#AND BUFFY IS AN ABUSE VICTIM

[jennycalendar]

help me im a beauty and the beasts fan on top of being a dead man’s party fan. very worried about returning to s3 and having more unhinged takes

[ssaalexblake]

I’m always thinking about that tumblr post that said s6 of BTVS should have swapped out Xander for Tara. Willow having an utter breakdown and violent rampage because Xander got murdered is as realistic as what did happen, and Tara could easily take the place of Xander in the final episodes and bring Willow back. 

Tara in s7 would have made everything Much less of a clusterfuck, and really all that they’d miss would be Xander’s convenient construction skills in fixing the house when evil doesn’t bother to knock, but honestly Buffy was perfectly fine working construction! She was not bad on a site, it’s just assholes will be misogynists and demons attacked, she could absolutely pick up that skill. 

Tara would spend the season in Buffy’s corner, because the real thing that Infuriates me about s7 is that they spend the whole time telling Buffy she should become a general, stop being too easy on the girls, stop being so Soft, to take it seriously, and the second she becomes this cold general they all expect her to be they unceremoniously kick her out of her own house. But Tara’s presence would not have ever allowed it to even get as far as that moment, Tara wouldn’t have stopped them booting her because had she been there the catalyst never would have even happened imo. 

Having Tara there would have eased the magical burden on Willow, that whole mess where Dawn almost dies because she thinks she’s a potential never would have happened bc Tara’s not an idiot like the rest of them and while she may have left Dawn to her privacy, she’d be aware she has a history of sneaking out and would have kept watch for it (tara is shown as a Very good caregiver to dawn and knows her very well). 

She’d also be respectful of the fact that Spike Has changed, or at least gained more perspective on his own self, but wouldn’t give him any ground At All. Or forgive him. She’d be weary and always watching to keep him in check but she’d not demean Buffy for her not wanting to kill him or potentially having feelings for him. (like, buffy’s reasoning for keeping him around Were sound! but the others were right to point out that he’s a danger! they could have easily reached a compromise here where spike is detained but not killed until they could fix the trigger problem.)

I don’t know how the season would form Exactly without the fabricated drama infighting, but they have enough evil to not worry about that. 

[matan4il]

To the Nonnie who asked me about the mass grave in Gaza, you're pretty close to the truth of it rather than the anti-Israel propaganda.

First of all, the mass grave next to the hospital in Gaza has been shown already to have been dug before Israel got there.

Now, it wasn't untouched by the Israeli army, but that is a result of two contributing factors, both of which linked to Hamas.

One is because of the bodies of terrorists, who were using the hospital, and were killed during the fighting. They had to be buried somewhere. This is the Nasser hospital, the biggest medical center which was still active in Gaza after the very biggest, the Shifa hospital, had to be raided twice, because Hamas terrorists returned and re-took it, after the IDF evacuated it to allow the place to function as normal. If during the second operation in the Shifa hospital, there were 200 terrorists killed there, and at least 900 more suspects arrested, of which at least 500 were confirmed terrorists as of the end of the operation on April 1, how many terrorists were fighting against the IDF from Nasser, the last big medical complex they could use, when we know the abuse of Gaza hospitals for murderous purposes by terrorists is systematic? (I'm not accepting any numbers claimed by "Gaza's health officials," where no terrorists are mentioned at all, because that's Hamas speaking) Where do people think all those terrorists went to, those who did not surrender? Do people think this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and if you stake a villain through the heart, then their body just goes "poof" into thin air, and there's no need to bury it?

The second factor is that Israel did exhume corpses that had been previously buried on the Nasser hospital grounds, to test them for DNA, in case they were what was left of murdered Israeli hostages, still held captive.

This has been done for a while, before this mass grave by the Nasser hospital started making the social media "headlines," so no one can claim this is an excuse made up now, because of this, and in fact, several bodies of Israeli hostages were returned to Israel thanks to the IDF's work, and the first one that comes to mind is that of 19 years old Noa Marziano, because her body was exhumed from the Shifa hospital grounds. She was held hostage in an apartment near the hospital, then moved into Shifa itself, and murdered in its basement. So yeah, guess where they buried her... Together with Noa, Yehudit Weiss' body was also recovered from the Shifa hospital grounds, and returned to her family in Israel.

If people don't like that the Israeli army has had to check bodies buried on hospital grounds for DNA, and then re-bury them together in a mass grave in the same place, then they should take it up with Hamas for murdering people on hospital grounds and for holding corpses as hostages in the first place. We're all living in the twisted reality created by Hamas.

And you know how we can tell that this part, about the bodies being exhumed to check for DNA isn't made up? Because we have regular Palestinians themselves admitting the bodies they're currently looking for in the mass grave are of their loved ones who were already dead by the time Israel got there.

Just to summarize this lunacy, we are being accused of massacring terrorists (who are legitimate targets, killing them was not a massacre, even if we were really successful at it) and already dead people. Make it make sense.

As for the added accusations that Israel skinned the Gazans and stole their organs... The anti-Israel crowd literally claims Israel stole organs in Haiti, when all we did was to send our military emergency medical staff to set up a field hospital there (to help the victims of the earthquake in 2010), and these lies are currently being repeated in print by The Palestine Telegraph (which is based in Gaza. You know, the place where nothing is published if it goes against Hamas interests). If that act of kindness and help could be turned into something sinister and monstrous just because the Jewish state was involved, it's almost a given the same would happen when Israel is at present dragged against its will into a defensive war. It's a recycling of the age old antisemitic blood libels, portraying the Jews as bloodthirsty and capable of any monstrosity. It's antisemitism, pure and simple. THAT is why the Jewish state has to be "comically evil in every way imaginable," like you said. Remember how for centuries in Europe, the 'bloodthirsty Jew' trope served to lie that we kill Christians to use their blood when baking our Passover matzahs? The following cartoon isn't from the Middle Ages, it's from 2018, and depicts Gazans, not European Christians (see the tire in one Palestinian man's hand? In Hamas-organized violent riots that aimed to breach Israel's border in 2018, as they succeeded in doing on Oct 7, many participants burned tires to create a screen of black smoke that would impair IDF soldiers' vision):

Meanwhile, the Islamist terrorist organization and Hamas' buddy, Hezbollah (which has been intentionally firing at civilian communities in northern Israel for months), has killed yet another Israeli civilian overnight, Sharif Suad, an Israeli Arab Muslim Bedouin. Watch the anti-Israel crowd ignore his murder, just like they erase all Israeli civilians victimized. Arab deaths don't count if they can't be used against the Jewish state.

