#i was thinking about buffy and how the two endings she got were: 1) she fucking dies to save the world

[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

[bensonstablers]

I was tagged by @sothischickshe (thank you!!! 🥰) to answer 20 questions for writers:

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

205.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

609,094

3. What fandoms do you write for?

fandoms i've written for include:

Law & Order: SVU / L&O: Organized Crime

Good Girls

Gotham

Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel

Criminal Minds

Graceland

Stranger Things

The Walking Dead

Riverdale

Castlevania

Preacher

Four Brothers

Outer Banks

Gilmore Girls

while no longer available, in the past i've also written for:

Fast and Furious franchise

MCU / Marvel

Boondock Saints

Hocus Pocus

From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series

DC

(plus more i'm probably forgetting about)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Shared History (Good Girls/Brio)

Degree of Separation (Good Girls/Brio)

Milkshakes (Good Girls/Brio)

Deep Sense of Belonging (Good Girls/Brio)

Sacred Art of Kissing (Good Girls/Brio)

5. Do you respond to comments?

i read all of them for sure but i'm terrible sometimes at responding although i do try my best

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

ooft, okay. there's probably more than this but the following have major character death warnings that could very well be classed as angsty lmao:

i wrote this little ficlet: Gone (SVU, bensler/EO) in which a raid goes wrong and it's just pain from start to finish and then there's Until Long After She Takes Her Final Breath which is a Good Girls/brio fic in which their reunion at the beginning of season 3 goes very differently.

Why don't we go to Venus? is another Good Girls/brio fic in which the summary is: Rio killed her and that was supposed to be the end of it but Beth doesn’t seem to be done with him quite yet.

that one is probably my angstiest overall but the ending is probably the least angsty bit about it??? haha

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

honestly? i have no idea and i have no clue how to check 😭😂

8. Do you get hate on fics?

there was someone going around the SVU/OC fandom leaving weird hate comments on people's stuff (anonymously) and i got one but while it felt rude, it didn't feel like hate, but also it felt like it was supposed to be hateful, y'know? pretty sure i just deleted it though (i for sure ignored it) 😂

but generally, no. i'm lucky to say that i tend to avoid hate on social media and that includes fanfiction.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

i have done and the variety isn't huge but it's there? i guess?

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

i have done! beyond the obvious (where shows, etc share worlds), i did a boondock saints/the walking dead one (which was also co-written) because norman reedus stars in both 😂

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i'm aware of?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

again, not that i'm aware of

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

yes! the aforemention boondock saints/the walking dead fic was co-written on ff.net and i co-wrote (with the same person), a fast and furious fic.

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

i lost myself a ton in writing olivia/elliot from svu/organized crime as well as beth/rio from good girls so they'd probably battle it out for top spot.

BUT

if i'm being brutally honest, my all time favourite ever to write were fast and furious ships 😂 especially the OGs (specifically vince and leon) with my OCs (although there were canon ships i loved to write too!). it was just so fun and freeing and i constantly think about it.

(i also loved when i wrote random marvel/mcu pairings, winterwitch was probably my number one for them and again, i think about it a lot)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

i think it's unlikely i'll finish a lot but especially a degree of separation. i kind of hate it, i'm so sorry 😭😭😭

16. What are your writing strengths?

the thought of analysing my own writing right now sounds painful but two of the most common nice things people tell me is that: 1) they like how i write dialogue and 2) they like my writing style in general

(but of which i highly appreciate!)

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i don't do it enough?

nah. true but seriously, there's a ton, however, i do tend to waffle on and write something in several sentences that could have been just one 😭

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't think i've ever done it? if i have it'll be dialogue or whatever that's already in the show/move/etc

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The Fast and the Furious 🥰

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

still on ao3: it has to be Why don't we go to Venus? but also Knock First which is a Beth/Rio/Original Male Character threesome fic that was SO MUCH fun

no longer posted: a fic for The Fast and the Furious. it was a Vince/OC story. it was so much fun to write and it was one of my most popular back when i was posting on ff.net and i miss this story all the time (even though it's probably awful 😂) and always think about re-writing and posting it again on ao3

Tagging: @conscience-killer @constant-sinner @astarkey @xstrawmari @blainesebastian if ya like! (sorry if you've been tagged before!)

[coraniaid]

I've been talking a little recently about the way that the show sometimes deliberately makes Xander unsympathetic, and I think The Wish is a great example of that.

I mean, it's actually kind of impressive that Xander manages to jump straight to "Look, you want to do guilt-a-palooza, fine, but I'm done with that" about ten minutes into the episode, cleverly skipping over any of the actual wallowing-in-guilt phase. Or even, as far as we see, the actual admission of guilt phase.

Yes, we know that he made a big effort in the week between Lovers Walk and The Wish to try to talk to Cordelia but, as Oz says to Willow a little earlier "I can't help feeling like the reason you want to talk is so you can feel better about yourself".

Xander certainly didn't seem particularly contrite when he was talking to Buffy and Willow earlier. Willow was talking about her plans to beg for forgiveness, but Xander was talking about kissing Willow being "a mistake" and how it "bugged him" that they were caught when it was definitely going to be the last time it happened. Nothing we hear in Xander's "sixty or seventy" answer machine messages to Cordelia -- which we see she did listen to -- contains any actual acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Maybe if he'd actually said some variant of "I'm sorry" at any point instead of just asking to talk, things would have been a little different.

And, to reiterate, I do think this is a example of the show knowingly have Xander act terribly. The Oz line I quoted above makes that obvious, I think. Indeed, Xander describing the kiss as "a mistake" must be intentionally echoing Buffy describing her kiss with Angel in Revelations as "an accident", something Xander himself was hardly sympathetic to at the time ("what, you just tripped and fell on his lips?".

We are surely not meant to be on Xander's side here.

(Which is good, because I'm not.)

This episode is really a culmination of two arcs that I'm not crazy about: the Xander/Cordelia subplot and then the Xander/Willow cheating subplot. And, having reached the end of both, I still don't think either one works. But the weaker of the two is probably the first one. It is just not credible to me that Cordelia would be attracted to Xander, and I'm not sure any amount of handwaving or headcanons is going to change that.

Yes, the show has established that Cordelia is often lonely or isolated despite her superficial popularity, and her romance with Xander kind of builds on that. I think the writers just forget (or ignore) that they've already shown us that Cordelia is capable of forming meaningful relationships with people that make her happy and don't threaten to undermine the social status she cares so much about (even if the last example of that happening was eaten by vampires way back in Season 1). The idea that she'd be happier dating somebody she has almost nothing in common with (except, possibly, a shared childhood history that is only ever hinted at) -- somebody who is barely even civil to her in all the times we see them on screen-- is just not serious.

And the show itself is never sure if it's being serious about their relationship: it never really moves beyond the punchline it was in What's My Line?. So there's a kind of bathos to the whole thing at the end: yes, it's sad that Cordelia got her heart broken, but the show was still playing her feelings for Xander as a joke as late as the Season 3 opener.

On the other hand, I know a lot of people dislike the Xander/Willow cheating subplot on an almost visceral level -- I've seen people talk about how it feels wrong and it's not enjoyable to watch, and I'd agree with that -- but I think that reaction is mostly (maybe even entirely) deliberate. We're meant to think that what Willow and Xander are doing is wrong and inappropriate and foolish. We aren't exactly supposed to be rooting for Xander and Willow to end up together at this point. We're not meant to think they have good chemistry. That ship sailed at least a season ago.

And as a vehicle for breaking up Xander and Cordelia ahead of her departure to Angel, and as a tool for commenting on Buffy's own secret-keeping with Angel that takes place over the same few episodes -- which, really, is all this particular subplot is at the end of the day -- I think it works well enough.

What I'm a little less persauded by is whether it makes sense for either Xander or Willow as characters, especially since Becoming Part 2 seemed to mark the end of Willow's unrequited attraction for Xander pretty firmly. On balance, I suppose it's not too out of character for either of them, even if it doesn't paint either of them in a particularly flattering light (Xander is so shallow that he finally notices how attractive Willow is the first time he sees her in a flattering outfit; Willow thinks resorting to magic is a more sensible approach to her romantic problems than talking about it to literally any of her friends). It's not too hard to believe it. But that doesn't mean I like it.

My more serious complaint is that, after this episode, the Xander/Cordelia split will see Cordelia self-exiled from the Scooby Gang too. That feels like a waste, to me. But at least she'll get to fufill her dream of moving to LA next season and put Sunnydale behind her for good, after which nothing bad will ever happen to her again.

[hisui-cotton]

It’s interesting to see how long fashion can last beyond it’s presentation. It’s not uncommon to see styles or trends come back around but another aspect of it within media is how integral it can be to the show’s image. When you think of a character, you think of how they dress too. Good costume design can bring a full image together or reflect a new side of someone. Games can implement skins, armor, and character customization to express new sides of a character or allow players to create looks that directly reflect the outfit’s origins. Today though I want to talk about 2 shows, One Piece Live Action and Buffy. I'd like to ruminate about some of the outfits I loved and how the outfits added to the shows unique and iconic imagery not by being just stylish but relevant to characterization of these already iconic characters.

My favorite two outfits from the One Piece Live Action were Nami and Luffy’s Baratie outfits. I feel like Nami’s was both poppy and cute, a Pink top and Orange pleated skirt, in the realm of party wear whereas some of her other outfits were more obviously for comfort on the sea or in combat. The way Emily Rudd wore it was also very confident which I feel is important for the character. Part of what I think makes Nami’s strength and so great is her own confidence and will, where she will confidently take the action she believes. Likewise Luffy’s outfit is a bit more of a modern casual version of his usual outfit but still works for his character. Luffy’s usual clothes are supposed to be ones he happened to have found, where as these feel like some he perhaps got before leaving Syrup Village as they’re much cleaner. The style of them though is still super fun, almost childish, and just similar enough to his usual that you don’t feel a difference in his presentation. Iñaki Godoy has a really energetic and in some ways naïve play of Luffy and so the outfit and the it fits that makes it feel like something Luffy would wear with blue jean overalls and a bright red hooded t-shirt.

For One Piece it’s not too hard to figure out how it can be so distinctly styled. Oda’s art and designs are fairly unique. If you see Luffy’s outfit off of Luffy, it’s still recognizably his outfit. But what was kind of unexpected within the show was that even in other outfits they always felt like something he’d wear. Most of the costumes were adapted from Oda’s Color Walk 1 and 2 but costume designer Diana Cilliers has mentioned that there were costume changes made for function and to better fit the cast in ways. But it’s fun to know that it wasn’t just actors and set designers trying to recognize Oda’s vision for the world but also the costume designers trying to bring more of his work directly into the production.

I think this is a good vision for the show to go by too. Taking the both iconic characters and Oda’s sense of design for them and making it integral to the iconography of live action’s production, recognizing that the clothing and fashion of the world is just as important, is wonderful.

Now you may be wondering how I am transition to Buffy in this or how I even relate these two together. Actually I had seen Buffy a lot when I was younger, my mom and Aunt watched it quite a lot. From time to time they also like to rewatch old shows while doing chores and stuff just as background noise. At the time OPLA came out, my mom happened to be rewatching Buffy and something about how stylish Buffy was stuck with me the same way I was noticing OPLA was really stylish. Thats about how they ended up being compared in my case but something I noticed actually was how both felt like they tried to authentically represent and evolve the characters outfits.

In One Piece where the outfits are more involved with the characters and clothing functionality, Buffy’s feels more about the way it grounds the fantasy of the world in Sunnydale and it’s time. Buffy has returned to the fashion zeitgeist as Y2K fashion has made a some back in many places. Which makes sense with the way the show has a pretty iconic sense of fashion. Buffy and Willow both have the most distinct styles in the show an that definitely left a note on the fashion culture at the time. Within Buffy it’s pretty interesting to note that not all the outfits were bought or pieced from everyday fashion, some were specifically designed and made for the show. A lot of the ones that were bought were also sourced from around LA and it’s surrounding cities, the closest thing to Sunnydale there probably is. In one interview for Paper Magazine Cynthia Bergstrom mentions the brands Ver Wang which was located in Beverly Hills, Mark Wong Nark who had a store on Sunset Blvd and Cynthia Rowley out by the coast and south of LA and Huntington Beach.

