lilithhedwig

[lilithhedwig]

Not going to tag this as part of the ongoing Buffy group rewatch because it's only very tangentially related to the episode we're watching this week, but -- partly inspired by @badwolfwho1's thoughts on that episode --here are five ways Amy might have become a witch between her sole Season 1 appearance in Witch and her sole Season 2 appearance in Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered.

1) Amy gets roped into the school talent show by Principal Snyder, just like Buffy and the others do in canon. She can't sing or dance or play a musical instrument, so what is she going to do? It's when she's going through her mom's old things that were left behind in the attic one afternoon -- I'm not sure what the legal status of her house is, with her mother missing and presumed dead, but I bet it takes a while to figure it all out -- that it occurs to her that she could do a little bit of genuine magic and pass it off as a harmless illusion. Her mom did plenty of magic while in her body, after all, so surely it can't be that hard? It sounds a little reckless, sure, but it beats being made to look like a untalented loser in front of the whole school. But what will her act be? Maybe she could figure out a way to make a rabbit really appear out of a hat? Or turn somebody in the audience, or even herself, into a rabbit? Or failing that, some other animal that starts with the letter R? How dangerous could that be, after all. What's the worst that could happen?

2) Amy gets caught up in the collective nightmares of ... uh, Nightmares. Specifically, she's haunted by visions of Catherine Madison, back from the dead (or from wherever Amy thinks she ended up) and looking for revenge. She dreams that her mother takes control of her body again, only this time they don't exactly switch. Amy is trapped in her body, a passive observer, while Catherine puppets her body around, destroying her relationship with her father and her friends and using her as nothing but weapon to seek revenge on the people Catherine believes wronged her. And the worst part is that Amy can't speak or signal or shout out a warning to anyone, and Catherine never reveals herself to anyone but her, so everyone Amy cares about believes that she's the person responsible for all their misery and misfortune. When the nightmares are over, she knows this was a wake-up call. Next time her mom comes back -- and she will, surely, come back -- Amy won't be so lucky: it won't just be a dream that time. She needs to prepare; she has to be ready. Like Buffy said about her this episode, she needs to become a witch to survive her mother.

3) On a whim, Amy dresses up like a witch in Season 2's Halloween after being volunteered by Snyder into escorting a group of kids as they go trick-or-treating. Afterwards she's not really sure why she did it. And maybe it's a little bit in bad taste, but ... well, it's been months since anyone saw or heard anything of Catherine or any other witch. Amy's safe. She knows that, most of the time. Maybe it would be good for her to try to face her fears. She was going to dress up using some of her mother's old magical supplies as props, but luckily she doesn't need to do that. Her friend Michael tells her about a great new costume store called Ethan's that just opened up...

And afterwards, when it's all over, Amy -- just like Xander -- finds she still has the memories of the person she was briefly turned into. She knows how to do magic now. Real magic. Better, in some ways, she thinks, than Catherine ever could. She's not planning on following in her mother's footsteps at first, but ... well, she didn't ever get around to reading the book for Ms. Beakman's class, the paper's due tomorrow, and her dad would be so disappointed in her if she failed ...

4) Soon after the events of Witch, Amy becomes part of the official group of people who know about Buffy being a vampire slayer, partly at Willow's urging (she points out to Buffy it's not fair not to warn Amy about vampires and that she already knows about Buffy's super-strength and magic and everything). Amy quickly becomes a key part of the group. She figures out Xander is possessed early on (because she knows what it means when a Sunnydale student starts acting strangely and cutting off ties with their old friends) and helps save Herbert the Pig and turn all the Hyena-possessed kids back to normal. She helps Giles and Ms. Calendar bind Moloch and save Willow. She hangs out with Buffy and they bond over their shared experiences of parental divorces and of living with a single parent who often needs to be away from home working. She's in the library with the others when Buffy kills the Master and saves the world, and later she's kidnapped by the Anointed One along with Cordelia and Ms Calendar.

