#naturally with buffy being the main character

[linkspooky]

TOGACHAKO VS. FUFFY: How To Save Your Evil Girlfriend

So, once again My Hero Academia has failed to deliver on its promise of saving / redeeming one of the main villains of its story, and victims of its ficitonal society. This time I'm going to make the added argument that not only does failing to save Toga make the story worse, it also makes Uraraka's character almost completely hollow. While you can dismiss Deku's lack of character development as him being a shonen protagonist, both Uraraka and Shoto had arcs and Ochako's is effectively ruined by her failure to save Toga.

In order to make my point I am going to compare it to a villain redemption arc in another piece of media that does it right, Faith's character, and her strained relationship with Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A series which is overall anti-state punishment and pro-redemption and delivers on practically all the themes MHA promised us.

MORE UNDER THE CUT:

THE GOOD GIRL and THE BAD GIRL

There is a reoccurring dynamic between two female characters in media, usually between a heroine and a female villainness that I like to call: The Good Girl vs. Bad Girl complex.

However, if you were a Freudian you'd be calling this a Madonna Whore Complex.

To explain the Madonna Whore Complex, one of the biggest examples in other Media is Aronofsky's Black Swan. The entire movie is themed around the Madonna Whore complex, and the impossible double standards the male perception imposes upon women.

"The white swan and the black swan are not merely characters, and not merely characters that are relevant to Nina. The black swan and the white swan are archetypes of women. They are emblematic of the Madonna and the Whore [...] . The white swan is the Madonna, she is pure, innocent, the ingenue. The black swan is the whore, she is cunning and deviant. The seductress. Nina and her ballet counterpart Odette are characterized as perfect ingénues. Ingénues are young, innocent girls who possess qualities of youth, innocence, kindness, naivete and purity. She is the fawn eyed damsel in distress and in literary films she's often the heroine or protagonist. On the other side of the coin from the ingenue, we have the seductress, embodied by Lily and her ballet counterpart Odelle. The seductress is characterized by her promiscuity, cunning nature and sex appeal. She is the alluring femme fatalle, willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She's most often framed as the village. These draw parallels to Freud's psychoanalytical theory, a theory that suggests in the minds of some men they struggle to fully see women as fully realized and rather view them in archetypal categories." [SOURCE]

Black Swan is also a movie where Natalie Portman attempting to live up to the impossible expectations society has placed on her to be both the White Swan and the Black Swan goes insane, and quite possibly dies at the end of the movie.

Considering that Toga's entire story is that she is a shapeshifter who went mad because she could not fit both her parent's and society's expectations of being a "normal girl" then you can see why the Madonna Whore Complex is relevant, with the oversexualized, vampish, femme fatalle Toga quite obviously playing the part of the whore.

Before you call me a fraud for citing freud though, let me prove my point that the Madonna Whore Complex is quite literally everywhere in media.

I could literally keep going if this post didn't have an image limit: Jean Grey and Emma Frost, Jean Grey and Madelyne Pryor, Starfire and Blackfire, Raven and Terra, The Two Sisters from Ginger Snaps, t's literally everywhere all the way back to Lilith and Eve.

More intelligent takes on this trope play with the concept of the Madonna Whore Complex (MWC) to either present the archetypes as two fully rounded people (Catra and Adora) or demonstrate that it's impossible for women to fit into these two dinstinct categories (Natalie Portman in Black Swan).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a work that challenges the MWC, by allowing both its good girl, and bad girl to be fully realized characters. My Hero Academia plays the MWC straight to a sexist extent by not allowing Uraraka and Toga to escape their categorization of Good Girl and Bad Girl, and also going out of its way to punish and kill the seductress for her sexuality like this is a slasher horror movie. Actually, it's worse than a horror movie because at least Jennifer's Body plays with the MWC in a clever way.

It's not just bad writing anymore Hori's writing has crossed over into actively murdering female characters to enforce puritan values, but let's not get into that just yet we'll talk about the writing portion instead.

I'm going to outline what BTVS accomplishes, demonstrate how it does this below, and then go on at length picking apart how MHA fails.

BTVS:

Shows Buffy and Faith as fully realized people

Shows the pressure to conform to the "Good Girl / Bad Girl" label.

Breaks down those two categories

Redeems it's bad girl

With that out of the way let's get the ball rolling.