Just as much as the show set trends in style, leaving ever iconic looks for characters, it also captured a lot of the actual clothes of the time. Willow’s clothing evolution is probably the one most people recognize across the series. Going from varied, almost hand me down fashion, to an almost casual punk or alternative style. From there it kind of naturally matures into outfits that feel more mature overall. One of my favorites though is from the episode where she meets Tara during a Wicca Group meeting. The episode is HUSH, a well known episode for being one of the more terrifying ones based on the idea of silence and terrors that lurk in that and take advantage of that. Willow’s outfit that I like has probably one of my favorite balances to match her personality and budding interest in this dark power in her. It has this cute cropped pink sweater and jean-patchworked Maxi skirt. It feels like it’s somewhere between the sweet and kind Willow and then the alternative grungy-naturalistic aesthetics of magic. In a lot of interviews it sounds like Willow was one of the easiest to style for and it shows quiet well. Willow always has a developing style all the time but it’s a very natural and understandable one and I love being able to see that.

The other outfit in this show I absolutely LOVE is from another legendary episode, Band Candy. Joyce, Buffy’s mom, and Giles, Buffy’s Mentor, essentially get their brains turned to teen-age from the chocolate sold from the school. Technically all adults who eat the chocolate get affected but we’re focusing on these two because Joyce looks great. Stacy’s mom? NO! Buffy’s mom. She and Giles go on a trek through the chaos that ripples through the town. Giles being the british-punk warlock he is steals a coat she wants from a shop window by tossing a trash can through it. Now when I say Joyce looks great in this episode I mean it’s undeniably one of the best outfits in the series. With suede (?) knee-high boots, a short formfitting skirt and the layered, ankle length jackets, one of which topped with an almost fur like feather collar, on top of a nice pastel V-neck shirt, is one of the most cohesive and timeless outfits seen in the run of the show. Giles’s outfit also fits this episodes' event change where he rolls his t-shirt sleeves up with a plaid shirt tied around his waist and plain jeans. It’s really simple but echos the general look of the younger punk scene Giles likely was a part of in his youth.

What I feel makes Joyce’s outfit stand out as iconic though is how it showcases something that actually people saw in a recent tiktok trend. People were swapping clothes with their parents and it made a lot of their parents look a lot younger. In many ways it showcased how style trends not just across time but across age can be irrelevant because of how the fashion itself is worn. A newer style and a certain level of trends can really affect the way a person’s age can present themself. When Joyce wears this outfit along with her acting younger it feels cohesive. The way she wears it and how it looks together, just like with Nami, Luffy or Willow, plays into the relevant parts of the character. She is teenage brained from a story standpoint but from a visual standpoint it helps to actually showcase that difference by evolving her outfit. Yet it still feels like her, not just because we see her in it but because of what we see in Joyce’s character in the rest of the series. She enjoys art, she jokes with Buffy and her friends a lot, and in being Buffy’s mom has raised her to be confident and fight for herself, even if she hadn’t always known Buffy was the Slayer. There is a deeper character that may not dress the way she does in Band Candy all the time, but has an origin and side to herself that would dress like that.

So when I say Fashion is always relevant, it’s not just a statement on how relevant it can be to a time. Most of what makes it so relevant in storytelling is the character and how believable it can be to see that outfit or costuming applied to said character. In live action series this can add a really thoughtful layer and be used to develop subtle, or overt, storytelling points. So when you find your next favorite show, see how much your impression and idea of the characters comes from how they dress. It might surprise you to see just how much it can change with a few outfit differences.

Anyways I’m no style expert, I just wanted to talk about some cool feelings I had over the fashion in these shows. Above is the full body picture I drew as a nice little doodle of the outfits I talked about here (You can also see part of it in the header for this post). Hope you like it. Here are all my sources and interviews I read to write this up:

Buffy:

One Piece:

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Blood Moon

Summary: In season three, Snyder once again enlists Buffy's help in taking kids trick-or-treating for Halloween. Buffy, this time, decides to dress up as Sailor Moon. In needing sometime to unwind before spending some time with the munchkins that night, Buffy stops by the mansion to see her favorite vampire. Thinking she looks pretty cute as Sailor Moon, and that Angel might appreciate the sight, she shouts, "Happy birthday!" to him as she bursts into the place... not knowing that Halloween is actually Angel's birthday, and this is how she's about to find that out. Based on "Buffy The Last Vampire Slayer" listing Halloween as Angel's canon birthday.

"Happy birthday, Angel," Buffy said somewhat shyly, as she strolled into Angel’s mansion in a Sailor Moon costume. Truth be told? As far as Buffy knew, it wasn't actually Angel's birthday. She had no idea when that day was, unfortunately—as there were still some things from his human life that he wasn't comfortable discussing. But she thought that Angel might, in some capacity, enjoy seeing her dressed in such a way, which was why she was saying the turn of phrase.

The actual day was Halloween, hence why Buffy was dressed up (and she'd chosen Sailor Moon for a few reasons. One, because a cute little girl who she had rescued at a comic book store had said that Buffy reminded her of Sailor Moon (1), which had then gotten Buffy to research the manga and to come to the same conclusion herself. And two, because on the off-chance they got turned into their costumes again this year, she wanted a superhero who could always handle things at the end of the day).

Anyway… Buffy was definitely hoping that Angel would think she looked cute like this, hence her lame "happy birthday" comment, to give her something to enjoy before she was once more under Snyder’s scrutiny in a few hours. But as Angel seemed to look at her with puzzlement in his eyes and nothing more, she was very much starting to regret the whole thing.

"How-how'd you know?" Angel gasped, after he'd blinked at the Slayer a few times.

And Buffy was about to ask “how she knew what?” When it suddenly dawned on her what Angel's question must have meant. She gasped, as she all but tackled him into the couch. He had been standing in the center of the room to hug her, no doubt, but now in her enthusiasm, Buffy was pretty much straddling him atop the sofa in his living room. "Angel, you’re saying Halloween is your actual birthday? Why didn't you ever tell me?!"

Suddenly, Buffy felt heartbroken that she had nothing to give Angel on his actual birthday here. Nothing but her love. Sure, she could give him a late birthday present, but it wouldn’t entirely be the same.

Buffy was about to berate Angel, for letting things become uneven between them this way (where he would be a better boyfriend than she a good girlfriend, since his birthday presents to her would be on time), when Buffy noticed just how intently he was looking at her.

“And you’re really debating telling me something heavy here, aren’t you?” Buffy surmised.

And Angel laughed once at that. And had smiling eyes for just a moment—even going as far as to calling Buffy the “Champion of Love and Justice, indeed--before he seemed to settle back into his despair. “It wasn’t because I thought birthdays were irrelevant after becoming a vampire that I didn’t tell you, Buffy. Please understand that. It wasn’t even the clichéd idea that we vampires moreso celebrate the dates we were sired…

"Though celebrating birthdays for hundreds of years can get confusing and tedious," Angel seemed to add as an afterthought.

"Though that's still not the main reason you left me in the dark?" Buffy asked, drawing circles on Angel’s red, silk shirt with her index finger. She wondered if it had to do with his birthday being on Halloween: the day demons never went out on, because they hated how commercial everything had become. Had Angelus feared everyone would think he was somehow commercial, if they knew when his birthday was?

Sighing heavily, and looking everywhere but at Buffy, Angel admitted in a voice that was small and very out of place for him, "Once my father had deemed me a disappointment in his eyes, he said it was only fitting I'd been born on Halloween, the devil's day and all that… and he was right."

Buffy knew she must have heard wrong. She had to have. Because while she knew that there hadn’t exactly been any love lost between Angel and his father, for a parent to still say that to their child… Even in much harder times, Buffy couldn’t make sense of it in the slightest.

And even Angel himself! Buffy knew that he could brood with the best of them, but he was working so hard for redemption and to prove that he was worth something. Even on his worst days, how could he ever believe something like that about himself? Buffy wanted to believe that he didn’t. But taking one look at how he was so still now, that Buffy knew could actually be the sign of an anxiety attack, she knew it was the truth.

"Angel, that's horrible! I can't believe your father would say that to you! He's dead wrong! He's always been dead wrong about it!"

"How can you say that, Buffy?" Angel countered, turning beaten, tortured eyes onto her. "Look at what I ended up doing to them. He must have-"

While Buffy had gone to just laying on top of Angel before, she was once again straddling him now, and leaning above him so she could peer directly into his eyes. Running a gentle hand over his face as she tried to sooth him, the Slayer whispered the following—as a warm glow from the fireplace settled on the both of them, "Don't you dare tell me he must have somehow seen the future and known you would become Angelus, Angel. That's just impossible. He was being abusive towards you. And you're taking something a demon did, that you're making up for every day, to try and justify those unfair words spoken to a child.

"From now on, we are going to celebrate your birthday on Halloween. And aside from this Sailor Moon costume that I'm totally wearing for you and not because I got roped into taking kids trick-or-treating by Snyder again, notwithstanding… what would you like for said birthday?"

It was clear that Angel was thinking about it—whilst he squeezed Buffy’s hip tightly and seemed to purposely smooth a careful kiss onto the little crescent moon that was on one of her red choker--but the moment that Angel got a guilty look into his eyes, Buffy knew what her vamp was going to try and articulate here. Before he could, Buffy pulled away from him the slightest bit and snapped, "And don't dare say you don't deserve anything from me because of last year, when you weren’t yourself. Or that I give you enough already, as sweet as that would be."

Angel laughed for Buffy’s sassiness for just a moment—something Buffy definitely appreciated—and then pulled her into a kiss that instantly had this Serena melting for her Darien (2). It had been far too long since the two of them had been together like this, Buffy thought, as she tried to not get too lost in the feeling of Angel's claiming kiss, and home. The two of them tried so hard to be virtuous, and not do anything to bring about Angelus. But how could those actions be deemed good when this was so right? Buffy wondered, just as Angel nibbled on her bottom lip once and she moaned.

But all too soon he was pulling away from her and getting up, even—removing temptation, Buffy suspected—and rifling through one of his drawers. If she peered closely, she thought that maybe he was looking at some of his drawings in them?

"I would like for my birthday… a thing of post-it notes."

Buffy stared at Angel for a long moment, thinking that he had to be joking with her, of course—even though her Angel was usually so sober—because who would ever ask for that for their birthday, but while he continued looking at her expectantly, and then in a bashful way, Buffy realized he must have been serious.

"Angel… I know you probably haven't really thought about what you'd want as a gift for a while, but I swear I can splurge way more than tha-"

But thankfully, Angel cut Buffy's somewhat insulted words off with a finger to her lips. "There's a part of me that's always wanted to try my hand at animation… Though to do that, you need to know how to use a computer, which I really don't. But you can somewhat imitate the affect with post-it-notes: in making a flipbook and I'd like to try it. And it would mean a lot to me if you could help me make that dream come true," Angel told her earnestly, dear God, almost doing the puppy dog pout, so that Buffy couldn't refuse him.

This still hardly seemed like enough of a gift for him to Buffy… Even if she went to an art store and asked if they had special post-its for artists, or anything like that, she was still skeptical about it, but she couldn't turn this dream of Angel's down, now that she knew it was a dream of his. But maybe she could do more with it.

"In the name of the Moon, that’s how I’ll heal you," Buffy promised the love of her life… And okay, she somewhat hated the cheesy words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Maybe the DIC dub of Sailor Moon wasn’t that great. Though in its defense, she didn’t think even it had ever been as silly as what she had just said.

But Angel didn’t seem to mind. If anything, he seemed charmed by it all and sealed their promise with a kiss. And being a girl very much in love, Buffy loved it when he ran his hands through her hair as they made out:

Buffy hadn’t actually bought a wig for this costume, but had rather done her hair up in meatballs as best she could. And while her hair wasn’t nearly as long as Serena’s at all—if anything, it was as long as Rini’s—Angel seemed to love her just the way she was, like he always did. Like she did him.

