glimpse of who Kara really is during Flight 237.

This is not about her being Supergirl or her powers (though both are relevant). Kara has suppressed herself for over a decade. She's not going to make waves - until she has to. Our first real insight into who Kara is now is as a devoted sister. It wasn't until Alex's life was at risk that Kara started breaking out of her shell (and then there was no holding back).

Our protagonist is a mid-20s adult - this isn't a coming-of-age story in the traditional sense. But it is a story of finding oneself and what it takes to get there.

And it starts with defending found family after a lifetime of loss.

So Kara creates the Supergirl persona. I think the cape is a crutch.

People say "a crutch" like it's a bad thing. But crutches are actually pretty fucking useful. They support you when you need it, whether it be short-term or long-term. They help you get around when you otherwise may not be able to.

Kara was deeply traumatized by losing everyone and everything she ever knew, being thrown into a world that overwhelmed her senses and made even her most casual movements into dangerous ones, and was told she needed to suppress everything - who she used to be, what she was going through now - to survive.

To find herself again, maybe she'd need a tool to get past what she had been through! The cape became that tool. She was able to unbury the heritage she had been hiding, she was able to embrace the powers that had burdened her, she was able to find her own bravery (and reactivity, she's got flaws in there too).

Keep in mind, in the scene above, Kara isn't "human for a day". Kara is powerless... just like she spent the first 13 years of her life. Her bravery isn't about her powers or Supergirl; they just help her get started.

That's not where her growth ends.

Kara's instincts for helping people start getting unburied in season 1, and she is excited to tag along someone else's quest to figure out where future threats may lie, or figure out how she can use her powers in service to the DEO.

But it's not until this moment that she realizes that Kara Danvers can be more, too. Lena unintentionally launches Kara's career - a second pathway for Kara's desire to help people, growing into a passion she is going to pursue (even if she gets fired). Her worth is no longer just about her sun-granted powers or being Superman's "younger" cousin.

In season 4, we even see her realization that Kara Danvers can be more powerful than Supergirl, because some fights can't be won by fists. That's a real discovery for herself.

Which I think, looking back, might becoming especially baffling for her... because Kara Danvers as originally an identity imposed on her when she needed to hide.

It's important to note that, while Kara Danvers was originally a facade that Kara gets at thirteen, she doesn't stay a facade - even in the suppression era.

We don't see enough of who Kara is when she's on Earth, left to her own devices. But we see glimpses - we know she likes baking (and we know we shouldn't try what she makes), we know she paints, we know she listens to NSync and Britney Spears. She's a goofball (even when she puts on the cape). Kara Danvers starts as a facade, but becomes a vehicle for Kara to continue developing her personality, now in her new context.

Would she have the same interests on Krypton? Maybe some and not others, maybe some new ones that don't exist on Earth. We're all products of our environments, after all. Her interests as Kara Danvers aren't necessarily fake just because they're different than what she expected.

Though she'll never know who she would've become on Krypton.

Which brings us to Kara Zor-El - the identity that is frozen.

Most people aren't the same person as an adult that they were as a child. Interests, tastes, personality, world outlook, philosophy - all of these shift over time, sometimes dramatically.

Parts of her are going to be deeply rooted in Krypton, and she's going to have ties to a culture that no one else on Earth has. It's not an aspect of herself that she can erase. But it's also not an aspect of herself that was able to develop for the remainder of her childhood and early adulthood.

She, like all of us, was destined to lose pieces of herself. But some of her loss was very sudden, and the pieces she lost probably weren't going to be the same on Krypton. Of course, she has no way to know.

And I think that frustrates her.

I guess my answer to "Who is Kara?" is that the three personalities clash with and harmonize with each other. None of them are truly her. All of them inform who she is.

There's a young Kara Zor-El as her root that was torn from the ground before she could ever grow.

There's a Kara Danvers who formed the bulk of her life - a mask that was given to her, the only vehicle for her personality, who ultimately became someone she could embrace as worthwhile in her own right.