HOW TO (NOT) SAVE YOUR EVIL GIRLFRIEND

This is the part where everyone in the audience is going to gasp. Even though I'm using Buffy and Faith as a positive example of deconstructing the MWC and redeeming a villain, Buffy does not save Faith. The two of them reconcile in the end, but Faith is not redeemed or saved by Buffy, and in fact Buffy is in part responsible for Faith's fall.

So, why would I say Buffy and Faith are a better example of villain redemption then Uraraka who at least did everything she could to offer a helping hand to Toga?

Because Buffy not saving Faith is THE POINT and Faith receiving redemption even though Buffy gave up on her is also THE POINT. Lemme explain, by starting at the beginning.

BTVS is a story that exists to flip both horror tropes, and the idea of the chosen hero on its head. The concept started out with Joss Whedon noticing that the Cheerleader is always the first victim in any given horror movie, and wondering what it would look like if the Cheerleader could fight back. If the Cheerleader was the thing that monsters ran away from.

Which leads us to Buffy Summers. Buffy is chosen by the universe to slay vampires, she is hero with super strength that can easily take on legions of vampires and often has to fight even tougher villains for each season's conflict. Buffy carries all the classic features of both the ingenue and the chosen one protagonist rolled up into one:. Ingénues are young, innocent girls who possess qualities of youth, innocence, kindness, naivete and purity.

However, after dying in the first season, and having to kill her boyfriend in the second season after he turned evil and inflicted a lot of psychosexual abuse on her Buffy has also got a whole lot of trauma. Which is when Faith appears on the scene. One of the first ways that the show challenges the idea of the "Chosen One" is that there are actually two Chosen Ones, Faith being the other Slayer.

Buffy much like Deku has a case of protagonism brain rot, but in her case she was actually chosen by the mystic powers that be to be the protagonist of reality. Buffy, who views herself as the hero of the story as a coping mechanism (we'll get back to this later) is suddenly challenged when the fates chose yet another chosen hero, challenging her pre-conceived notion that she is the hero of the story. If Buffy is not the only hero then who is she? What is all the suffering she's endured so far if it's not a part of her own personal hero's journey?

Buffy begins to dislike Faith on sight for projection reasons, before Faith does anything wrong. In a way Buffy herself the female lead is enforcing society's standards of the MWC because all the reasons Buffy decides to disturst and dislike Faith on sight are because she exhibits qualities of the seductress.

Faith is openly promiscuous, often comparing the art of killing vampires to sex, she is also someone who is proud of her power as a a slayer and uses it for her own purposes. She is a slayer for selfish reasons (apparently) while Buffy is the selfless hero. In the first episode Faith appears in, Faith, Hope and Trick Buffy is almost immediately hostile to Faith who has so far done nothing wrong for, trying to get along with Buffy's friends, getting a little bit too into vampire slaying and openly relishing her strength, and like occasionally making lood comments.

FAITH: Don't… touch… me…! BUFFY - yanks Faith off the unconscious vamp with one hand, stakes the vamp withher other. Then she turns to Faith who is breathing hard, high on adrenaline, rubbing her fists. BUFFY: What is wrong with you? FAITH: What are you talking about? BUFFY: I'm talking about you living large on the great undead here. FAITH: Gee, if doing violence to vampires upsets you, I'm pretty sure you're in the wrong line a work… BUFFY: Or maybe you like it just a little too much. FAITH: I was getting the job done. BUFFY: The job is to slay demons. Not mash them into sloppy joes while their

Buffy then escalates to like ableist slurs towards Faith within half an episode for getting slightly violent in a fight against vampires that were trying to kill her.

GILES: Well, Buffy, you have to realize you and Faith have very different temperaments… BUFFY: I know, mine would be the sane one. Giles, she's not playing with a full deck. She has almost no deck. She has a three. GILES: You said yourself she killed one of them, she's a plucky fighter who got a little carried away. Which isnatural, she's focussed on Slaying,she doesn't have a whole other lifehere like you --

The twist this episode is that no matter how much Faith tries to present herself as a free-spirit, she's actually a scared homeless girl who just happened to become the Slayer. Unlike Buffy she does not have a watcher, a mother, or friends to support her. She lives in the cheapest motel in sunnydale. The reason she's so violent against vampires is because she is understandably having a trauma flashback because her mentor was murdered right in front of her by a different vamp.

This is repeating pattern throughout the whole season, Faith is shown to be a victim of trauma, and occasionally acts in ways that are understandable for a victim like her to ask, only for Buffy to start mischaracterizing her as someone violent and insane and throwing the slurs.