…

Buffy did make good on her promise to Angel, but she did something else, too. Though she knew she was probably the world's most terrible artist, she thought she might get points for effort. So, what did she do? She made her own animation flipbook… it was supposed to depict when she gave Angel a bracelet when they'd been fighting the Sons of Entropy (3), but Buffy thought it probably looked more like a stick figure attempting the hula.

"I don't know," Buffy explained lamely, as she handed him both presents, as they both stood in front of the fire at the mansion. "I just thought that maybe, for your birthday here, it might be nice to reference both presents I've given you so far. It seems really stupid now. I know my drawing sucks," Buffy said all but depressed.

The next thing Buffy knew, Angel was moving in her direction. And her Slayer senses were going absolutely crazy for it, thinking that an angry vampire was trying to attack her—and she nearly prepared herself to go on the defensive—but then she was in his arms as he was trembling. And Buffy remembered where she was, and just how vulnerable the creature in her arms was and just how much she loved him.

"Angel?"

"Thank you, Buffy. Just thank you. Whenever I think I can't love you any more than I already do, you prove me wrong."

"And I’ll always be here to do that for you, Angel," Buffy said gently, kissing her vampire’s ear. And she embraced him a moment longer, before they both sat down in front of the fire to examine Buffy's little animation together.

Before Angel left, he drew his own one in the post-its that Buffy had given him: the time that he had given Buffy her claddagh, thinking it was only fitting that since Buffy had drawn the time she had given him a bracelet that said "always," that he depict when they'd shared rings and promised each other forever. He'd given this to Buffy; and as she'd looked over Angel's gorgeous line work and colors as they moved, she imagined she'd never loved a possession more.

And, yes, even in the long years that she was temporarily without him, did it give her comfort.

Author's Note: (1) That happens in one of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer High School Years comics.

(2) I know that their names are Usagi and Mamoru… but in the time the Buffy seasons take place in, Buffy would most likely know them by what the DIC dub called them: Serena and Darien (and their daughter from the future as “Rini”).

(3) This is a reference to the Buffy books “The Gatekeeper Trilogy,” and Buffy did give Angel a bracelet there.

This whole thing is based on how in Buffy The Last Vampire Slayer, Angel’s birthday—on his wedding certificate to Buffy—is written to be on Halloween. I may not like quite a few things about that series, but that’s cool. And it got the muse inspired to write this whole thing.

For a while now, I’ve thought about Buffy dressing up as Sailor Moon for Halloween, mainly because they have so much in common. And then it combined with the above idea and this fic was born.

I also feel like Angel would know about Sailor Moon, perhaps (which I clearly went with here), because he read a lot—so maybe he’d come across the manga—had been to Japan in the past (so I feel like he maybe knew Japanese, like he knows so many languages—so perhaps he could even be reading the manga in its original language)… and, well, Sailor Moon is so like Buffy. So, if for whatever reason, he ever started the first volume, I feel like he would continue on, because he’d be like, “Oh my gosh, she reminds me of Buffy.”

I do have an idea for a sequel to this, I think, so hopefully we’ll see that soon!

[hexiewrites]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 43!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 562,348, which is honestly insane

3. What fandoms do you write for? right now mostly stranger things. I've got most of a ted lasso fic written but who knows if that'll get posted?? and prev, harry potter.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 1. don't take this sinner (dramione, marriage law ish), 2. same as it ever was (steddie, two timelines, one of my first steddie fics!) 3. carve your name into my chest (steddie, the hockey au of my dreams) 4. come get your man (he got lost in my DMs) (steddie, social media, steve being a horny DM guy) 5. there'll be a riot (cause I know you) (steddie, the matty-healy-rat-man-Eddie-vibed mostly smut fic)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? ugh. I WISH!!!! I want to be better at this, I really do. I usually start strong but I end up with limited energy/time and I want to filter that into writing more. if you've ever commented: I FUCKING LOVE YOU and think you're SO cool! if you really WANT a reply, the best way to get that is to ask me questions haha. it starts to feel weird just "thank you!"ing everyone, ya know?

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I am.... not an angsty ending person tbqh! I think the closest is probably you love the sea, which is a flintwood rarepair selkie fic that I deeply love. it ends happy, insofaras they end up TOGETHER, but if you think more about the implications and how fucking sad it's going to be for oliver... well. I'll leave that to you guys.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? god, I'm well known for having "endings so happy they border on absurd", according to one person online. so, pick your poison I guess! anyways the fic THAT person was referring to was same as it ever was, so, let's go with that!

8. Do you get hate on fics? I have been so lucky lately to not get much hate at all lately, which is a real privilege in the fandom world. remember that I cut my teeth in early days of harry potter, and people were BRUTAL. I definitely HAVE gotten hate - my aforementioned dramione fic has a bit of a weird twist that some people were PISSED about (and once I got an incredibly detailed comment about how badly I fucked up my representation of black Hermione because she... didn't talk that much about hating her hair? which I know is AN experience but not necessarily a universal one) but overall, at least this fandom go around, no hate. thank you, everyone, for that!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yes. lots and lots and lots of it. mostly kinda kinky and pretty much all pretty gay. let's not talk about how many times I've had to tag dacryphilia and what that means. I just like when people fuck about things, yknow?

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? nope, never! and I likely never will. too much to keep track of.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? not that I know of, thank god for that.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I've had requests but... I would need a translator willing to work pretty closely with me because I want to make sure certain choices come across well, and I haven't found that yet.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? not officially, though I did write a buckingham companion piece to the amazing cowboy-bar fic @riality-check did!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? OH GOD don't make me choose! ALL TIME is still probably dramione, but steddie is a very close second. in terms of canon ships, I'm such a sucker for buffy/spike (leave me alone), and veronica mars/logan (AGAIN LEAVE ME ALONE) and rory/logan (BECAUSE RICH WHITE BOYS NAMED LOGAN ARE A WEAKNESS, APPARENTLY)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? pour one OUT for you can't take the sky from me, which is my firefly inspired harry potter au ft pansy/percy, mostly because I had so many big plans for it that I've completely forgotten AND I just can't write in that fandom at all anymore. sorry everyone, I do love what I put out and I wish there was more of it.

16. What are your writing strengths? prose, smut, tying things together with little bows, and spending way too much time in my characters heads

17. What are your writing weaknesses? dual POVs, getting so lost in one character I don't flesh out the others as much as I mean to, action sequences, and consistent motivation

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I've done it before (mostly in clean ice, cold hearts, can't lose) and my typical strategy is to indicate that the characters are speaking a diff language (in french, I use guillements and italics) but not to actually WRITE the french, unless it's very short and the POV character doesn't understand it on purpose like in carve.

19. First fandom you wrote for? harry potter baby! my oldest posted fic that I've found online was from 2002, when I was... too young to be interacting with the internet like that, that's for sure.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? carve your name into my chest and it's no contest. I love same as it ever was as well, which I think is a better WRITTEN fic technically speaking, but carve was a huge passion project that I had so much fun with, and the response to it had been one of my favourite things in the world. oh, and special shout out to make this inn our own, which is my second longest fic ever and was just an absolute joy to do. so, those three, I guess!

tagging with no pressure: @riality-check @hereforanepilogue @maxineholtzmann @stevespookington @stevethehairington @withacapitalp and whoever else wants in!

[fancoloredglasses]

The Buffyverse (An awesome pair of shows based on a dumb premise)

[All images are owned by 20th Century Fox Disney and Mutant Enemy Productions. Please don't sue, bite, or stake me]

I know these days Joss Whedon is known more for his toxicity than his works, but in the 90s and early 2K he had two (it should've been three) of the hottest series on television.

(Thanks to Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

The premise is simple enough...

a cheerleader named Buffy Summers (played by Sarah Michelle Geller) finds out she's the latest "Chosen One" known as the Slayer, who is born to kill vampires (hey, if the 16th President of the United States can do it, why not a high school student?). A Slayer's power is awakened when the previous one dies (quick note: Buffy died, but was revived, at the end of Season 1. This caused a second Slayer to be awakened!)

This was actually the premise of a film (produced by Whedon and starring Kristy Swanson as Buffy, though it was much more comedic than he intended) and the series picks up where the movie left off (with Buffy being forced to move to Sunnydale California after the events of the movie)

(Thanks to Buffy and Angel Clips)

(A quick note on how vampires work in the Buffyverse (yes, it's important): When a vampire drains a human of their blood, a demon inhabits their body, replacing their soul. Said demon gains the human's memory and personality, but has no conscience or morals and exists to spread evil and chaos)

Whether Buffy wants to be or not, she is still The Slayer and has a job to do while keeping her grades up and trying not to be kicked out of another school.

This may be harder than she thinks, as Sunnydale was built on top of a demonic beacon known as the Hellmouth, and all sorts of demonic entities (what? You thought vampires were the worst thing she'd have to deal with?) are drawn to it on a weekly basis...and guess who has to handle it?

Assisting Buffy in her crusade throughout the series are... (NOTE: Buffy's allies are often referred to by the fandom as "The Scooby Gang", and yes, they have a dog (of sorts))

Rupert Giles, the school librarian and Buffy's Watcher (Watchers are responsible for training and advising a Slayer, as well as recording their exploits for the next Slayer to learn from)

Xander Harris, fellow classmate and the "everyman" of the Scooby Gang (everyone else has or gets cool abilities/skills, but Xander remains a plain old vanilla human)

Willow Rosenberg (played by How I Met Your Mother star and host of Penn and Teller's Fool Us Alyson Hannigan), Buffy's best friend. Willow eventually learns magic (and learns that using it almost NEVER goes well!)

Cordelia Chase, class Mean Girl who for whatever reason hooks up with Xander and joins the Scooby Gang until they break up.

Daniel "Oz" Osbourne (played by Seth Green, who played Scott Evil in the Austin Powers movies and would go on to co-create and do various voices for Robot Chicken), Willow's boyfriend (until they break up...did I mention there's a LOT of Teen Drama in the series?), lead singer of the underground band Dingos Ate My Baby, and, oh yeah, a werewolf (told you there was a dog in the Scooby Gang!)

Tara Maclay, Willow's girlfriend (and their courtship was ADORABLE!)

Anya Jenkins (AKA Anyanka), former vengeance demon who lost her powers and got into a relationship with with Xander until he left her at the altar (y'know, I think Xander may be afraid of commitment)

Finally, we have Angel (AKA Angelus, played by David Boreanaz, who would later play Agent Seeley Booth in Bones), a vampire who was cursed with having his soul returned to his body, meaning he has all the powers of a vampire and all the grief from everything he'd done before being cursed. The curse was lifted after sleeping with Buffy in a moment of True Happiness (DUDE! You're over 350 years old and she's 17! Talk about robbing the cradle!), allowing Angelus to resurface (don't worry, the curse was reinstated before he could end the world, and he left the series shortly after)

Actually that's not all of the Scooby Gang, because it's revealed at the end of season 4...

...she has a younger sister. Meet Dawn. No, she wasn't just "away from the camera". One minute Buffy's an only child and the next she's yelling at Dawn for being in her room!

It turns out that Dawn is a mystical artifact that was sent to Buffy in the form of a family member that was implanted into everyone's memories as Always Being There. And when THIS end-of-the-world crisis is over (there's pretty much one every season), Dawn is allowed to be a normal (bratty) teenager (or at least as normal as things ever are in Sunnydale)

Besides the usual Vampire/Demon-of-the-week and Season-Long Big Bad, there are two recurring antagonists (who were supposed to last one or two episodes before being killed off, but Whedon liked the chemistry between Gellar and them)...

Spike (AKA "William the Bloody") and his sire/girlfriend Drucilla (who is quite mad). Spike would eventually break from Drucilla and be a thorn in Buffy's side until he gets a chip implanted that forces him to stop killing (long story), after which he falls for Buffy, quests to get his soul back, and joins the Scooby Gang.

The series ran for 7 seasons, ending with a spell that awakened the power in ALL potential slayers!

In the middle of its run (shortly after a certain angst-y vampiric love interest left Sunnydale) there was a spin-off...