I hope this helped! Take care. xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

FINALS

PROPAGANDA

BUMBLE (WARRIOR CATS) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) Back with another Warriors submission, I bet you’ll be getting a lot from other people too LMAO. Bumble is a kittypet (housecat) who befriends the male protagonist Gray Wing’s girlfriend, Turtle Tail, and lets her stay in her house. This gets Gray Wing all pissy because he’s controlling of Turtle Tail and shares most of the wild/clan cat’s proclivity for looking down upon kittypets. Turtle Tail gets pregnant by another kittypet, Tom, who tries to control her by hiding the fact that humans take away kittens after they’re born. Eventually Bumble comes clean about it so Turtle Tail returns to the forest. Some time later, Bumble is found in the forest seeking refuge because Tom has been physically abusing her, scratching her where the humans can’t see. So, she’s CANONICALLY ACKNOWLEDGED as a domestic abuse victim (unlike Squirrelflight who meets all the textbook signs but the narrative and authors deny it). How do you think our good guy protagonists, i.e. Gray Wing “The Wise” and Turtle Tail, respond to an abuse victim seeking refuge? They tell Bumble to go home, thinking to themselves that she’s fat and soft and therefore would be useless in their group. Bumble stands up for herself and asks to speak with the leaders of the group. One of them asks if Bumble could just get along with Tom better (bro???) and when Bumble says it’s not within her control, the leader suggests being nicer to the humans instead. Another rival leader butts in and verbally abuses Bumble again by ripping into how fat and lazy and useless she would be. Despite Turtle Tail having been friends with Bumble and Bumble had helped her through her own hard times, to Gray Wing’s approval Turtle Tail chooses not to intervene as Bumble is forcibly escorted back to her abuser. But that’s not all. Later Bumble is found in the forest maimed and dying, and it seems likely that Gray Wing’s brother Clear Sky, a male with a long history of violence, is the culprit. Rather than mourn the dying innocent cat, Gray Wing’s primary concern is how other cats might be mean to Clear Sky if they think he’s a murderer, and reassures himself that refusing to help Bumble in her time of need was still the right decision.

2.) I have no idea how she managed to be written so horrifically from an abuse victim and woman (/she-cat I guess) standpoint but here we are. Okay so my memory is a bit fuzzy but basically Bumble was a character in Dawn of the Clans and a close friend to Turtle Tail, a major character, as well as a character who lived close to Tom, an abusive dickhead of a cat. Bumble was largely depicted as just a really sweet cat. Turtle Tail was very briefly the mate of Turtle Tail, but once she got pregnant, he became super violent towards both her and our gal Bumble. Tom actively hid the fact that, once her kits were old enough, Turtle Tail’s kits would probably be taken from her, and made Bumble keep quiet about this too, but Bumble eventually told Turtle Tail the truth, Turtle Tail left and Tom became extremely violent towards Bumble because of this, and was extremely abusive towards her. Eventually, Bumble ran away from him to where Turtle Tail and co were and begged to stay, since the wilderness as a whole was genuinely more safe than being around Tom was. Naturally, this meant kitty xenophobia from cats who had only arrived in that area recently, because everybody was insistent than, since she was a kittypet/house cat, things wouldn’t work out, and even her friend Turtle Tail denied her on this, insisted she was too soft to live in the wild and only sent her towards a cat Bumble wanted to convince because she was absolutely certain she’d be denied. Also our good old protagonist Gray Wing got to spend this scene being all upset about this soft cat wanting to join them to escape an abuser and was all bitter about the fact that Turtle Tail lived with her for a short period of time, and he also got to have a sweet romantic moment with Turtle Tail after denying an abuse victim an escape from her abuser. Also as much as I like Tall Shadow usually she sucked ass in the following scene because she was essentially telling Bumble to go find a way to make peace with Tom as if she was not the one being abused (Bumble pointed out that Tom was the one who would need to make peace for it to happen, not her) and that she should just make life better by going back to being a housecat and being spoiled despite the fact that she was actively at risk with her owners because of Tom. Then she leaves after being threatened by several cats there and is called soft on the way out. The next time she appears she is literally dying, and her death is just a plot device to create a stupid little mystery which is solved in a very stupid way. Also her abuser does continue to be a shithead and for some reason is fully permitted to kidnap his own children but he also gets a heroic death and the only reason I will not rant more about him is because this is too long already. Long story short Bumble deserves the world and everybody who decided not to let her escape her abuser just because they thought she was soft sucks

3.) Is nice to the group of starving, feral wild cats that left the mountains so their friends and family could have more food to eat and befriends one of them to the point of opening her home to her after she leaves the group because the guy she likes is too dumb to notice she likes him and keeps falling for his brother’s love interests.

Unfortunately, because Bumble is a house cat who lives in a house with people and not a Wild and Free cat, this is a grave and horrible crime (luring a wild cat into the safety and comforts of domesticity) and is villainized for the rest of the arc, including for things wildly out of her control

I.E.

Her owners taking in an aggressive male cat that bullies and abuses the two female cats already living there

When Bumble’s friend leaves and goes back to the wild cats, Bumble leaves her home (as the abuse as has gotten worse) to see if she could either get help or have her friend return so the abuse isn’t as bad again)

Bumble eventually dies in the wild because the feral cats all hate her for ‘stealing’ their friend and tricking her into becoming a kittypet for awhile and refuse to help Bumble adjust to wild life or even teaching her how to hunt.