You can compare both Faith and Toga as characters who are complex victims of trauma who society turns their back on and become bad victims, but Faith is a special case because we actively see her turn to the dark side. Faith starts out trying to be a hero like the rest and she practically does nothing wrong for half a season, and when she does finally make a mistake and become a bad victim it's the hero's desire to punish her and castigate her that turns her into a villain.

We actively see Faith's fall happen onscreen, and it's like totally Buffy's fault. Buffy throws her completely under the bus, because she's so desperate to see Faith as the Bad Slayer and Buffy as the Good Slayer. Faith is almost pushed into evil because of the MWC, the characters around her can't see her as a fully fleshed out human being so they are quick to demonize her when she starts acting like a bad victim.

So the two episodes appropriately named: Bad Girls and Consequences depict Faith's fall. In that episode Faith and Buffy are fighting vampires, and one human is mixed among the vampires. The human grabs Faith by the shoulder, and Faith thinking that the human is a vampire turns him around and stakes him.

It's a complete accident, something that Giles even says later on is an accident that can happen to any Slayer on the job and is completely normal. It's a murder that Buffy herself could have committed.

GILES: This is not the first time something like this has happened. BUFFY: It's not? GILES: A slayer is on the front lines of a nightly war, Buffy. It's tragic - but accidents have happened. BUFFY: What do you do? GILES: The council investigates, meters out punishment if punishment is due… I've no plan to involve them,however. That's the last thing Faith needs right now. She's unstable, Buffy. She seems utterly unable to accept responsibility. Shows no remorse.

However, even in the same breath Giles explains that it's an accident and not Faith's fault, he's also calling Faith unstable and irresponsible. Basically when they're not calling her a psycho (just hitting her with the ableist slurs), the protagonists all lowkey imply that Faith is somehow inherently violent and unstable because she displays symptoms of a bad victim.

I might also remind you Faith has not done anything to earn any of these accusations, until she kills someone in a complete accident. A complete accident that Giles once again said wasn't her fault and wasn't really a big deal.

FAITH: My dead mother hits harder than that.

Faith is stated to be a victim of physical abuse, heavily implied to be a victim of sexual abuse, and is homeless (none of the main characters offer to let her stay in her house she spends half a season in a terrible motel). However, Faith is quickly demonized by the white wealthy main characters for acting in ways that are completely typical for a homeless teenager.

The moment she commits one mistake they all turn on her and use that mistake as proof of these violent tendencies they all want to accuse her of having. Faith can never be the ingenue so she must be the seductress, because she can't just be a person.

Buffy: So, I, uh... (sees Faith scrubbing) How are ya doin'? Faith: (still scrubbing) I'm alright. You know me. Buffy: Faith, we need to talk about what we're gonna do. Faith: (looks at Buffy) There's nothing to talk about. I was doing my job. Buffy: Being a Slayer is not the same as being a k*ller. Faith has nothing to say. She's finished scrubbing. Buffy: Faith, please don't shut me out here. Look, sooner or later, we're both gonna have to deal.

It is essentially two episodes of this, Faith after killing someone on accident in a life or death fight is constantly called a murderer by others. She wasn't even like, drunk, or high, or being especially reckless she was being a normal slayer.

FAITH: So the mayor of Sunnydale is a black hat. Shocker, huh? BUFFY: Actually - yeah. I didn't get the bad guy vibe off him. Faith shakes her head. Scoffs. FAITH: When you gonna learn, B? It doesn't matter what kind of "vibe" a person gives off. Nine times outta ten he face they're showing you? It isn't the real one. BUFFY: I guess you know a lot about that. FAITH: What's that supposed to mean? BUFFY: Look at you, Faith. Less than twenty four hours ago you killed a guy. And now you're laughing and scratching and zipidee doo dah. That's not your real face, and I know it. I know what you're feeling because I feel it too. FAITH: Do you? So, fill me in. I'd like to hear this. BUFFY: Dirty. Like something sick creeped inside you and you can't get it out. And you keep hoping what happened wasjust some nightmare…

Faith is dirty, faith is disgusting, faith is unstable, Faith is sick for... killing a guy on accident in a way that Giles said was a perfectly understandable accident, and not showing clear guilt because the moment she did it everyone around her jumped on her and started accusing her of being a murderer.

Why do the selfless main characters suddenly start demonizing this girl before she even did anything wrong - well it's because she's poor problem solved.