(Thanks to der450)

Angel has moved to Los Angeles (the City of Angels, heh) and opened up a PI business (Angel Investigations) to try to help the downtrodden. Among the members of Angel Investigations are...

Allen Doyle, a small-time hustler who has visions of people that need Angel's help...

...and is also half-demon.

Cordelia makes her return and joins because she needs a job while trying to become an actress. Let's just say her skills she acquired as part of the Scooby Gang better suit her than her acting skills. And she also acquired Doyle's visions after he sacrificed himself.

Wesley Wyndam-Price, a former Watcher (that lasted at most half a season on Buffy) who lends his knowledge of All Things Demonic to the cause.

Charles Gunn was a vigilante vampire hunter before joining Team Angel, where he primarily serves as the Mortal Muscle.

Krevlornswath (Lorne) is a peace-loving member of a war-mongering tribe of demons. He's in exile in LA, where he ran a nightclub for demons before joining the team.

Winefred (Fred) Burkle was banished to another dimension before being rescued (and later joining) the team. Unfortunately she was killed when her body was inhabited by...

...the Elder God Illyria. Fortunately for the world, Illyria's power was diminished in her new host. Even more fortunately, she joined Team Angel instead of destroying the world.

Finally, we have William the Bloody Spike joining the team after he re-corporated following his death in the final episode of Buffy.

Angel's primary antagonist (which they have to deal with throughout the series) is an agency known as Wolfram and Hart, which are run by a mysterious group known as the "Senior Partners", a trio of very powerful demons (The Wolf, The Ram, and The Hart. I have to say, they were rather clever with the name)

The series ran for five seasons. The final episode (which was supposed to be a cliffhanger for a sixth season, which was carried over to comics. I REALLY would've liked to see where it went on-screen, rather than the series implying that everyone died facing a horde of demons)

(Thanks again to der450)

While the series was as tongue-in-cheek as Buffy, the tone was overall much darker. This series showed more of Boreanaz's range as an actor.

Both series had some rather dark elements (such as the death of beloved characters such as Buffy's mom, Tara, Doyle, and Fred), as well as some episodes that were just bonkers (such as Sunnydale becoming a musical and Angel becoming a Muppet), but even at their silliest the series was still compelling and you wanted to see how they managed to beat the season's Big Bad.

Both series are available on Hulu or behind your favorite paywall. As always, if you would like to see an episode reviewed, let me know!

(Thanks to anti virus)

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Monday May 15 - Tuesday May 16, Part II

[Fandom Discussions]

the episode of Angel where Cordelia is shown how the world would be if she never crossed paths with Angel in LA by epiales06

How do you deal with shooting scenes of abusive behaviour, such as Spike’s towards Harmony? by James Marsters via alfasou

Cordelia and Willow by tuiyla

what are your thoughts on Spuffy this season? by tuiyla

I think a character we never talk about getting kinda narrativly assassinated is anya. by helpfulbug

https://coraniaid.tumblr.com/post/717396973231243264/i-know-the-moment-is-played-for-drama-and-in by coraniaid

Giles is often a lousy father figure by coraniaid

I’m not big on hot takes by tuiyla

I WANT ANGEL AND DAWN TO HAVE A BROTHER/SISTER RELATIONSHIP SO BAD by ann0yedpeach

OH MY DEAR GOODNESS I AM LOVING THE NEW SPIKE by nestaenthusiast

In Beneath You Anya mumbled "oh penis" by hero-adjacent

Random but isn't weird that Anya got so good at hand to hand combat by nevergonnabemuchmorethanweather and itzniaok

Dru in season 2 by epiales06

the way wesley really saved lilah from the beast by gothamstreetcat

In the flashback scene of Spike dying in "Chosen" why did they remove Buffy's "I Love You" to Spike? by Multiple Authors

Spike on Angel Season 5 Was it worth it or a waste of time ? by Multiple Authors

SoS: Willow's best qualities and what makes Willow great by Multiple Author

Discussion of The Vampire Slayer #14 - Released 5/17/23 (Boom! Studios) by Multiple Author

Despite a Beautiful Legacy, Buffy‘s Willow & Tara Were a Toxic Couple by Multiple Authors

Discussion of ‟Can AI actually write good fanfiction?‟ By Jay Castello, Polygon by American Aurora

Any personal headcanons on what you think Willow called Xander here in this scene by Lobothehobosexual

The two tales of who Buffy was vs. could've been by primal_slayer

Angels curse by Ok_Nature2869

What is the best Angel episode? by wallstreetliam

Message Boards by surfsupturtle

Anyone else find Buffy's crying in Triangle obnoxiously annoying? by jdpm1991

Question about Faith from S4. by SatansAssociate

Caught a moment in Angel where they forgot to edit a camera by mariacostoya

The Beast massacring everyone in Wolfram & Hart is a very underrated scene by jdpm1991

Do The Boys Watching Buffy Podcast Guys Ever Figure Out the Invitation Rules? by white_lancer

LANFAR! Do the dance of joy! by Mitogi

"Conversations With Dead People"--One of The Best Episodes. Do people hate it? by kipcarson37

a couple of questions about s3e11 gingerbread by -zoo-wee-mama-

Season 1 vs. Season 5 and Before by Kirrela

About this incident….. by mugiwara-no-lucy

Why did everyone lose all their braincells in 'empty places' S7E19? by ThrobbingHeadaches

Powerful Demon Skip by MoreGull

I Love AtS Season 4! by MoreGull

Are these things headcanon or were they actually established in the show? by Suitable-Garlic5217

Was Buffy reunited with Joyce while she was in heaven? by CleanUpOnAisle10

The Body arc by huffgil11

Puppet Show by BreakTacticF0

Was this done on purpose? by jdpm1991

“You’re Welcome” Ending by ginime_

The Effect of Crosses on Vampires by ErrForceOnes

We never got to know whether Dawn forgave Spike by aeryn1227

Wes job at Sunnydale High by Cat_OHara

Connor had a normal childhood by LightBlueSky55

How would Spike react if Buffy lost her soul? by whimsiebat

When Spike was "slaying" Buffy in The Bronze while watching her friends. by CharlieOak86868686

Xander is so loathsome in Season 2 it’s mildly ruining my rewatch by ThatGumYouLikee

Rewatching and it occurred to me. by WeeklyClimate8775

What If Glory encountered Marcus Hamilton and Brain Sucked him, what would come of Her and Ben? by ComplexAcademic1231

Angry rant about the pile on by URMythtaken

Help me understand the Seal of Danzalthar by menlindorn

Can you still be punk while [spoilers] by whimsiebat

If you could talk some sense into one of the Scoobs in S6, who would it be? by Opening_Knowledge868

Yes or no - Were The Initiative's experiments on supernatural beings unethical? by InfiniteMehdiLove

Buffy's empathy S1 vs S7 by mazmataz

Do you think what invisible Buffy did here qualifies as SA? by aeryn1227

I just love JM's performance in Beneath You! by CellSation

do vampires need to shower? by atlasshrugd

What line in Buffy gives you goosebumps more than any other? by theredacer

PUBLICATION: (Para)Normalizing the Patriarchy: How Supernatural Pregnancy Storylines Shape Perceptions of Motherhood and Bodily Autonomy for Women in Angel, 1999-2004 by Haley L. Strassburger (at the author‛s request, including her contact info for anyone who wishes to discuss the paper: spoonie.reads on instagram or haley.strassburger at gmail.com)

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

[benefits1986]

Juno Detour: Bad Faith

Starting Saturday with revisiting Sarte’s “bad faith” reminds me of Paul McCartney’s Let It Be. LUH. Ang aga.  If there’s one class I didn’t purposefully maxed out my free cuts on, it’s Philo 101 with a female prof who has androgynous looks and of course, very progressive and feminist. I’ve had a few philo classes who were under male profs and though the readings keep me up all night, there’s something OFF. The male gaze which I learned about in film class is the culprit. Or ako na naman lang ba ‘yun? :D  “Bad faith” is essentially un-hyping yourself. It’s your inner Decepticon, literally and figuratively. These monologues sabotage your game, your vibe, your aura. These thoughts spell out inauthenticity because we choose to think that we are not who we are. HUY. ANG AGA, MHIE. Bad faith is when we sigh and say: NO CHOICE, E. LOL. Bigat. Kagat na kagat.  Bad faith can be the core of my personal favorite line from Sarte, too -- “I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.”  This line is my constant struggle and victory for more than two decades. Since, mother dragon passed on her love for Paul McCartney to me, whenever I’m down the dumps and in a dark tunnel, Let It Be is my lullaby, my anthem.  During my trip back from a company activity, I was asked a series of non-work questions that led me back to the roads of Sarte and McCartney. Mhie, I was not prepared to answer, but, sige, in the name of Brene Brown and what I call Brownism year, push. My officemate turned real-life confidante asked me if I regretted starting my career late because I chose to look after mother dragon. I felt the huge ass lump in my throat again. LUH. But this time around, I just let the lump be. CHAR. I paused and told her that it was not an easy choice and I felt that I had no choice. YES and while I knew I made the right choice, the younger me, resented that choice when mother dragon told me that her time is up, that our cheating death season is ending. That’s eight years of putting mom in the center of my solar system. Plus three years of staring at my tabula rasa which CTRL + ALT + DEL my mom. I shared that what I failed to do back then is to embrace Let It Be fully; since, I knew so well how to defy gravity BUT I chose to believe that I’ve got an imaginary Invisibility Cloak for mom and me, too.  Every time mom recovered from yet another silent major attack, I felt stronger thinking that the vulnerability has been neutralized and vanquished. Kakanood ng Charmed, Buffy and Angel. UGH. I didn’t realize that all the while, I was not able to make amends with the reality that she did not have much time. I forced my choice to keep bumping her numbers up thinking that those numbers matter most. LUH. Naiiyak na naman ako. Numbers gaming pa more. Twisted thinking grounded on idealism and utopia pa more, girl. I iterated a lot; hence, my affinity to WORK AROUND arrived at its peak. But, like any peak, I didn’t prepare for the natural decline; for the reality. Why so? I just wanted more time with my mom. PERIOD. I convinced myself through bad faith that sige, NO CHOICE ako that her existence is highly perishable due to GBS, however, I am still the captain of the ship. I am still the master of my fate. TIWALA AND TRABAHO LANG. Looking back, I am indeed a twisted shit, super duper twisted to be precise. So, when I lost mom, I felt that bad faith left me in dust-like particles that will evolve not in this lifetime. I felt lifeless. I felt like a fucking walking dead. While I love the tabula rasa concept, my mindset was set on bringing mom to Disneyland and bringing home a souvenir pencil. Ang lala ng ating overactive imagination amidst the RBF. HAHAHAHA.  I also shared with her that the reason why I have an RBF is that I had to neutralize my mom’s doctors battle cry --mother dragon IS a case study. She is but another statistic; 1 out of 700,000 to be exact. I chose to twist the bad faith mindset and tricked myself that mother dragon can be that 1 out of 700,000. Lakas maka-defy gravity, mhie. You see, at 17, I should have been concerned with making landi, having the time of my life, and the works; but hell, no. HELL, NO! When faced with too many doctors who couldn’t do their work which is to save lives, (galit na galit yarnnn?) you’re left to do your thing. I tried my best to ask questions after heavy rounds of research in an ISP Bonanza era. Mhie, hassle. From walang pake, unbothered to stalker mode real quick tayo. The thing is, GBS back then is actually a series of case studies talaga.  After mother dragon died, I was left with nothing. All my plans, all my schedules, all my daily trackers were burnt to the ground; leaving me at my ground zero. Ang lala. I think that it’s my first time to fully share my feelings about this OUT LOUD. Mother dragon convinced me to Let It Be but, I DID NOT LISTEN because I fucking know the secret, already naman na. Ayoko lang tanggapin matalo. Ayokong matalo. Ganun po tayo kalala. Pati death, kinakalaban. Pati death, minamalditahan po natin. Why not? :D Yoko na. Ang lala talaga; but, hey, let’s do this, Juno! Let’s friggin’ let this out in the open to close it up real good, hopefully. And while at it, may the dots connect more and more backwards, too. More importantly, may these stories reach their audience of one. Ganern.  I told my office friend that hindi nagkulang mom ko. She told me that kaya ko na mag-let go. It’s time. Mom forced me to have my life going because she’s gonna be gone soon and then, sooner. She always argues with me when I chose to stay by her side. She reminded me too many times that she’s off to her finish line while I’m still starting the race.  During these passionate conversations, I just tell mom: Look, I know you don’t have much time. Alam ko ‘yun, ma. I know I am late in the race. Trust me, I know that little too well, too. I know that this choice may fuck me up real bad, however, I am here. You are here. We are here. Tapos. Hahabol na lang ako ‘pag time is up na. Ako ng bahala doon. Meantime, let’s get this compression socks up your thighs because we don’t want to risk your legs getting wonkier, shall we? ‘Pag nakalakad ka na ulit ng mainam saka ‘pag kaya mo na, I will let you do your thing, your way. Meantime, it’s my way. Got it? Also, kung ‘di mo siguro ako minahal ng sobra, you won’t be in that sick bed. Wala ka kasing concept ng self-love, ma. So, quits lang, ‘di ba? Pay it forward, ganun.  Her usual reply would be like: Naturuan nga kita pero sumobra naman training mo, anak. Ayoko maging pabigat; maging hadlang sa’yo, sa buhay mo. It was never my intention to weigh you down.  Syempre, ‘di ako magpapatalo. EVER. Kahit alam kong talo naman talaga ako. Iiwan din niya ako. My usual comeback: Ma, sabi mo nga, the true test of a teacher is when the student outperforms her. I got this. We got this. Slow and steady.  LUH. Naiyak na ako. Hassle ng thought fart na ‘to. Brownism is on a roll. Balik na lang tayo kay Sarte na walang feelings? Hahahaha.  I know mom wants the best for me.  But she also taught me that the best may not always be what’s easy, what’s convenient. Metal po talaga kami. I told my office friend that the only thing I regret was my inability and unwillingness to prepare myself for my tabula rasa. ‘Yun lang talaga. I had to spend 3 more years to get back in the game; but, if uulitin ko ba choices ko noon? YES. HELL, YES!  Though I was on my personal pandemic, my isolation, my Exodus for 8 years, those years taught me so much. It allowed me to take care of mom, my universe, the center of my solar system, my OG, my ultimate love (LUH), my everything. While I saw her at her worst, we had the best time of our lives, too. I witnessed what family really is about --staying 100% committed when it’s easier to escape, to walk away, to make grand alibi in the name of the BEST choice. I also learned that while a fat bank account can buy you convenience, the truth is that TIME is the real currency.  Back then, I felt that I wasted time.  Looking back, I know that time wasted beautifully and wisely, is never wasted.  OPAK.  Looking back, too, I guess this chapter allowed me to sharpen my “GOOD FAITH” saw. That, all things are possible in the perfect time. That even when things are sooooo fucked up, all you have to hang onto is that, things will make sense BUT you have to move forward. Move towards the light, inch by inch. That you just have to Let It Be. That you just have to keep the slow and steady wins coming. That the detours in June will always crash into you, and burn so badly, but, these detours make you more human which is more than divine.  Lesson: ‘Wag ng magsasama sa carpool with office friends to avoid emotion-centric questions. Joke lang. Adult na tayo, so, sige pa. More, more, more talks with the inner child tayo. Unti-unti. :D  Thank u, universe.  Thank u, Team Mohawk.  Sana eto na ‘yun. XOXO x RBF,  B