They are littl e to no hard feelings at her death beyond ‘good riddance’ but the aggressive tomcat that chased her out of her home is later regarded with good feelings and regret at such a ‘good, heroic cat’ passing when he dies despite him literally never doing a good or kind thing in his life and actually causing trouble for the wild cats right before dying

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

[fallingtowers]

btvs season 1 episode 10 "nightmares" is a story about abuse, and more specifically about a young boy who has been abused by an authority figure. in a very real sense, the titular nightmares stem from this act of abuse—they're of course doing some metaphorical work on the level of individual character (e.g. willow's opera dream represents her fear of being scrutinized and "found out"), but as they all come from billy, we can also understand them as a metaphor for the kind of unreasoning fear an abusive authority figure might inspire in a child under their care.

see buffy's behavior, for example. this episode identifies buffy with billy—she serves as a kind of proxy for him, running from the monster with him and ultimately helping him defeat it. it's the running that's interesting here. buffy describes the ugly man as "too strong" for her to fight, something we only rarely see her do, and usually in reference to enemies of a far greater caliber than this kind of villain‐of-the-week. in fact, buffy spends a big chunk of this episode in abject fear!

in the end, of course, she faces down the ugly man and saves the day. it takes her a good while, though, and by that time someone else has beaten her to the punch (🤡) and already faced his fears.

despite his connection with buffy in this episode, the fact that billy is a young boy who has been physically abused by someone who was supposed to look after him positions him as a much more direct parallel to xander, who at various points in the show is heavily implied to have been (and at this point in time presumably still is) a victim of abuse at his parents' hand. interesting, then, that it's specifically xander who turns around and decks his nightmare in the face!

it's played as a comedic beat, and there's not much in the way of on-screen justification for xander's sudden burst of courage, but given the context of the episode it feels significant that it's him. in fact, if the ugly man represents billy's baseball coach, then there's no reason why we can't understand the clown (textually an adult who terrorized xander when he was a child) as a stand-in for xander's parents.

what's more, towards the end of the episode, when billy is "unmasking" the ugly man, willow expresses confusion—but xander says, "i get it." out of all of them, he's the one who understands exactly what billy is going through. this similarity between them is further underscored by xander's line in the final scene, when buffy expresses disbelief at the coach's actions: "you obviously haven't played kiddy league. i'm surprised it wasn't one of the parents."

"i get it." and of course he would. he's been there himself.

[raisedbythetv89]

Ok ooooook OK SO.

Spike was literally made for Buffy because he was made for and by Drusilla, and Buffy and Dru are the same person:

Innocent, kind-hearted young girls, with special gifts that cause them to carry more guilt/burden than others and they are used/abused/traumatized by angelus/angel, then neglected and abandoned, with Spike being there to pick up the pieces and nurture, care for, and love them the best he can to help them move past their angel trauma (which is actually an impossible task with Drusilla because of the sire aspect but isn’t with Buffy)

WHICH is why I believe William’s first act as a vampire was to try and save his mother. He was literally created to be Dru’s knight. Not only her protector but her healer. Which is why his first instinct when it should be all about blood lust is instead, to heal his mother who he still loves even as a vampire. I mean even Dru, a certified nutcase, is like you wanna do WHAT?!?! When Spike tells her his plan to save his mom😹

This is also why I believe angel trying to mold Spike into his image never really took or rather Spike was able to break free from it. Angel was created by darla for the intent of death, torment and destruction.

Spike was created to care for and love Dru. Which required an OBSCENE amount of patience, determination, humility, and love of a challenge. Which is why he was so intrigued by slayers, another seemingly impossible task - but the joy/fun was in the TRYING, the thrill of the unknown and the unpredictability of it all. Which are all the traits he needed to be there for both Dru and Buffy while also ensuring he never gives up on them as long as they want him there, and then some lol.

IM FREAKING OUT ABOUT THIS

Because also this is soooooo not where I planned on going with this but “I was made to love you” episode title is now drawing in the connection of, is this why Spike didn’t initially see the problem with the Buffy-Bot until he saw the reaction of Buffy herself who often acts as his moral compass as he relearns what is “good” after 100+ years living by vamp code because him AS A HUMAN, in his vulnerable, dejected and devastated state was killed and made into a vampire for the sole purpose of loving and caring for Drusilla selflessly, without regard for himself, much like the bots were!! So why would he see the harm in creating something like that for himself when no one was going to die in the process and it meant he could stop fixating in the real buffy? Both of which to a vamp who’s only been trying to live by human morals again for like 14 episodes vs 120 years with NO help just trial and erroring his way through becoming a white hat which his starting point is “I would like credit for not taking advantage of bleeding disaster victims” and “what do you mean building a shrine to show how deep my devotion is and chaining you up, offering to kill my ex, and forcing you to talk to me and admit your feelings aren’t the way to do this??” 😹😹😹 like he gets it so wrong, it’s comical in season 5 because he truly is so earnest about all of it because while yes it is all for a chance with Buffy, he genuinely wants to be better for her so he can earn that chance. As he says to Riley “a fellas gotta try” after saying he doesn’t think he has a chance with her.

He was an Eleanore who desperately needed his Chidi. Which Buffy is his moral compass but she ends up being a “let them fail/push them into the deep end” kind of guide. So he makes A LOT of mistakes along the way as many of us often do in general but especially those of us who were raised by abusive parents; who in our adulthood, have to learn to discern what is healthy vs abusive to be a good person to both yourself and others and be in actual healthy relationships with boundaries and respect with zero practical experience or good instincts to go on.