There's a Supergirl who distinctly separates from those around her, but lets her move past her numbness and reclaim her heritage.

And it's that clash that makes her a particularly compelling character.

Maybe that's a cheating answer to the original question.

But there's still a missing piece to the puzzle - because it's not just about Who is Kara? but also about Who does Kara want to be?

I think Supergirl is something that could fade if needed. If Kara lost her powers, she would find a new normal, so long as she was able to pursue her desire to help the world in some capacity.

But the truth of her is somewhere between Kara Danvers and Kara Zor-El. The truth of her is in what Supergirl allowed her to unbury, even if not directly tied to Supergirl herself. But Danvers and Zor-El are burdens, in a way. Lena is one of the few people who sees the person in between, who understands Kara on her own terms. Which is why Kara is terrified of Lena's rejection.

I think it's one of the most telling lines in the show - to be just Kara is to be free of her own baggage, to be able to embrace herself despite the pain in her history. Something I think we all want, that is never entirely possible.

But the pursuit is still a worthwhile one.

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As a desperate lesbian who has been wanting a sapphic Wednesday portrayed for AAAAGES now, I still can't believe these things that the show gave me:

THE Wednesday Addams being shown jealous of a character that barely has any lines MULTIPLE times just because Enid mayyybe wants to choose said minor character as a roomie/bestie over her

BFFs Thing and Enid ganging up on Wednesday over her fashion sense and her pouting about it

Wednesday, who takes pride in her independence and relishes in isolation, admitting to have missed anyone is unthinkable. But she did! In her own way. Even if she was roundabout with her admittance, the fact that she got called out by both Thing and the goddamn villain shows how down bad she was during that fallout with Enid

"Thing said he missed you" and the way she visibly struggles against her nature to say "Skip the tape" with the tape symbolizing her breaking down her walls for Enid

something about Thornhill, who is played by an actress who also used to play Wednesday, telling this new Wednesday that she has to admit someday how much Enid has come to mean to her is just... ugh. Will never get over how much it adds so many layers to Wednesday's self-denial.

she held off all the insults in her bottomless vocabulary so she wouldn't completely offend Enid over the snood she made for her. She sugarcoated her words for Enid, which Wednesday NEVER does. In fact, it's the opposite of what she always does!

Enid VS Tyler bearing so much resemblance to that classic trope where the Love Interest saves the girl from the other Love Interest, even being a parallel to the fight between Gomez and Garret over Morticia

Enid lamented how she would never find a mate because she's not a real werewolf and would hence die alone, to which Wednesday remarks that it's a good thing in episode one. To emphasize Wednesday's apparent indifference to isolation, she is told that her nature as a raven means that she is fated to be alone like Enid feared for herself. In the finale, after Wednesday accepts that she doesn't want to be alone in the wake of her fallout with Enid, Enid finally wolfs out to save Wednesday. Enid made Wednesday realize that she doesn't actually like being alone, at least not when it meant she wouldn't have Enid by her side. In turn, Wednesday's life being threatened gave Enid the push to finally wolf out and, supposedly, now be given an opportunity to be eligible for a mate. I mean... I don't have high hopes, but the narrative is making it too easy to make it look like they were meant for each other

The heavy implication that Wednesday joined the Poe Cup because Bianca specifically said she wanted to make Enid cry over losing. The fact that she always deflected whenever Enid tried to confirm that Wednesday is doing it for her, but she never outright denied it!

"The mark you have left on me is indelible" and "I'll think of you" about Enid aksnnzzinsosnsj she gets sooooo sappy for herrrr

THE HUG. For people she's very very soft for, like her family, she only ever let THEM touch her. She's never show to start or reciprocate. SHE pulls Enid back into her. She holds Enid just as tightly, despite the injuries and despite Enid's pink coat. Enid toughens up for her but Wednesday is so vulnerable for her my god im so ill for them 💀