[mediacinemtographyartetc]

Archetypes in media/stories

Okay, so in media or even as a writing narrative archetypes [not sterotypes, sterotypes were written either to harm or be a caricature of a group of people while an archetype can describe anyone and can be anything being a leader is a archetype that any one can be while being a bad driver is a sterotype]

So here's the ones that drive me crazy ^^;

Protagonist see's the villain do something evil like steals the declaration of independence or blows up peoples heads because their 'problematic' But the protagonist by being decides that even if they can tell local authorities decides to do the right thing.

By 'stealing' the declaration of indepence [national treasure] Or blowing peoples heads of [Kingpin when eggsy and Merlin blow up the heads of the 1% of people in their safe house bunkers when the whole world almost got killed]

Its okay when the HERO does it I guess *shrugs* The popular concept of "Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. 'Trope'

Then my next favourite 'archetype'

The two 'best friends' who are living vicariously through the main character or the 'choosen one' [weird it'd happen twice but alas I have two nickels]

So we have the choosen one whose life sucks, they have a lot on their plate but because of their friends they're able to remain a pure hearted hero.

But what happens when that friend wants to walk away? Just 'stop' and be a kid for once? And not carry the world on their shoulders anymore and the friends have issues because how dare they do that and be so 'selfish'

Its like an abuse parent system the girl 'friend' is an overbearing mother who isn't speical but wants to be the quricky girl who thinks her life is sucks [but its actually great and kinda privaleged] then the boy 'friend' who is lazy neglectful but always has an opinion.

Buffy the vampire slayer with Willow and Xander. Danny Phantom with Sam and Tucker.

Tucker asked danny what if he could control a girl for five mintues, both friends using his powers for 'their' benefit. When Sam talks about Dannys issues she suddenly makes it about her and her overbearing parents. When Danny turned himself human both friends got annoyed because he wasn't 'speical' anymore [Altho the villain was being sus, its unfair that DANNY who is fourteen has to deal with it like he's responsible when its unfair.] Same as willow, she walked one mile in buffys shoes then whined that she had to nighthunt vampires for the summer when Buffy was awol [Her boyfriend DIED willow god] yet Buffy had to nighthunt when she was younger, by herself deal with her parents divorce and DIED but sure willow lets make it ALL about YOU and YOUR problems.

Then the guys don't take anything seriously and are just the goofy comic relief but when they have just a 'tiny' bit of life not being fair they act all grouchy and judgmental.

Heck Both Ron and Hermione do the same to Harry with the 'parent' dynamic because it makes sense. Both are sucked in by the 'choosen ones' orbit. Its whimsy and adventurious to save the world. The tone changes when it turns serious. When their families are in danger when they realise they could 'die' then it looses its lustre.

Ron used to be self sacrificing when he was in his first year, because children dont realise the danger yet when he got older and realised wanted to leave but was in too deep to walk away. Which is a valid fear, but when compared to the 'choosen one' who physically cannot walk away sounds like their whinning and need to suck it up.

Also more annoying when the choosen one starts to flag with burnout and wants to end it, thats when the 'mom' type just 'nags' the main character like yeah they already feel like shit just add to it I guess. Jeez.

Not throwing around anything since I'm not a therapist etc- but it does kinda come across like narcisistic friends who kinda gaslight their friend to get something from them and when they do something they percieve as 'wrong' they make them feel like crap because of it.

...

Next is some fun archetypes which by youtubes channel [Cracked]

The four humours. aka the four temperaments;

The leader, The rival, The intellect, the heart. Or usually the comic relief.

Usually a group of four OR Five. Like Avengers, Voltron, TMNT, etc and it goes on. Going back to the group of threes would be, Katniss peter, kale. Then Percy annabeth and rover, then Harry Hermione and Ron, Then Bella Edward and jacob.

Groups of threes then you go for Groups of four > Fantastic four . Girls trip, sex and the city [again tmnt] The A- team. other comedies. Then leads to groups of fives which are prevelant in superhero movies/series like teen titans etc.

Love triangles which are prevelant with the GROUP OF THREE. But honestly? If only Character b-c like character A? Thats not a triangle thats an arrow. Personally I feel like triangle would be A likes B and B likes C and C likes A. Are ALL abcs like abcs and realising who like who and which should be endgame instead of the popular archetype of;

[Dull bland your/name brunette girl here] who has to choose between [hot boy next door who is just the sweetest and non problematic guy who is her personal simp and would let her get away with murder] OR the OTHER HOT dark edgy cool mysterious "I can fix him!" Toxic bully of a guy. Which everyone chooses dark edgy shadow the hedgehog because at least the toxicity has some SPICE to his character as the boy next door is just as bland has white bread.

Also another thing I hate about these archetypes [that turn INTO a steroytype because it harms ME personally]

Is choosen one VS Society, and do the choosen ones actually fight 'against' the issues with society? Actually dismantle the structures in place? Harry conforms and becomes an auror and doesn't fix anything [anyone can polyjuice potion as someone and infiltrate the goverment escpeicially children harry and his own son did it and yet nothing in place? huh?]

Shadow hunters, clary becomes part of it AS DOES SIMON and yet do nothing to help downworlders [even tho simon WAS an ex-downworlder] and just became shadowhunters and conform to their [very elitist] society and dont change it.

The only people who ACTUALLY tried to change anything was Katniss she literally abolished the hunger games [and even the SECOND coming of 'capital' hunger games] And Percy jackson making it where the parents actually acknolodged their kids changing and avoiding a ton of resentment after the fall of Luke?

[shipsandlattes]

So I know everyone has already dissected this scene to its core, but it’s taken me a good 48 hours to digest this and I just needed to get it out.

I’m an aspiring actor, I’ve been training for a long time, with a lot of amazing teachers. I’ve watched a lot of shows and shipped a lot of couples. Some of them beautiful and canon, others, well, let’s just say waiting 22 years and counting for acknowledgement, closure, anything, it’s a damn challenge. I’ve seen a hell of a lot of will-they-wont-they’s, baiting, purposeful ignorance, deliberate fake outs, zero explanations, storylines that basically caused canon disintegration, the works.

In saying that, Dean and Cas were right up there on the list with the other “impossibles” because honestly, I didn’t think the writers would have the guts to do it, but I am so f*cking proud they did. It’s safe to say I’ve watched the scene a good hundred+ times already. 

I’ve seen a lot of “controversy” around Dean’s reaction/Jensen’s acting choices and whether or not Dean reciprocates Cas’ feelings, and obviously, I needed to add my own views to the mix.

Just work with me for a minute here.

Dean Winchester is an emotionally repressed trainwreck, and ironically enough, the one that is so full of emotion it hurts to watch. When Cas first starts his speech, he’s confused, really confused because why on earth would Cas start off on a rant now? Billie’s waiting to kill them, he just said he knew something that was more powerful than she was, something that could save them. That’s where he thought this speech was going.

The confusion turns to realisation that it’s a goodbye when Cas starts telling him how incredible he is, how his entire essence is love. Go back and watch the scene again, when Cas says “you’re the most caring man on Earth”, you physically see Dean look down, his eyes searching, he’s actively trying to make sense of what’s happening, he knows what’s coming and you can see him coming to terms with the shock of the words being said to him. He then looks directly at Cas. That look, that was pure shock.

Also, notice how he doesn’t stop Cas from talking? He doesn’t interject, make a joke, doesn’t talk about how there is no time for this now, they’ve got to at least try and stop Billie. He. says. nothing. He listens, he listens like I’ve never seen Dean listen before. Because it’s sinking in now.

When Cas really starts crying, when he says “you changed me, Dean”, you can actually see the pain in Dean’s eyes. He’s no longer in control of his emotions, he’s crying too. He’s never seen Cas like this, so raw, and vulnerable and human. This is the hardest, most emotional conversation they’ve both ever had. They are talking about the one thing that everybody knows, but is never addressed. When it wasn’t talked about, they could deny it, live in the lie. Once it’s said aloud, it’s real and they can’t turn back.

This above series of interactions is the part that kills me the most. The moment Cas says “because it is”, that’s the exact moment of realisation. Look at that last GIF, really look. He’s just worked it out, that he is Cas’ true happiness. He knows what’s coming before Cas even says it. Go back and watch the scene again, they pulled that off so well, the way the music swells at this exact moment. Jensen is giving us everything here, you can see what’s happening in his head - he is Cas’ happiness. He is the one thing on Earth Cas wants and thinks he can’t have. He is the reason Cas is about to die. He knows what Cas is about to say and he’s not sure he’s ready to hear it, not now, not like this. It’s almost a silent plea not to say it, because he knows. Of course he knows. It’s like he can’t quite believe Cas is really, after all this time, finally going to say it.