NONE of this excuses any harm that Spike causes at all. That is not the point of this to say “oh he didn’t really do bad”, no he did. Spike caused a lot of harm but this perspective that I’ve finally been able to put into words is why none of the harm ends up being a deal breaker for me and many spuffys because it puts his choices in the right perspective which is not that of a human even though he looks like one a lot of the time.

Spike pre-soul, making the mistakes he makes isn’t the same as a human or a vamp with a human soul making the mistakes because he doesn’t have his human soul motivating and informing the decisions he makes. It really mimics different cultures in a lot of ways as anya really demonstrates during her wedding with all her talk of demon culture and tradition (and her own struggles to assimilate into the human world again and she HAS a human soul and xander to help her) and the initiative being VERY n*zi coded and Riley being called a bigot because he is ignorant to much of demonology. So un-souled spike has a more potential for forgiveness of his mistakes than human soul havers because he is always genuinely TRYING to do right by Buffy even when he gets it horribly wrong. And the characters in the show always hold him accountable and make him feel TERRIBLE for the mistakes he makes.

Why does he have such potential for forgiveness you ask? The best example is to think of the concept of someone trying to assimilate themselves into a new culture. We can’t expect them to blend right in perfectly and get all the culture norms right, right away (again -anya-but also a real life example - when I travel in Italy and catch up with friends there I STILL always stumble and forget they’re always gonna go in for a double cheek kiss greeting - pre covid anyway - and I KNOW it’s a thing but if I’m out of practice it takes me a while to start greeting people that way again and it makes for some AWKWARD ENCOUNTERS until I get it down😹). It takes time, and normally guidance and patience from others that spike honestly doesn’t often have except in the form of being yelled at or beat up until he gets his soul. But his willingness to TRY anyways despite failure, rejection, ridicule and cruelty. How can I not love him?? He is me, I am him!! I was also met with so much unhelpful criticism and cruelty when I was just trying to learn and do a good job.

Both as someone who is autistic and didn’t know it for a lot of life; I too felt like I was blundering through without a guide or a rule book and I was sure I was making mistakes because people would get upset but I had NO help identifying what exactly I did wrong or what to do instead. So I knew I was messing up but had to keep guessing and trying anyway and getting it wrong again and again!

And as someone raised by an emotionally distant/abusive narcissist, navigating healthy relationships became even MORE difficult and I made a lot of bad choices along the way that landed me in some awful relationships much like what spike and Buffy devolve into towards the end of season 6 because both of them are up stream without a paddle when it comes to healthy relationships, healthy coping mechanisms, and communication. They know pain, avoidance, fighting, torment, and ecstasy from always living in extremes and life or death situations (notice Buffy struggles the most in the season with no threat of the apocalypse until the last two episodes - season 6 - which is SO common for people with trauma, you really fall apart when things are low stakes)

It’s why the tenderness and gentleness of season 7 means SO MUCH. Both of them experiencing these tiny pockets of true peace with each other after everything they’ve been through individually and together. Experiencing true peace like we see from them is one of the hardest things to accomplish if you have severe trauma.

I’m always really happy when I can digest these complex themes enough to communicate why I love them so much and why they’re so important to me. The fact that this show had so much in-fighting amongst the writers and misogynists trying to make spike pathetic and accidentally making him one of the most complex characters, plus episodes based specifically on neurodivergent/queer peoples’ traumatic coming of age experiences because the parallels are SO strong there no way they’re not lol. This all means I can probably spend the rest of my life dissecting the layers of this show and learning about myself in the process and always find something new 🙃🙃🙃 and clearly I love all aspects of spuffy so god damn much as they each embody a big part of my life experiences in so many beautiful yet tragic ways.

[coraniaid]

The only thing more powerful than the Buffy writers' reluctance to give screentime to a woman over the age of thirty is the collective Buffy fandom's eagerness to seize on the slightest scrap of canon characterization as evidence that said thirty-plus-year old woman is some sort of monster.

The show: Willow Rosenberg likes spending time with her mother and does so willingly even after moving out (as we see, for example, in Forever) and her mother was keen to invite her high school boyfriend over for dinner to try to get to know him as soon as Willow admitted to her that he existed (at the end of Gingerbread) and her mother was fully accepting (literally "proud") of Willow when she came out as a lesbian (already implicit, but confirmed in The Killer In Me). Oh, but she has a full time job in academia and sometimes Willow wishes she paid her more attention (this despite the fact that Willow canonically does hide things from her all the time) and she doesn't always notice when Willow cuts her hair or properly remember her friends' names and she only met Willow's first girlfriend a few times.

The fandom: well, clearly Willow is as much a victim of parental abuse as Xander Harris or Amy Madison or Faith Lehane. This is a completely reasonable and proportionate conclusion to come to based on one on-screen appearance and some throwaway lines of dialogue.

I mean ... don't get me wrong. Shelia Rosenberg is not a good mother. She's not much more than a cardboard cutout, really. Less of a character than even Hank Summers, and that's saying something.

What she is, really, is the sort of lazy cliche you get in a lot of teen movies of the 1990s and 2000s (something which is true of Joyce Summers as well at times, only Sheila is permitted far less depth or screen presence or other redeeming features). She's a somewhat reactionary take on the idea of an adult woman who dares to have a professional career and therefore cannot "properly" attend to the needs of her children. A woman too busy focusing on the abstract (her academic study of "adolescent development") to care about the practical (the growing pains of her own teenage daughter).

(Get it? See, it's funny, because she's a woman with both a child and a career. What will those crazy feminists dream up next?)

As written, Willow's mother kind of sucks: not because she's a bad person but because she isn't written as a person at all. She's a joke, and not a good one.

But the weirdly popular idea On Here that Willow is somehow traumatized by having what is, by all accounts, a fairly ordinary and comfortable childhood is absurd. There is simply nothing in the text to support this.

[claudiasescapesubmarine]

Looking at a lot of Loustat shippers and how they view/talk about Louis, is making me think of the BtVS fandom, the first fandom I joined when I was 16/17.