And, over the summer, at first under Ms. Calendar's careful instruction and then more and more on their own, she and Willow starting learning magic together. It's Amy's idea, at least at first, but Willow is soon really into it. Buffy and Ms Calendar just chalk this down to Willow's usual academic drive, but Amy figures out the truth. Yes, Willow puts up a brave front, but deep down she's still heartbroken about not being able to save Jesse last year. Maybe she can hide it from the others, but she can't hide it from her old childhood friend Amy. Jesse was Willow's friend, and she couldn't help him. But maybe, with magic, she still has a chance.

Willow increasingly becomes obsessed with using magic to try to bring Jesse back to life. Jesse's death wasn't natural, Willow insists to Amy. It wasn't fair. Maybe she finds out about the spell Wolfram & Hart use (in canon) to bring Darla back to life. Maybe she finds Giles' books of black magic, or finds out about the ritual she'll later (in canon) push Dawn towards when Joyce dies. Either way, she's going to do it, just as soon as she gets powerful enough. Amy's sure that this is a bad idea, but she doesn't know how to talk her friend out of it. Even when Willow starts hanging out with a creepy warlock called Rack from the bad part of town. Even after Amy finds her reading books about ritual sacrifices and forbidden old magicks and sharpening knives.

It's only when Ms. Calendar dies -- murdered by Angelus, who lost his soul and didn't want it back -- right before Amy was about to confide in her about Willow, that things change for good. It's only after Willow starts talking about bringing Ms Calendar back too, and making everyone who hurt her suffer, and her eyes and her hair start turning black, that Amy decides to do something. She can't convince Willow to change her mind with words, but maybe there's something else she can do. Maybe she can change her mind more directly. Maybe. if she resorts to a little dark magic of her own, she can make Willow forget all about Jesse. Make it so she never started down this path at all. Make it so that Willow -- and everybody else -- had forgotten all about Jesse the minute he died.

One night, alone in her room, the same night she knows Willow is heading to the cemetery to try to resurrect Jenny Calendar, Amy does it. It takes everything she has, it's harder than she thought anything could be, but she's able to save her friend from herself. Able to reach back in time and change everything. She falls asleep, exhausted, knowing that her spell worked just the way she wanted...

... and is very surprised to wake up the next day, firmly back on the outside of the group, with none of the others remembering she ever was one of the Slayerettes. Of course, in this new reality, Willow never missed Jesse. She didn't remember him; she had no subconscious urge to replace him. It had always just been her and Xander, right from the start. So she didn't have the same motivation to get back in contact with another old childhood friend, she didn't ever push Buffy to let Amy join the gang, and none of the last few months happened the way Amy remembered it. She can still do magic, she still knows who Rack is, but now there's nothing in her history that can possibly explain why.

Amy tells herself that that's okay. That Willow's better off that way. That everyone is.

And being able to do magic when nobody else can will come in handy. Amy becomes sure of that when she gets sent to the Principal's office because, apparently, in this reality -- without Willow's help -- she's not been keeping up with her classes. Only, wait. Who's this new guy? What happened to Principal Flutie?

5) The writers needed somebody to be a witch in order to kick start the main action of this episode, half-remembered the plot of Season 1's Witch and thought "wait, Amy's a witch, right? why can't we bring her back?". When they realized their error it was too late to make any real changes to the script except to throw in a couple of lines about how Amy's mother "is" (not "was", interestingly) a witch too and hope nobody asked any awkward questions. Not a very funny answer but I think this is quite probably what actually happened.

[lilithhedwig]

happy pride month 😂

[lilithhedwig]

actually a really key aspect of fuffy is that Buffy buys into the watchers council's fucked up ideology far more than she lets on. Faith believes Buffy is better than everyone because Buffy is a slayer. But it’s because Faith is a slayer that Buffy doesn't totally view Faith as a person. So yes, Faith is less deserving of redemption and forgiveness than someone like Willow, because Buffy is less deserving of redemption and forgiveness than other people. In Buffy's mind, when a weapon is not useful to the cause, you discard it. And that includes herself, and that includes Faith. And in s7 that includes the potentials.