And because obviously Jensen decided that that wasn’t enough to break us, the loaded reaction when Cas says “I love you” has me nothing but convinced that it’s reciprocated. Because Dean knows. He’s always known. Those tears, that head tilt, that gulp. He’s so genuinely confused that they’re really having this conversation. It’s like he can’t quite believe that this is the reality before him because he’s been living in that denial, in that self-loathing and unlovable layer he believes to be true. He’s been under the ‘what if... but it could never be’ umbrella for so long. 

What also makes this real is that there isn’t anyone else around this time. When “I love you’s” have been said before, they have always been able to deflect it, with other people or other words. Now it’s just the two of them. No deflecting, no running away. Dean is forced to hear it, to absorb it, to realise it’s for nobody else but him.

Now, I don’t know if you guys felt this, but when Dean says “Don’t do this, Cas”, he wasn’t just referring to Cas sacrificing himself to the Empty, he’s telling Cas that he can’t just say this, not now, knowing he’s going to die, knowing that Dean won’t get a chance to think, to process, to say what he needs too. I keep staring at that GIF above, Dean is breaking down, I’m almost convinced that Jensen was using an “I love you too, please just stop this” inner monologue for this bit. Look at the way he’s looking at Cas before he realises the Empty has started materialising and turns around. That’s a look of pure heartbreak. Trust me when I tell you, it’s really hard to keep those inner thoughts inside if you’re so in the moment - actually, don’t just take my word for it, read any acting book, ask any actor, it’s so hard to keep that in and sometimes you don’t, and sometimes you do - it’s in both the resistance and the letting go that the gold happens. This my friends, is gold. 

Did anyone else hear “Cas, I-”, well, regardless of whether or not it was an “I” or a very sharp breath, the outcome is the same. Dean’s gone into immediate panic mode. The Empty at one end and Billie at the other, and all poor Dean wants to do is gather his thoughts on not what to say but how to say it. I don’t think he comprehended just how little time he had, he was so focused on what was being said that the reality of the situation caught him completely off guard.

Also, I know this post was about dissecting Dean’s reaction, but can we sidebar a minute to talk about Cas as he pushes Dean out of the way? He’s sobbing, he’s fully crying. That hit me really hard, I’ve never seen Cas cry like that, I’ve never seen Misha get to play that level of emotion before and it was the most heartbreaking thing to watch since The Doctor and Rose and Buffy and Spike, to which by the way, I find many parallels between those couples and this scene.

Speaking of crying, that brings me to this: Dean slumped on the floor, ignoring a call from Sam, sobbing his heart out knowing he’s lost everything. Dean-I’m-emotionally-unavailable-Winchester is sobbing. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t recall ever seeing Dean cry like this before either, the sobbing was so evident and piercing in that silence. The look around the room, the burying of his head in his hands, that is a classic writers romantic love trope if I’ve ever seen it, they really pulled out all the stops with this one.

So, to summarise, I think Jensen’s choices and Dean’s reactions were absolutely and utterly perfect. They both did it so well that it didn’t break from character that these two emotionally distant and repressed men are in love and finally voicing it. Jensen barely said two words and still managed to cause mass coronary’s across the fandom. That my friends is what you call a brilliant actor. I bow down to the talents of these two amazing human beings.

Before I leave this novel, I have to say there are now a few things I’m going to need from the powers that be to not screw this up, help me manifest this:

1. Dean gets to reciprocate his feelings to Cas in person. So, I’m gonna need Cas back and a very emotional Dean.

2. Dean to be actively dealing with heartbreak in the next episode (unless they decided to bring Cas back that soon, which I wouldn’t put past them at this point).

3. Sam to confront Dean about his feelings for Cas, because out of everyone, he’d be the one to hit Dean with the truth of his fears. Sam knows. Sam is supportive. Sam sees it all.

4. I’m gonna need some physical affection, cause after 12 years of nonsense, we damn well deserve it. A hug, and not just any old reunion hug, a proper, this is different now hug. A kiss because hello, in love out loud now. Forehead touching, handholding, really gonna need the works here.

5. A happy ending for the two of them, one way or another. We’ve never had one, it’s time.

Okay, have at it now, let’s speak these into existence please.

Note: GIFs are not mine, I did not make them, credit to owners who I’m not sure of, but they’re beautiful, thanks for making them. EDIT: I’ve just been informed that these gorgeous gifs belong to @michaeldean​ and @inacatastrophicmind​! 

[asterekmess]

Did you ever watch Buffy? The first episode where Anya was introduced was titled "The Wish" and all I can think about is if Scott McCall had ever run into a pure Sidhe where they offered him a wish. Instead of, "I wish Buffy had never come to Sunnydale." It would be more, "I wish I was never bitten to become a werewolf." But just like all feaye tricks, the outcome is more, his Dad ended up with primary custody rather than his Mom and he was forced to leave BH. And then Stiles ended up more friends with Heather and others. And while Scott's life is worse, when he tracks down the others he finds all of theirs are greatly improved.

I think about it a lot and how Scott never really dealt with the consequences of any of his actions, everyone else did, and how an episode or mini-arc could have fixed a flaw in the show's design. I mean, we were already dealing with a lot of Celtic lore, why not someone from the Sidhe courts?

I have no idea why this took me so long to answer, so apologies for that. <3 I did watch buffy! I've seen all of it, and all of Angel as well. XD

I remember 'The Wish' episode, and whoooo boy it gave me chills. I loved how big the butterfly effect was, how something that seemed so small, something that Genuinely seemed to be the cause of a lot of problems in Sunnydale, ended up being so important to how things had progressed. Because, yeah, you would think Buffy not coming to Sunnydale would be a Good Thing, right? Sunnydale didn't have all of these insane issues before she arrived. It was quiet, and nothing big or scary ever happened. Her arrival matches perfectly with when everything started going absolutely nuts, so whatever selfish ideas Cordelia had, her thought that Buffy not coming to Sunnydale would be a good thing, makes sense. Except that, as she finds out, she's entirely wrong. Buffy's arrival was a lucky coincidence, or fate, whatever your taste leans toward. She showed up right as things started going nuts, and she kept it from going SO MUCH MORE NUTS.

Now, moving on to TW, it is a fascinating mix of being the Exact same situation, and the exact Opposite. I'll add a Read More, cus' holy god is this a lot of Rambling.

Because Scott wishing not to have been bitten...yeah, the bite Did improve things. But it improved things for him. He would absolutely regret making the wish, just like Cordelia did, because he would realize how many good things the bite had brought with it. BUT, conversely, he would have to realize how many good things the bite had brought for him, not for other people, and how their lives either wouldn't have been affect, or might've even Improved without him being bitten. Without the bite, Scott wouldn't have gotten on first line, period. His health issues made very clear in the five minutes he had them that any kind of stamina based sport was just out of the question for him. If he is unable to walk through the woods at a moderate pace without needing to grab his inhaler and stop against a tree, he just plain cannot play lacrosse for two or three hours of running at high speeds and working a bunch of muscles in his upper body. He likely wouldn't have gone out with Allison, because he would have no convenient way to get her attention. Furthermore, he wouldn't have the extra senses that both impressed her on the lacrosse field, and told him about her 'family dinner' the night of Lydia's party. (I've discussed this before, but... While it's true, Allison would have still brought him the dog; that dog would likely have attacked him, and his chances with her would have been shot in the foot when they both got in massive trouble and he likely had to go to the ER for stitches or something. Without Allison or first line, he wouldn't have started hanging out with the 'cool kids,' and quite frankly, wouldn't have had anyone to help him study for the classes he was struggling with. It's true that he also wouldn't have had werewolf things to worry about, or even a girlfriend to distract him from homework, so maybe that wouldn't have been such a huge issue, but still.

If we look at other people's lives and how They would have been affected by Scott not getting the bite...well, let's talk about that.

Stiles didn't get on first line because of Scott, or because of a werewolf bite. Or even because of the werewolf bullshittery occurring in town. He was put on first line because of his abilities, and even after being taken OFF first line for missing the game, he was put Right onto the field in the next game, chosen OVER other players who were perfectly viable options. Which means, he still would've ended up on first line. Allison wasn't interested in dating before she met Scott, and part of her draw to him was based on how 'different' he was. He knew things she didn't know how he could know, he had a weird ability to calm a furious, injured dog, and he had charisma that was ALSO gained from the bite, since being on first line made Scott Much more self-confident. If she didn't end up dating him, it's likely she wouldn't have dated at all. Which would mean no hiding from her parents, no strange conflicts of interest, AND, interestingly enough --depending on her involvement in the murders, etc that would still be occurring in town--no night in the school that would scare her bad enough to ask Kate for extra help and tip her headfirst into hunter training. AND, even if she DID still end up getting those lessons from Kate? There would be no bitterness to fuel her behavior at the end of season 1.

Allison was Traumatized after Kate showed her Derek on the grate. She was horrified, and didn't know what to do about it, and while we can ramble all we want about the morality of her not confronting her family (whom she's just discovered is willing to electrocute people) about it, the fact is that she pushed the thoughts aside to stop freaking out and went to that dance. Where she found out Scott was a werewolf, and was So fucking Betrayed that she was willing to help Kate catch him and Derek. No Scott, no betrayal, no willingness to help Kate recapture the miserable man who'd been chained up in a basement.

If we go back to that specific night, and try to unfold the events from there if Scott hadn't been bitten, things get a little complicated, but I'll take a few artistic liberties. Scott isn't bitten. Presumably, he just happens to get out of the woods in time, or he gets caught with Stiles by the sheriff, or doesn't go to the woods in the first place. These all change the possible outcomes of that night. If he hadn't gone in the first place, and Stiles went alone, would he have been bitten instead? Would Scott have been dragged into all of this anyway, but without the protection and boost of being a werewolf and cured of his asthma? If he weren't the one bitten, and he saw everything Stiles gained from it, would he still have such a hatred for the bite? Or would he want it, like Erica did, to cure him and make him powerful and cool? But, let's assume Stiles doesn't get bitten either. The second half of Laura's body still hasn't been found, and Stiles has no reason to fear running back into the preserve the next day, and no real punishment from his father as far as we can tell. So, does he go back to look again? If he did, he would run into Derek, because Derek would still be there after retrieving Laura's body himself. He would see Derek and still recognize him, and from there, things might spiral, still involving Stiles in the supernatural, and it's likely Stiles would try to involve Scott, and Again we get hit with "Would Scott want the bite, if he hadn't gotten forcibly bitten in the first place?" The answer is probably yes. He wanted to be cool, and popular, and on the lacrosse team. He wanted everything being a werewolf gave him. BUT if we're looking at this wish as similar to "The Wish," then no matter what, Scott won't be bitten. He'll be transported to a new world where it just never happened, and he'll be human, and forced to watch everyone around him be just plain different. Scott not being bitten would isolate him from Stiles, if Stiles got involved in the spn anyway. We SAW how Stiles cut off his other friends once the spn starting getting in the way. He and Harley? We have no clue how close they were. They were close enough for her to tease him about his crush on Lydia, for her to wander up comfortably to the locker and talk to them. And he cut her off as soon as the werewolf stuff hit. What if he cut Scott off? To protect him, if nothing else, like he did his own father. Once he realized the danger involved, I doubt he would be willing to put Scott in harm's way.

So, Scott would not only lose first line, lose his girlfriend, lose his popularity, lose his health and strength and heightened abilities, lose his 'importance' to the goings-on of Beacon Hills, but he would also lose Stiles, who seems to have been his only friend, unless he also had a relationship with Harley.

Okay, I've rambled enough about the what if's, so let's talk about the Reason why this wish would go so badly for Scott, in such a different way than it went for Cordelia. Cordelia, first off, wished that someone Else would not have/do something, rather than wishing for herself not to have done something. She watches how fucked up the world gets, and how much worse her life is without Buffy around to save the day. Scott wished for Himself not to have done something (even something passive, like 'get bitten') and would have to watch how fucked up his world gets, and how far behind he would fall. The other's lives might not necessarily get better, because Peter is still on the loose, and the hunters are still there, etc etc, but they would still Progress, while Scott would stay stagnant.