Anyway, a lot of the Spuffy shippers were out there calling Buffy derogatory names, saying SHE was the actual abusive one in the relationship, writing the most vile essays/fanfiction about her needing to be brought down a peg and admit she was wrong and Spike was right, saying the show was boring without Spike, despite Buffy being the main character, could not talk about Buffy as a character separate from Spike, propping up James's acting skills over Sarah's, made it sound like Spike was a better parent to Dawn than Buffy was (?), saying that the other men she was in romantic relationships with were much more abusive than Spike, excusing Spike for basically all of his actions and woobifying him because of his trauma....

and then you'd have the more critical Spuffy/non-Spuffy shippers (mainly woc) pointing out the blatant misogyny and victim-blaming in this way of thinking, pointing out how Spike represents some of the worst aspects of racism and the patriarchy, both textually and subtextually, even providing scholarly articles and literature to back up their claims, and asking why do you even ship Spuffy if you hate Buffy? Which of course received extreme backlash and harassment from people racing to defend Spike themselves, saying, no of course they didn't hate Buffy, but Spike is more complex than you're making him sound, and no he's not a racist or hates women, he's actually a feminist and a punk/anarchist and doesn't kill based on race, you're just a vile sjw and an anti who loves ruining everyone else's fun.

Anyway. Why do you even ship Loustat if you hate Louis?

[comradesummers]

it is actually possible to criticize the scoobies' treatment of buffy without making them out to be abusive monsters (as opposed to like, dumb teenagers) and her out to be a helpless victim with zero narrative agency. just saying.

[finalgirlkell]

Final girl (Noun): An Introduction.

According to some, I guess I owe them an explanation. But let's start at the beginning - at least.

What is a Final Girl?

Coined by film theorist Carol J. Clover in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.

The Final Girl is a character (classically female presenting) who is the last person alive to confront the killer/monster, and often the sole survivor. The final girl is a trope in horror films (particularly slasher films ).

A common plot in many horror films in which several victims are killed one-by-one by a killer amid increasing terror, culminating in a climax in which the last surviving member of the group, the final girl, vanquishes the killer (at least until the sequel).

Why would I want the moniker or call this blog Final Girl Kell?

The final girl trope has evolved throughout the years, from early final girls most often being DIDs (Damsels in Distress), saved by a strong men to more modern final girls who are more likely to survive due to their own abilities.

For many, the final girl is the living embodiment of stereotypical conservative attitudes of what women "should be"—virginal, subservient, untouched by the menace of the outside world. But as the trope evolved, the trope was used to force the audience to identify with a woman in the climax of the movie.  The person you root for to win. That became a very powerful sword to wield.  It allowed new points of view in horror storytelling.

When women won, they were able to force men to watch them step into their own power. 

The name Final Girl Kell is a large part wish fulfillment.

I'm not here to trauma dump, nor give some sob story - at least not all at once and not for the public to twist and use against me as some things have been in my past. It's what the public does to victims of abuse when they speak out and that fall out I know all to well to try again.

The quick notes version is I've been the innocent who was forcefully defiled by the monster of men. I've had my life completely derailed by others selfish needs and desires - others fears and needing to single out someone to hurt to deal with their own insecurities - and I've had to bear the brunt of that fallout, living in a life feeling confined to a box others made to try to kill me.

I'll give them it was a trap my own naivety caused me to fall into - trusting the wolves in sheep's clothing - but the Final Girl always makes it out of these traps. They always fight and claw their way back out to come back and take those monsters down. They make it out to see another day. To live another day. To be free of the monster hunting them down.

As a survivor, especially one a lot of people see as "not perfect" I identity with that.

I've been to the edge and back and I've gotten free. I've won to see another day. As someone still dealing with picking up the pieces of my trauma and more recent battles - I hold on to the trope like a mantra. I will survive, and I will thrive. I will be free to see the light of another day.

As a child who grew up on whatever I thought sounded cool at Blockbuster and loved all things spooky - Final Girls like Nancy, Sidney and Laurie always stuck with me. My inner child and adolescence begs me to tap into the power those Final Girls had - and I have to honor that.

What is the goal for this blog?

Benny: But I still want to know what happens! Buffy: Everyone gets horribly killed except the blonde girl in the nightie who finally kills the monster with a machete but it's not really dead. Jennifer: Oh my God. Is that true? Buffy: Probably. What movie is this?

— Cut dialogue from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I can't say what I plan for this blog to be totally.

Part health journeys - with my mental and physical health in some serious need of TLC.

Part writing out ideas for horror screenplays based on the insanity I'm dealing with and the terrifying situations living in Atlanta brought me into.

Part just spooky stuff I like, and showing off the positive progress I've made. Be it showing off a cool skill I've taught myself (like with ghost hunting) or musings about Halloween Horror Nights and showing gratitude for the things and people who make me want to never give up.

I can't say I have everything figured out, but I'm down to start this blog journey and I hope others are excited to read, listen, watch and hopefully relate.

We're all final girls here.