[lilithhedwig]

People that claim Willow and Xander are bad friends are half right, but also ignore the crucial part of their characters, which is that they. do. not. leave. And because of that there are no two better friends for Buffy ‘abandonment issues’ Summers.

I definitely want to talk about this more, but I just think it is so important that Buffy, who is terrified of everyone leaving her, is surrounded by two idiots who refuse to leave the horror movie even when they really really should.

Like yeah, Cordy, Oz and Giles objectively have Buffy’s back more often - but they all leave!!! Even if it is for a perfectly valid reason (Cordy and Oz), Willow and Xander would never dream of jumping ship. At their core they’re still the first people who see Buffy and decide, actually, she doesn’t have to be alone, and she won’t be alone. And that is so important!!!

They cling to Buffy like a limpet because they centre their identities around her. And like okay, unhealthy much, but Buffy was ridiculously lucky to find these two immediately, bc no sane person is staying for 7 years in constant life or death situations. Not even Giles. Who, btw, is getting paid.

It makes it kind of hilarious that Buffy is so scared of her friends leaving her that she didn’t consider that they wouldn’t let her leave. Codependency so strong not even dying gets her out of it.

[lilithhedwig]

Thoughts on the new Buffy series and the comics:

Over on Reddit a lot of people are looking at this new Buffy series and the comics as an "either-or" type of situation rather than a "both can co-exist" situation. Largely this is due to the fact that most Buffy fans haven't actually read the comics (or have only read all or some of Season 8), so they don't even have a clear picture of how the comics end. But it's honestly so easy and doable for this new series to be post-comics, make a small acknowledgement of that in some way (Buffy mentioning that she lived in San Francisco for a little while, etc.), but not require any actual knowledge of the comics in and of themselves. Like, having it so that the stuff in the comics still happened doesn't mean that these things have to be directly adapted or shown in the new series, especially because Buffy's character is going to be a mentor and not the main character in the series.

The Buffy comics seasons ended when Buffy was 30 and this series is taking place with a Buffy that is likely going to be in her 40s. 10 - 15 years is a long enough time for some major changes to have occurred. Given all of the issues with Xander's actor, it's unlikely that his character is going to be present in the series. A lot of people heavily dislike the Dawn and Xander relationship in the comics, but if the series were to introduce Joyce (the daughter of Dawn and Xander in the comics) they could easily either 1. retcon this a bit so Joyce's father is someone else (like a random dude Dawn met at college) or 2 is still Xander's, but have it so that Xander passed away sometime during those 10 - 15 years. Since Buffy isn't going to be a main character, we likely aren't even going to get that much in the way of Dawn anyway, unless they involve Joyce into this (she would be around 15 max in the series if they were to do that, so she would be the teen age range that the series often has the characters start off at).

By the end of Season 11 the supernatural and demon world has gone back to being an underground thing, and by the end of Season 12 Giles is back to being his older self and Buffy is single. Everyone ends the series on fairly good terms too, so it's a fairly easy clean slate to transition from if the series were to take place after it.

There is the whole "Buffy becomes a cop" thing in Season 12, which I hate, so I wouldn't mind if they either retconned that as well or had it where Buffy experienced just how corrupt the system truly was from the inside-out and left. In Season 7 we saw Buffy training and preparing the Potentials with a slightly more grey point of view than Giles and in Season 11 we see Buffy really existing in those grey spaces, so this wouldn't necessarily be new grounds for Buffy in that sense. But we've always seen Buffy touting the idea that dangerous humans should be judged by the police and other human based systems that are in place. An ex-cop Buffy would likely approach this differently as well and train a Slayer with a different mindset in regards to all that, and it would fit in with a lot of the modern day hot topics and discussions surrounding ACAB, police corruption, and police brutality. So I would be down for it.

Of course, at the end of the day I'm not expecting this new series to acknowledge the comics in any way (and that's fine with me), but I do think that this new series and the comics could peacefully co-exist with each other. The series could easily take place after the events of Seasons 8 - 12, and it would be very easy and doable for people with no knowledge of the comics to still enjoy the content. This doesn't necessarily have to be an "either-or" situation. There is so much potential here.