And WHY is that? Because Scott isn't important to the story. It DOESN'T start with him. That's the Whole Point of his character. He is supposed to be the 'everyman' who gets dragged into crazy shit and becomes integral to things that he wasn't ever meant to be a part of. The guy who wanders into becoming King or 'The Hero' that will save the world, even though he's just a small lad from a tiny town, whose highest prospects were "get on first line."

He was NEVER supposed to be Buffy, or if he was, it was done Very Badly.

But Beacon Hills WASN'T a quiet town before Scott was bitten; however much he might've said 'nothing ever happens in this town.' It was FULL of bullshittery and magic from the very beginning. There was the fire, and Paige, and the blinding of Deucalion, and the death of Alexander Argent, and the Nogitsune in the internment camp nearby. All of these things were around So much longer than Scott's bite, and they'd been affecting the world that whole time too. Because yes, in Buffy, the master was There before she was, but he was literally rendered inert by the situations he was in. And the things he'd done happened Centuries before, not six years. There is a difference. Sunnydale was Not Known for the insane number of weird deaths. Beacon Hills was. And aside from the Nogitsune, every single fucking thing that happened in Beacon Hills, was attuned to the Hale family in one way or another. Deucalion's blinding occurred during a meeting on Hale land, because Talia was known as a wise leader, etc, in the area and other wolves flocked to her. Deucalion biting Argent seems unrelated (if you even believe Deucalion did that, despite being a fucking pacifist before Gerard blinded him), but again, it occurs just a couple hours away from Beacon Hills, which is Hale Territory. The one who plays the Buffy role here? Who shows up at just the right time, and launches themself against an endless wave of evil, with slightly enhanced senses and a thorough need to do good and not back away from things that 'aren't they're problem'? The actual hero who is somehow tied to everything going on in ways even they don't understand? Was Derek. The guy who entirely unwittingly allowed Julia Baccari to survive, because he was trying to be merciful to his first love. Who entirely unwittingly was manipulated into giving up information that let a hunter kill his family. Who followed his sister back to town after six years of just trying to survive in New York, fell into a fucking tragedy, and decided to stop the bad guys anyway, even though he knew he didn't stand a fucking chance.

And as annoyed as some might get. The 'everyman' who stumbles onto the set and accidentally becomes integral to the saving of the world? The one whose ambitions are small and who expectations are smaller? Who is misunderstood, and has abilities that aren't recognized or appreciated, that doesn't really fit in, but tries their best anyway? The literal Angel to Derek's Buffy?

Is fucking Stiles. The son of the sheriff who just could not let it go when he discovered there was something funky going on. Who hung around on the edges, even though he wasn't really wanted, because he needed to help. Who ended up saving Derek's life over and over, and becoming so important as to be Derek's anchor? Who literally WENT DARKSIDE and HAD TO BE NEARLY KILLED, even though Derek didn't to kill him???

I know how it sounds, but JD SAID he took inspiration from Buffy. The issue is that his parallels are between DEREK AND STILES, and BUFFY AND ANGEL. Respectively.

Derek might act like the broody bad boy, but it is STILES' mentality that matches Angel's behavior, and it's Derek who matches Buffy.

I'm so fucking off track. Scott would be miserable if he ever managed to get a wish and used it to keep from having been bitten. And it would be sad. I would feel bad for him, had I watched something like that happen. Seeing him realize that most of the good things he had, he only got because of the bite. That Stiles would still be on first line, that Lydia and Jackson would still be the popular kids. That Allison wouldn't know he existed, or if she did would avoid him entirely. That Jackson would never have been turned into the kanima in the first place. That everyone else would move on and up in life, and he would still be standing at the bottom step. Because it wasn't his actual limitations that were holding him back, it was his refusal to accept them, to work with them, and to just plain stop Envying Everyone Around him, and start living his own fucking life instead of trying to steal other people's.

Scott wishes he were Cordelia, and I promise that would backfire too.

[trainsinanime]

Ms. Marvel

I finally got around to watching the first episode of Ms. Marvel, and I gotta say: I really love it. This is easily the best thing Marvel has done since WandaVision, if not before (yes, I know, Hawkeye was fine, but it wasn’t purple enough).

People have been debating the changes this show has made to the comic character, but personally, I think they’re fine. Kamala Khan’s story is not about her powers, and definitely not about the Inhumans, but about her, her environment, her family, her friends and the space she lives in. And this show does a great job with all of that. I love Kamala’s entire family (especially the dad), and I love how the show grounds itself in the Pakistani-American culture and in Jersey City.

At the same time, I love how the show is willing to be out there with its visuals and the way it breaks the fourth wall in an almost Scott-Pilgrim-esque style. This and the strong color palette help set the tone and clear identity of the show, and is actually a good use of all the Marvel CGI stuff.

(RIP to shows like Cloak and Dagger, which were also awesome Marvel teenage superhero shows, but whose special effects budget was limited to one (1) flashlight for Tandy. Every new Marvel+ show makes it seem more and more like the early shows with their low budget and questionable canonicity got screwed over, despite some of them being very good.)

Most importantly, I love this version of Kamala Khan. She’s a bit more self-assured than in the comics, but she’s great, and her chemistry with everybody is amazing. Bruno in particular; the two constantly look like they’re about to kiss.

Finally, props to the credit sequence for the way it incorporates the comic art from the first 2014 run of Ms. Marvel. I really like that.

If all of that sounds a bit superficial, it’s because the plot itself is fairly generic. Teenager must find her place in the world, torn between friends and new experiences, pressures of school and family expectations. What matters isn’t this broad structure, it’s how the show fills it with life. And it does so absolutely beautifully. In particular, I love how even though her parents are technically the main antagonists in this episode, they always remain human and lovable. Kamala doesn’t want to escape her family and her community, she wants to be a superpowered hero within it. I’m sure spelling that out will be the main revelation at the end of this season, but at the same time it’s also set up to be perfectly obvious.

The only real problem I have with this is that it’s only six episodes, when this material clearly has the room to go as long as something as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[we-pay-for-everything]

What do you think about Dawn's part in BTVS?

To be honest, I am not the biggest BtVS aficionado. I probably haven't watched seasons 4 to 7 as many times as most BtVS fans here. I'm not sure I can give you a deep, insightful answer... I can give you a long answer, but will it be full of inaccuracies? I'll let you be the judge of that haha.

I, for one, enjoy Dawn's character. I have a soft spot for teenagers, and it's nice to see a teenager in a TV series (mostly) behaving like an actual teenager, and being played by one too. Dawn's full of heart and sass. I think it may be hard to connect with her character, since she wasn't there from the beginning and the latter seasons are not most people's favorites, but Dawn was a refreshing addition to the show imo. Most characters in the latter seasons had their moments of being selfish, distant, cold, yet Dawn was sweet, compassionate, alive. I also think she grew up a lot and had a nice arc. Her arc isn't really a hero's one - like Xander, she never had any super powers and couldn't kick ass like other characters - but that's why I like it. She was just a girl who matured, learned from life, got smarter and braver. She was just a nice person (~extraordinary~). I also enjoyed her chemistry with characters like Buffy, Tara, and Xander.

As far as her role in Buffy's story goes, Whedon famously said Dawn was meant to replace Angel, and I agree with that for season 5. Although Buffy ardently wishes to be a normal girl and to create a separation between slaying and her "normal" life (eg. uni) - with the Scoobies being the intersection between both worlds - Buffy ends up falling in love with a vampire, and later getting a mystical key for a sister.

Angel being a vampire meant that the very human experience of falling in love for the first time happened with a supernatural being. Buffy had previously tried to date two guys (in Never Kill a Boy on the First Date and in Reptile Boy), and both ended up being too into the supernatural life, which isn't a coincidence since the show always challenged Buffy to step into her role as the slayer when she least expected it (even with her mom's boyfriend!). But both episodes show that Buffy very much wanted to fall in love like a ~normal~ girl, and, yet, she fell in love with a vampire and ended up knee deep in supernatural shit because of it. Willow being a witch, for example, was not really a problem until season 4, as Willow was only a friend who helped Buffy, but Angel being a vampire was a problem from day 1. Romantic love is much more intense than a friendship, kind of like how a sister's love is more intense than love for a boyfriend.

In season 5, Buffy attended uni until she no longer could, and had a boyfriend who helped her kill vamps but was otherwise very normal; when that ended she even tried to date a normal, handsome doctor. But her efforts to exist in both worlds were squashed by the discovery that Dawn wasn't even 'real'. The only person she was supposed to put before her job was also her job. That was even more extreme than what happened with Angel.

But I like that Dawn tied her so deeply to the supernatural world. While she died for Dawn and things with Angel ended badly, Dawn and Angel were the people she loved and treasured the most. In order to accept her role as the slayer, she needed to see that not everything about that other world was bad - her best friend was a witch, Angel was a vamp, Dawn was the Key - and that she could be both a slayer and herself without losing touch with either. However, in the end, Willow went a bit crazy, Angel became Angelus and then left, she died for Dawn. Rather than helping her accept her role as a slayer, Angel and Dawn unwillingly added to her trauma and made her question herself even more. [I guess such is the role of the slayer? Is it even possible to come to terms with such an existence? Buffy got pretty close for a while, but how could she ever be okay with being a slayer? She’d need to take the good (ie. saving people) with the bad, but it’s hard to do so when there’s virtually no separation between them. Like Buffy said, she believed killing Angel had been the right choice, but couldn't understand a world in which she had to kill Dawn.] While Angel and Dawn were crucial to Buffy's hero's journey (because heroes must always sacrifice themselves in order to become heroes), their contributions were a bit different.

In season 2, Angel was a vampire who saw Buffy as more of a girl than a slayer, and when Buffy and Angel got together, they weren't slayer and vampire anymore - this actually showed Buffy that girl and slayer weren't opposites. However, Angelus happened, and in season 3, although they tried, Buffy and Angel could no longer escape their nature. Angelus also forced Buffy to trust herself as a slayer and give up part of her 'humanity'.

With Dawn, the reverse happened, to some extent. When Dawn turned out to be the key, Buffy was already struggling deeply with her humanity. For Dawn, she ~literally~ lost her humanity. If Angel/Angelus helped her believe in her destined role in season 2, Dawn did the opposite. She had fully embraced the supernatural as her sister, and then had to give it up. However, dying for Dawn helped her reconnect with her humanity (she both saved the world and her sister), and, in season 6, Dawn helped Buffy find herself again. With Dawn, Buffy was more like a normal big sister than a slayer and I think Dawn helped anchor her to reality. But she was only Buffy's sister because Dawn was supernatural, and that is where Angel and Dawn's similarities lie. Being a girlfriend or sister were as important to Buffy as being a slayer, but she wouldn't have been either if she wasn't a slayer to begin with.

I don't think I'm doing a good job of directly comparing Dawn and Angel, because truly they were too different. It's important to note that Buffy gave Angel up for a normal relationship, but Dawn stayed because she became normal after fulfilling her role as the Key. After season 5, Dawn no longer had a significant role in Buffy's hero journey (aside from the season 6 finale).

Another difference is that, to Buffy, Angel will always be a connection to the girl she was. Although supernatural forces keep them apart, Angel means love and comfort from the realities of being a slayer, Angel means being a normal girl in love. Buffy loves Dawn so much, but Dawn was still a responsibility when she stopped being the Key. Dawn became a human responsibility, but she neither grounded Buffy nor connected her with her slayer side. She still helped Buffy remember her humanity, but not enough, I guess? I think in seasons 6 and 7 Dawn was more of a real life responsibility Buffy couldn't avoid, just like everything else in her life. She was so disconnected from humanity in season 7 that she implied (or said?) she would kill Dawn if forced to made that choice again.

I don't know... This is a mess, and I'm tired. I guess what I meant to say is that Dawn didn't provide a bridge between girl and slayer the way Angel did. After season 5, her role was different, and I guess I don't quite know what that role was? I think it was just being her sister.

Thanks for the ask! Sorry for making this about Bangel, but I guess this is what I'm comfortable writing about haha.