[faithlesbian]

buffyangel gender roles transfem angel - when angel gets possessed by that girl ghost in season 3? insane and the guy ghost picks buffy to inhabit beautiful

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER SEASON 2 EPISODE 19 I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU EPISODE OF ALL TIME!!!!!

for real this ep is up there among my whole show favourites because of how directly it engages with buffy's self-blame over angel losing his soul through, of all things, the medium of genderswapping ghost possession. this is gonna get Long just to warn you

the way this episode is set up is so so so genius. they could've made it a very simple story about an evil abuser and an innocent victim, but instead they recognised that the situation demanded more than that. real life rarely follows a simple story, and it can often be hard to recognise a relationship for what it is when it doesnt fit that template. buffy finds it very hard to think of herself as a victim, and she blames herself for "killing" the angel that she loved and turning him into the monster he is now, which is why she hates the ghost of this boy as much she does - she fears that she has done something worse than just murder her lover. she could have all her friends and family tell her this wasnt her fault and i dont think she would fully believe them, but through the possession she is told that if it was her fault, if she did kill angel, she would be loved and forgiven anyway.

the role that gender plays in this episode is Crucial. despite setting out to subvert the horror movie blonde cheerleader victim trope, btvs often falls into a pattern of men as monsters and women as victims. in this world, no male character is exempt from seeing women sexually, even gay characters like larry and andrew perform misogynistic sexual degradation of women that's played for laughs. it's just "how all men are". conversely, as evil as women can be on btvs, their sexual violence against men is never taken seriously (see all the times xander is assaulted that just never get addressed). this episode complicates the binary of men as monsters and women as victims as part of its overall complication of these roles by having the final possession play out the way it does. angel, the "man" who is textually a monster, becomes a woman who was a victim of a crime of passion, while still remaining the older person who got into a relationship with a teenager despite knowing it was wrong. buffy, the innocent young girl, becomes an angry murderous boy, while still remaining an emotional teenager making rash choices in the name of love. the disruption of these concrete ideas of monster and victim (and their gendered natures within the show) allows buffy to realise she needs to forgive herself.

obviously this whole plot is doing fascinating things with gender, but the ending stands out to me specifically because of how angel reacts. textually he feels disturbed by the reminder of his humanity and feels the need to go out and do evil vampire things to feel affirmed in his monstrosity, but i also think its interesting how buffy, who often feels robbed of her sense of girlhood by her role as the slayer, isn't perturbed at all by briefly becoming a man. the subversion of gender roles was central in their relationship prior to him losing his soul, with buffy being the strong capable hero, and angel her damsel in distress -- buffy has for the most part reconciled with the perceived masculinity of her strength and doesnt feel that it makes her any less of a girl. angel, on the other hand, who has now had to take on a more masculine role as patriarch of the vampire family (in darla's absence) is freaking out not just because of the reminder of humanity but bc he was briefly literally buffy's girl -- something he wants more than he can let on, soul or no.

[johannestevans]

Wait why is buffy the vampire slayer bad? Is this a personal taste thing?

I have watched most of Buffy, naturally I'm horny for Rupert Giles, but like. As with all of Joss Whedon's shows it's extremely horny for people, especially children, getting raped and then being like "oh I deserved it" and/or "oh being raped gives me super special powers and it's good (narratively) that I got raped actually", and as a rape victim I find that miserable.

Obviously the writing is also cheap, messy, and full of Joss Whedon's trademark """"""""wit""""""", which isn't pleasant either.

Obviously Whedon abused many of his workers, especially the women - especially Charisma Carpenter, who received the worst of her abuse for being pregnant - but like. The show would be shitty whether he'd done that or not.

I've watched most of it, it's not something I'd generally choose to watch because as I said, as a rape victim it just makes me feel dirty and unpleasant unless I'm in a particularly good place, but like. It's a TV show. It's fine. Sometimes it's just like that.

[centrally-unplanned]

Sarah Z released a new video on Buffy Season 6 - looks like she isn't the only one doing a recent Buffy binge, great minds Sarah! Given her long track record as a Buffy lover I give her props for finally going all in and making a project of it. As is going to be a surprise to no one, I am pretty middling on this video - lets go to the random thoughts:

--- My first comment on this was going be a bit of a question mark around its title, "In Defense of Buffy's Most Hated Season". Season 6? Most hated? Sure you not thinking of Season 4? Or Season 1? Season 6 is very consistently ranked as a higher Season by most - no Season 5 or 3, sure, but normally top 3 or 4. Its a bit of a "cultural baggage" idea - because of, hm, reasons, it was an extremely controversial season back in the day. But removed from its airing that drama faded away, and particularly given that season 6's musical episode is one of the most lasting legacies of the show, now it stands on its merits and is generally liked. Sarah even almost accidentally cops to that with one of her example reddit posts, from a Season 6 hater but who frames that as a hot take:

However, looks like we agree, because Sarah changed the name of the video! Now its called "You Should Watch Buffy Season 6". I respect and empathize, honestly, realizing the cultural consensus has changed can take some time.

--- For a movie review about defending Season 6, it actually spends half of its analytical run-time criticizing it. And I was not swayed by these - which I am sad about, I have my critiques of the season too. Just trying to explain why the following thoughts are about criticisms, given the title.

--- Does anyone out there interpret Riley's departure in Season 5, and one-episode return in Season 6, as Buffy "losing a good man, and being shown the life she could have had married to him if she didn't screw up"? Because that is what Sarah thinks, and that to me is a buck wild take. Riley is not a subtle character, its pretty much a defining trait of his. Pretty sure his departure in Season 5 is him leaving a bad relationship, that is bad for him and Buffy, and Buffy realizing too late that she was letting pride and self-involvement get in the way of fixing it. Not that it necessarily could be fixed, or should be, just that that was the source. And in season 6 - this to me can't be any clearer - Riley's point in returning is to highlight that he, who was in an awful place in Season 5, got better. He got over it. He's strong even when he doesn't look it. And Buffy is too. She will get over it. Its why she breaks up with Spike at the end of the episode - Buffy realizes she is still strong, she can be way she 'used' to be. It does not forgive Riley's mistakes, or is even about any of that? This is a very weird take. Honestly I want to know if others have this take, tell me if you do.

--- This very weird take by the way comes from the "misogyny" moments that the video constantly alludes to, which tie back into Joss Whedon's behavior, which I want to flag here. I'll admit that from what I have seen of the evidence, while Joss does come off like a huge asshole on set, I actually haven't seen much of a case for a lot more than that. Some people see him as this like uber-predator and I don't know where that is coming from. So I might be biased a bit here, lacking that heft of conviction.