Regardless of what they decide to do with all of that, I'm excited to see what and how this new series will be!

[lilithhedwig]

I love Buffy like the concept is awesome I love the monsters I love the characters even with their flaws and the way they speak and everything

But I can't shake the feeling every time I watch that Joss Whedon doesn't like his characters? It's not even the main cast and the fact that some issues don't get satisfactorily addressed because like, that's life! But like side characters that make sense to show up often due to being set in a small town and a school just get hardly any characterization which is a shame. Like Larry (think that's his name) is a hero in an alternate universe, he's gay, and he dies at graduation, he was also a bully, but we don't get to know anything more about him. Harmony gets bitten and then is comedic relief with no real satisfying ending even on angel. That random woman who Giles shacked up with for two episodes? Forgotten immediately. Any characters outside of the main ones that Buffy or her friends seem to have a good connection with in an episode? Well too bad they're never coming back again! Kendra? She is nervous around boys and more serious than Buffy, then she dies. She could have been so cool a character, they could have learned so much from each other! Oz, though I love him, leaves to control his werewolfness and there's no story telling us where that journey takes him. Amy was a promising friend to willow then turned into a rãt for years just cause. The annointed one seemed pointless, just a gag for Spike to use? Dawn makes friends in an episode which is cute and then they're never seen again. Just...there was so much potential for fleshing out the world but instead it feels so insular. Lonely almost. There's no world outside the immediate context of whatever the Scoobies are doing at that moment. I suppose it's just that they have a cool setting of a school and other media has used that to full effect having recurring characters that really make the place feel real and just don't use it at all. Like why is Buffy worrying about fitting in and hiding that she's the slayer when she doesn't talk to her classmates anyway? And why don't they try and put things in place to stop situations like the Invisible girl happening again? Why does Buffy and friends only interact with people if they're dating them or if they want information out of them? I know they work to certain beats every episode but there's something cold about it. I love Buffy but it does feel lonely in that world sometimes in a way I can't fully explain.

[lilithhedwig]

Young people have GOT to stop talking about conservatives like they're scary menacing monsters. Yes the policies they back are horrifically destructive but that's entirely because of how individually stupid, fearful, emotionally stunted, weak willed and catastrophically gullible they are. That all is what made them become right wing to begin with. Just the most easily manipulated zombie sheep on earth.

[lilithhedwig]

This this this right here is getting to me. Gif is from @terrapia

Yeah you could argue this parallels Silco but it doesn’t really. Silco didn’t want to give up jinx because she’s his daughter. Sevika doesn’t want to give up jinx because she’s a zaunite

And you know who that reminds me of so fucking much?

That’s Vander’s ideology right there. Vander could have done like Grayson suggested, picked any rando off the streets to take the fall for the apartment explosion, but he wouldn’t, because those are his people.

Vander was weak and Vander was a coward but Sevika followed him once, and there was a reason for that

Silco may have been the Eye of zaun, but Vander is its Heart, and that heart is still fucking beating

[lilithhedwig]

Okay but guys, the scene where Jayce and Vik hug and Viktor looks like THIS

This is NOT longing, not afffection --- this is resignation. This is a realization and immediate acceptance of "oh, this isnt important to me anymore. He cares so much and I did, too, in some far away past, but I dont reciprocate this anymore."

His return of the hug is indulgence, because its the appropriate thing to do, but it is not with any warmth. His priorities are forever altered. He cant even feel Jayce's warmth when he hugs him.

This is removed PITY.

[lilithhedwig]

[lilithhedwig]

Day 31: The Last Drop

past and present

[lilithhedwig]

pieces

[lilithhedwig]

There are two kinds of people, separated by the way they dealing with heart shuttering break up:

They becoming sad alcoholic hobo with no sense of personal hygiene...

2. ...or career overachiver.

[lilithhedwig]

[lilithhedwig]

I,,,, I uhhh,,,,,,, ummmmm uhhhhhhh

sketch I guess!

[lilithhedwig]

Unwilling revolutionary 💢

[lilithhedwig]

#something has just awoken inside me...