[firelxdykatara]

I’m just really confused as to where this idea that Zuko is gaycoded came from. Like people are allowed to have that headcanon but I don’t understand where people are coming from when they try and claim that he was undisputedly gaycoded and trying to deny it is homophobic when he’s only ever shown romantic interest in women.

I made a pretty long post on the topic a while back, but the ultimate gist of it is this: there are a lot of elements of Zuko's status as an abuse victim and trauma survivor that resonate with queer folks. This is understandable and completely fine! However, there are some parts of the fandom who have taken that to the other extreme and will now insist that those elements are uniquely queer, and that they can only be read as some sort of veiled gay/coming out narrative, even though that doesn't make much sense since there is no part of Zuko's narrative which is unique to any sort of queer experience.

I think the problem really does stem from two things being conflated--Zuko's history of abuse and trauma, and trauma&abuse being something a lot of queer people have experienced. I suspect it goes something like 'I see a lot of myself in Zuko, and I was abused for being gay, therefore Zuko must be gay too in order to have had similar experiences.' This can then lead to feeling dismissed or invalidated when other people point out that those experiences are not unique to being queer--but on the flip side, abuse victims and trauma survivors whose abuse&trauma do not stem from queerness (even if they are queer themselves) can feel invalidated and dismissed by the implication that their trauma must be connected to their queerness or it isn't valid.

This is also where the 'people don't actually know what gay coded means' part comes in, and I realize now that I didn't actually get into what gay coding (and queer coding in general) actually means, since I was so hung up on pointing out how Zuko doesn't really fit the mold. (And the few elements that exist which could be said to count are because of the 'villains historically get queer coded bc Hays Code era' thing and mostly occur in Book 1, not because of how he acts as an abuse&trauma survivor.)

Under a cut because I kind of go on a tangent about gay/queer coding, but I swear I get back to the point eventually.

Queer coding (and it is notable that, with respect to Zuko, it is almost always framed as 'he couldn't possibly be attracted to girls', rather than 'he could be attracted to boys as well as girls' in these discussions, for... no real discernible reason, but I'll get into that in a bit) is the practice of giving characters 'stereotypically queer' traits and characteristics to 'slide them under the radar' in an era where having explicitly queer characters on screen was not allowed, unless they were evil or otherwise narratively punished for their queerness. (See: the extant history of villains being queer-coded, because if they were Evil then it was ok to make them 'look gay', since the story wasn't going to be rewarding their queerness and making audiences think it was in any way OK.) This is thanks to the Motion Picture Production Code (colloquially and more popularly known as the Hays Code), which was a set of guidelines which movies coming out of any major studio had to adhere to in order to be slated for public release and lasted from the early 1930s until it was finally abandoned in the late 60s.

The Hays Code essentially existed to ensure that the content of major motion pictures would not 'lower the moral standards' of the viewing public. It didn't just have to do with queerness--cursing was heavily monitored, sex outside of marriage was not allowed to be seen as desirable or tittilating, miscegenation was not allowed (most specifically interracial relationships between black and white people), criminals had to be punished lest the audience think that it was ok to be gay and do crime, etc. Since same-sex relations fell under 'sexual perversion', they could not be shown unless the 'perversion' were punished in some way. (This is also the origin of the Bury Your Gays trope, another term that is widely misunderstood and misapplied today.) To get around this, queer coding became the practice by which movies and television could depict queer people but not really, and it also became customary to give villains this coding even more overtly, since they would get punished by the end of the film or series anyway and there was nothing to lose by making them flamboyant and racy/overly sexual/promiscuous.

Over time, this practice of making villains flamboyant, sexually aggressive, &etc became somewhat separated from its origins in queer coding, by which I mean that these traits and tropes became the go-to for villains even when the creator had no real intention of making them seem queer. This is how you generally get unintentional queer-coding--because these traits that have been given to villains for decades have roots in coding, but people tend to go right to them when it comes to creating their villains without considering where they came from.

Even after the Hays Code was abandoned, the sentiments and practices remained. Having queer characters who weren't punished by the narrative for being queer was exceptionally rare, and it really isn't until the last fifteen or so years that we've seen any pushback against that. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is famous for being one of the first shows on primetime television to feature an explicitly gay relationship on-screen, and that relationship ended in one of the most painful instances of Bury Your Gays that I have ever personally witnessed. (Something that, fourteen years later, The 100 would visually and textually reference with Lexa's death. Getting hit by a bullet intended for someone else after a night of finally getting to be happy and have sex with her s/o? It wasn't remotely subtle. I don't even like Clexa, but that was incredibly rough to witness.)

However, bringing this back to Zuko, he really doesn't fit the criteria for queer coding for a number of reasons. First of all, no one behind the scenes (mostly a bunch of cishet men) was at all intending to include queer rep in the show. This wasn't a case where they were like 'well, we really wanted to make Zuko gay, but we couldn't get that past the censors, so here are a few winks and a nudge', because it just wasn't on their radar at all. Which makes sense--it wasn't on most radars in that era of children's programming. This isn't really an indictment, it's just a fact of the time--in the mid/late 00s, no one was really thinking about putting queer characters in children's cartoons. People were barely beginning to include them in more teen- and adult-oriented television and movies. It just wasn't something that a couple of straight men, who were creating a fantasy series aimed at young kids, were going to think about.

What few instances you can point to from the series where Zuko might be considered to exhibit coding largely happen in Book 1, when he was a villain, because the writers were drawing from typically villainous traits that had historically come from queer coding villains and had since passed into common usage as villainous traits. But they weren't done with any intention of making it seem like Zuko might be attracted to boys.

And, again, what people actually point to as 'evidence' of Zuko being queer-coded--his awkwardness on his date with Jin and his confrontation with Ozai being the big ones I can think of off the top of my head--are actually just... traits that come from his history of trauma and abuse.

As I said in that old post:

making [zuko’s confrontation of ozai] about zuko being gay and rejecting ozai’s homophobia, rather than zuko learning fundamental truths about the world and about his home and about how there was something deeply wrong with his nation that needed to be fixed in order for the world to heal (and, no, ‘homophobia’ is not the answer to ‘what is wrong with the fire nation’, i’m still fucking pissed at bryke about that), misses the entire point of his character arc. this is the culmination of zuko realizing that he should never have had to earn his father’s love, because that should have been unconditional from the start. this is zuko realizing that he was not at fault for his father’s abuse--that speaking out of turn in a war meeting in no way justified fighting a duel with a child.

is that first realization (that a parent’s love should be unconditional, and if it isn’t, then that is the parent’s fault and not the child’s) something that queer kids in homophobic households/families can relate to? of course it is. but it’s also something that every other abused kid, straight kids and even queer kids who were abused for other reasons before they even knew they were anything other than cishet, can relate to as well. in that respect, it is not a uniquely queer experience, nor is it a uniquely queer story, and zuko not being attracted to girls (which is what a lot of it seems to boil down to, at the end of the day--cutting down zuko’s potential ships so that only zukka and a few far more niche ships are left standing) is not necessary to his character arc. nor does it particularly make sense.

And, regarding his date with Jin:

(and before anyone brings up his date with jin--a) he enjoyed it when she kissed him, and b) he was a traumatized, abused child going out on a first date. of course he was fucking awkward. have you ever met a teenage boy????)

Zuko is socially awkward and maladjusted because he was abused by his father as a child and has trouble relating to people as a result. He was heavily traumatized and brutally physically injured as a teenager, and it took him years to begin to truly recover from the scars that left on his psyche (and it's highly likely, despite the strides he made in canon, that he has a long way to go, post series; it's such a pity that we never got any continuation comics >.>). He was not abused for being gay or queer--he was abused because his father believed he was weak, and part of Zuko's journey was realizing that his father's perception of strength was flawed at its core. That his entire nation had rotted from the inside out, and the regime needed to be changed in order for the world--including his people--to begin to heal.

That could be commingled with a coming out narrative, which is completely fine for headcanons (although I personally prefer not to, because, again, we have more than enough queer trauma already), but it simply doesn't exist in canon. Zuko was not abused or traumatized for being queer, and his confrontation with Ozai was not about him coming out or realizing any fundamental truth about himself--it was about realizing something fundamental about his father and his nation, and making the choice to leave them behind so that he could help the Avatar grow stronger and force things to change when he got back.

TL;DR: at the end of the day, none of the traits, scenes, or behavior Zuko exhibits which shippers tend to use to claim he was gay-coded are actually evidence of coding--they aren't uniquely queer experiences, as they stem from abuse that was not related in any way to his sexuality, and they are experiences that any kid who suffered similar abuse or trauma could recognize and resonate with. (Including straight kids, and queer kids who were abused for any reason other than their identity.) And, finally, Zuko can be queer without erasing or invalidating his canon attraction to girls, and it's endlessly frustrating that the 'Zuko is gay-coded' crowd refuses to acknowledge that.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I keep meaning to make a post about my opinion on the Buffy novel "Revenant," but then things keep happening to get in the way of my attempt.

I'm going to try and do so now.

I'm not gonna lie: this isn't one I probably would have chosen to buy on my own, just going off the description of it (I got it in a box of Buffy books that I got from Ebay for a good a deal, which is where I've gotten a lot of the ones that I've been reviewing lately). But after reading it, I'm definitely glad that I own it now. After reading "Revenant," it's pretty high on my list of Buffy tie-in novels: partly because this book did a great job of pretty much ending every chapter on a cliffhanger, so that you wanted to keep reading to know what happened next. LOL. I also feel like every chapter was a nice length. Not too long, not too short. There have been times in some of the Buffy books, where I felt like a chapter could have been split into two or something.

But I really enjoyed learning so much about the Chinese culture in this one, and that was definitely one of my favorite things about it for sure.

And in some ways, this book kind of reminded me of the Unseen Trilogy, but a better version of it? (Because I've spoken before about how parts of the Unseen Trilogy kind of bored me.) One, with the parallel of Willow trying to help a friend, who is at the center of things. And two, with gangs being involved with both books' plots. I guess maybe I like this book better than "Unseen," in some ways, because it's not drawn out. Maybe I just feel like things went on for too long in that trilogy? I don't know. -shrugs-

And as the huge Bangel fan that I am, I can't get over how Buffy and Angel spent pretty much every scene together in here<3

Willow was really wonderful here (and despite me having just ragged on the Unseen Trilogy, I do like that in both this novel and that saga, we get to see her being a really supportive friend to these side characters, in helping them out). And we get some really cute Ozillow moments, that I should probably share on here.

And I like that this story apparently takes place when Cordelia's dad is starting to get in trouble for having cheated on his taxes. And though a part of Cordy doesn't want to be around the Scoobies after her breakup with Xander, she also does not want to be at home right now and decides to do research with Giles to avoid all that drama. It was a really good missing moment to have in this book, I thought. And I felt for Cordy there.

I feel like the only thing I really didn't like about the novel was some of the stuff with Xander. 1. That it felt like he kept getting into fights non-stop (and of course winning them, or just getting out of the situation and surviving). And I could maybe handle something like that with Buffy, but with Xander? I can't suspend my disbelief as much. 2. The major thing was that he falls in love with this Chinese spirit. And, I mean... On one hand I guess I can get why that worked and was maybe needed for the plot. And this was after he and Cordy broke up, so I guess he might be on the rebound. But I just didn't like this, because it's another girl who just happens to fall in love with Xander. And I sort of felt like they were trying to make us feel bad that Xander was single, when it was really his fault that he is, since he cheated on Cordy! And I just couldn't help feeling they could have come up with a better storyline for him. IDK.

But all that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed Revenant:D

Edit: I've realized that I never really say much about Giles in these Buffy book reviews that I do. And I think that's because, for the most part... he's just Giles in them (at least in the ones that I've read thus far). And Giles is wonderful. I love him. Don't get me wrong. But so far I haven't really had anything to really say about him from these stories that you wouldn't get from the show (except maybe about a few of his love interests. But then I really have no desire to talk about them, either, because you also know they're going to be short-lived, since they're not in the show), if that makes any sense at all. Though maybe that will change. I'm kind of hoping it will!