But I still think this is generally correct - someone's personal behavior is an extremely imperfect reflection of their writing chops. Some of the most insightful prose of all time was writing for crass monetization; serial abusers have written, in spades, the most complex and well-realized victim protagonists. Writing is a skill, not a morality trait. Personal action impacts writing, sure, but not in ways that *align* with morality. The fact that Joss Whedon was an asshole on set does not mean the writing on Buffy reflects misogynist abuse. Xander isn't a misogynist - when he is mad at Anya for sleeping with Spike he is portrayed by the narrative as a clear asshole. Riley isn't portrayed as a perfect boyfriend, dude fucking pays vampires to bite him! This all in your head! You don't have to like prove Joss Whedon is a bad dude through textual analysis. His work can still be #girlboss feminism, there is no contradiction there.

--- This will be brief, but I feel like we are past the weird 2010's hiccup of thinking "fridging" is a problem, right? This is about Tara's death, ofc. Stories aren't real life, in stories some characters are way more important than others. Side characters exist, very often, to further the arcs of those main characters. One of them dying as part of a main character's arc is completely normal. Its weird I feel I have to explain this; I don't really, right? Tara is not killed off on a whim; she dies because Willow has a season-long arc of tipping over the edge on magic power, its a lot about her relationship with Tara, and her death pushes her over the brink. I'll admit I find Dark!Willow's execution to be a bit weak, but that's its own problem; the motive is solid. This is how stories work.

--- Additionally, I think there is a big, but a bit unnoticed, shift in what "works" in media around character deaths. When Joss Whedon killed Tara in Buffy - and more notably killed Wash in Serenity - he was doing a deliberate "no one is safe" thing. It became a meme, actually!

Meme-ing about Joss Whedon man, right there in the garbage dumb of the past alongside Harry Potter memes shitting on Twilight thinking its the better franchise; life comes at you fast. But anyway this was a "big thing" to happen - audiences were shocked by it! It had dramatic impact.

Then Game of Thrones happened and this got turned up to 11, and the general plot twist even more of a meme. But meanwhile, TV changed in the background; entire seasons were getting dumped at once on streaming, everything was becoming "high context" with actors live tweeting their own set experiences, fandoms got more involved and contextual, "water-cooler" shows everyone was talking about faded due to audience separation, all sorts of shit. Which meant that the "kill a main character" thing stopped being powerful - it was overplayed, spoilers were more common, it didn't "air" as a standalone episode everyone talked about. The reason to kill off a character to raise the stakes faded away.

Which means when people go back and say things like "oh I loved Tara why kill her", its...well for one Amber Benson wanted to leave the show. But additionally you can't see the power it had in 2002. TV was different then, it wanted different things.

--- To give something positive, while I think Spike's attempted rape of Buffy is a strong writing choice - very in character for Spike, and its fine that it is primarily about his arc and not Buffy's because its a story, that is how these things work - I do agree that Buffy's response to the event is just not explored enough. It comes up multiple times of course, even in Season 7, but it also gets swamped by plot events in Season 6 with Willow, its not given room to breathe.

This imo relates to the fact that the pacing of the event is a bit wonky - Spike & Buffy had been on the outs for many episodes at that point, there wasn't this strong inciting incident for it. If it had happened much closer to their breakup, in a more focused arc, it would have had more narrative impact and allowed time for both of them to respond to it. I get that they had a lot of plot balls to juggle at that point, but still, missed opportunity I think.

Okay I had more thoughts but I am tired, I think that covers my most interesting complaints/observations anyway.

[jennycalendar]

in regards to your btvs post: what are some friendships/dynamics you wish we got to see more of or at all in the show!!! (i am personally always thinking abt the potential of oz and tara being besties under different circumstances.....they would have an Understanding)

OZ AND TARA SO REAL!!!!!

hmmmm okay starting with the obvious (for me): jenny and buffy. like i of course have lots of different jenny-related answers, but jenny and buffy make me just cosmically unwell, because CANONICALLY that's the deepest relationship jenny has in the show outside of giles? like she has this supernatural gothic connection with angel, she's got a deep warm love for giles, and literally as i was typing this i forgot who i was talking about, which is exactly my point re: why i wanna see more of jenny and buffy. they are the most drift compatible ever.

and kinda piggybacking off of that, because i'm on a "victims of angelus whose girlhood was shattered by his monstrosity" kick -- BUFFY AND DRUSILLA. i think buffy's canon attitude towards drusilla (dismissive, furious) makes so much sense, but i would have loved for it to be interrogated more re: the way buffy perceives herself and her role in The Angelus Situation. sort of a situation where buffy and drusilla are both able to heal a little more by actually facing the girl(s) that got killed.

who else UM. xander and giles. canon, explain to me why giles is Like That about a teenage boy in an abusive home. and i don't even say that judgmentally, i think there are so many narrative possibilities that could sell me on giles being such a dick to xander! the one i toss around in my head a lot is the notion of xander's wise-cracking stubbornness reminding giles of the worst parts of ripper, and then him sorta unfairly taking out his own issues about Dumb Teenage Boys on xander by reducing & simplifying him to a Dumb Teenage Boy. but i think that's a little bit of a stretch, and, again, CANON DID NOT GIVE US ANYTHING.

and one more to bring it home: jenny and angel. i can't not put them here. the jenny/giles buffy/angel thing is so insane and i would kill a man to have it dissected more thoroughly within canon -- the interweaving connections between all of them after the big s2 blowup!!! -- but specifically jenny and angel is like.... she was raised to REVILE HIM and she gave him back his LIFE???? i think so much about that quote "forgiveness is an act of compassion, it's not done because someone deserves it, it's done because they need it" in a jennyangel context. she stepped away from playing arbiter and went "what this situation needs is love." and her love got carried forward in becoming pt. 2 when giles softly asserts that curing angel was jenny's last wish. she makes the Conscious Choice to end the cycle of vengeful violence when little girls start getting hurt again, and she gets killed by her childhood monster, and her act of love breathes life back into him. what the fuck. what the fuck. wh

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

KATHERINA MINOLA (THE TAMING OF THE SHREW) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) We had to read this for English my senior year. I got so mad at the way she’s treated. She’s the titular “shrew” of the play. She has to be married off before her younger sister can get married, because that makes sense.

Then the most dogshit man imaginable comes along, and everybody thinks they’re perfect. He literally gaslights her and denies her food and water.

Fuck Petruchio and Katherine Minola deserved better!

2.) Literally the whole play is about how she is so awful that the main guy needs to change her entire personality, which he does as a challenge not because he likes her, and then proceeds to her abuse her for the rest of the play. Yet, he is portrayed as the hero, not a villain and she is shown to have “improved” at the end. People will say, oh it’s open to interpretation, it can be played different ways, it’s satire, but i don’t find abuse funny and there is a distinct lack of commentary in the play to count as satire imo. Taming of the Shrew is a tragedy not a comedy, I will die on this hill. Kate deserves better!

3.) The title isn’t joking, ya’ll. She literally gets broken like a rebellious feral animal and it’s treated as a happy ending.

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

[linkspooky]

hi 👋

i was wondering how do you go about writing mai zen’in?

i wanted to write more about her but I don’t think I have her character voice completely right yet. 🫠

and out of all the fics I read that focused on mai (it’s not a lot 😭) i think you wrote mai the most accurately.

I'll do my best anon, but fair warning ahead of time what you're going to get isn't exactly canon Mai, because Mai as a character has about three major scenes in canon, her introduction, her fight with Maki and then her death. I've done my best to flesh out Mai based on my interpretation of those three scenes. This is basically how I characterize her in my fics Werewolf and Inugami Family.

To understand Mai you have to understand Maki

As much as I enjoy Mai as her own character, the way Gege writes her within the story itself is basically as a tool to prop up Maki. Which means a lot of Mai's characterization is derived from how she relates to Maki, and also her relationship with Maki.

A lot of this is going to sound like, if Maki is X, then Mai is Y.

I think as a character Mai is designed to be everything that Maki is not. Nobara in fact makes that comparison between the two of them, that Mai is the shitty knock off version of Maki.

Maki looks at her situation in life, and doesn't mope or whine about it she earnestly works hard to improve it. In comparison, Mai not only pities herself a lot more than Maki does, she also blames the people around her (even her sister who she loves) rather than herself. Mai's the kind of person where if you were sitting there listening to them complain, you'd eventually get fed up hearing them and say "Well, aren't you going to do anything about it or are you just going to sit there?"

Mai's basically designed to be sort of unlikable, to make Maki look better. As an unintended side effect, she actually shows the symptoms of her traumatic upbringing in the Zen'in a lot clearer. Maki for someone who has apparently been violently abused her entire life, doesn't really lash out in anger that often, doesn't act up, and is for the most part just kind of introverted and a loner. Her worst quality is that she doesn't really respect or trust the people around her.

Mai on the other hand shows a lot of symptoms of what she endured. She's interalized the fact that she's weak and helpless and doesn't try to step beyond that. Mai is one of the complacent women of the Zen'in Clan like her mother. Naoya even says in his assessment of the twins that Mai may have a bad mouth but she ultimately knows her place. Mai acts oversexual and flirtatious when she's engaging women around her and seems to just get plain annoyed by men. Mai says the nastiest things imaginable, and she's totally willing to throw the same emotinoal abuse the clan constantly threw at Maki (you're weak, you're useless without a cursed technique) if she thinks it'll get attention from her sister. Mai's trauma is actually a problem which shows up in her everyday behavior. Nobara says trauma isn't an excuse to just do whatever you want, and like that's a quote from an unsympathetic source but I do think Mai has a tendency to play the victim.

Mai's also defined entirely by her cowardice. She just wants to run away and hide rather than face things. Part of the reason she wants her sister back is because her life would be easier if someone else was there to either protect her or suffer with her, even if that's not what's best for Maki. Mai's one backstory moment is her being so terrified of curses she wanted to close her eyes to everything and cling to her sister's hands rather than face it.

Mai's eternally running away from her problems, but if anything to me that makes her a far easier character to write than Maki. The best advice I can give about Mai is try to make her as unlikable as possible. She's whiney, mean, and rude. If you had her as a friend you'd probably get sick of her pretty quickly.

A big basis of my characterization for Mai is Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if you want a show to watch for inspiration. Faith is the negative character foil for the hero Buffy. Because Faith is first an anti-hero, and then an anti-villain she's allowed to have a lot more negative traits to explore than Buffy is as the hero. Faith is not required to be likable, she doesn't have to appear moral and because of that there's a lot more flexibility with her character. So, Faith to Buffy is take the heroes flaws, and make them more ugly. Mai to Maki, is lets take Maki's flaws and make them more annoying. What if Mai had Maki's exact same trauma, but she was annoying about it and nobody respected her?

As a character there's a lot you can work with for her, because she has a lot of flaws to overcome. Not only that but her internal world is very complex, basically nothing that comes out of her mouth is the truth and she never tells anyone how she really feels. Which means you can show a lot of that complexity by demonstrating say, the difference between her words and her actions. Or say, the difference between how she really feels about someone like her sister, and the things she says because she's trying to cover up that vulnerability.

My last advice is Mai is kind of in a continual state of pain. It's not like she's not getting over her childhood abuse as an adult, she's literally still living in that abusive home with really no way out and no therapist to talk to or adult figure to rely on. If she's not strong enough like Maki to just overcome it, then everything she does is a sort of twisted attempt to cope with the pain, like someone who drinks just to get through the day. If your every day reality is to be stuck in a painful home where you're continually reeling from that pain and feeling like you're in danger, then it's going to be hard for you to think straightforwardly about things or even try to self improve like Maki does because your brain is in survival mode.

That's all I've got for now, hope you had fun.