No, but it does play a factor. Why do most american white middle class look down on the homeless? Because, they must have done something to deserve it, right? If Faith killed a man, that clearly is an indication that she was violent all along and the heroes don't have to sympathize with the fact she's homeless or you know lift a finger to help her.

Now, this makes it sound like I hate Buffy, but Buffy is actually my favorite character in the whole show. The thing is Buffy's complete lack of sympathy for Faith makes her a better character. Buffy needs to demonize Faith and throw her under the bus, because Buffy is a victim of sexual abuse too. Her boyfriend turned evil after having sex with her once, and spent an entire season stalking her and terrorizing her the entire season 2 Buffy / Angel plotline is a thinly veiled groomer metaphor.

The thing about Buffy is she's not allowed to show any kind of reaction to her trauma. The episodes preceeding Faith, Hope and Trick are Anne, an episode where Buffy runs away from home after being sexually abused (stalking is sexual abuse) by Angel for a whole season and feeling like no one would understand her, and Dead Man's Party, an episode where every single one of Buffy's loved ones ruthlessly criticize her for having run away. Like, how dare a teenager not react perfectly to being horribly stalked by a serial killer after she had sex with him for like half a year.

JOYCE: Buffy! You didn't give me any time. You just dumped this… this thing on me and expected me to get it. Well -guess what? Mom's not perfect. I handled it badly. But that doesn'tgive you the right to punish me byrunning away. BUFFY: Punish you? I didn't do this to punish you XANDER: Well you did. You should have seen what it did to her. BUFFY: Great. Would anybody else care to weigh in? What about you? By the dip. XANDER: Maybe you don't want to hear it, Buffy. But taking off like that was selfishand stupid. Buffy's breaking down. It's all too much. BUFFY: Okay - I screwed up! I know it - alright!? But you have no idea. You have no idea what happened to me or what I was feeling

The reason Buffy is so hard on Faith is because everyone else is equally hard on her. The label of the ingenue is so difficult for Buffy to maintain, because she has to be pure, and without any flaws, especially when reacting to trauma that she throws Faith under the bus for her bad victim behaviors.

The white middle class demonize the homeless because they don't want to face the reality it can happen to them, Buffy doesn't want to reflect on all the things her and Faith have in common because she could very easily become Faith. Buffy is the victim of extremely similiar trauma to Faith, and being pressured to be the perfect victim of that trauma in a way that's destroying her mentally slowly.

FAITH: It was good, wasn't it? The sex? The danger? Bet a part of you even dug him when he went psycho BUFFY: No FAITH: See - you need me to tow the line because you're afraid you'll go over it, aren't you, B? You can't handle watching me living my own way and having a blast - because it tempts you. You know it could be you... ( Something snaps in Buffy. She rears back and POPS Faith a good one. Faith falls back, but she's smiling as she puts a hand to her bleeding mouth. ) FAITH: There's my girl…

Buffy is suffering under the expectations of the MWC too, but in her desperation to make Faith out to be the seductress instead of... like... a csa victim... Buffy is reinforcing those standards on both herself and another woman.

The entirety of Bad Girls and Conesequences is Faith being called a murderer by several people, having another trauma flashback to a sexual assault because Xander came to her motel room under the guise of "helping her", getting hit over the head and chained to a wall, then getting the swat team called on her and almost dragged to London for trial. Then the heroes do nothing to help her. The first thing Faith does is go to the main villain, who buys her an apartment AND A PLAYSTATION. So... the evil main Villain of the show helped Faith with her homelessness situation while none of the main characters lifted a finger.

it sounds like it sucks but it doesn't because it's all intentional. Buffy cannot process her own sexual trauma so she is just awful to people who are also domestic abuse victims. here's one of my favorite scenes, Buffy yells at a girl being beaten by her boyfriend with a visible black eye.

Buffy: Where can we find him? Debbie: I-I don't know. Buffy: You're lying. Debbie: What if I am? What are you gonna do about it? Willow: Wrong question. Buffy takes her by the arm again and pushes her up against the sink in front of the mirror. Buffy: Look at yourself. Why are you protecting him? Anybody who really loved you couldn't do this to you. She takes a few steps away. Debbie turns around to face them. Debbie: Would they take him someplace? Buffy: Probably. Debbie: (shakes her head, sobbing) I could never do that to him.(Willow sighs) I'm his everything. Buffy: (disgusted) Great. So what, you two live out your Grimm fairy tale? Two people are dead.

That poor girl gets her neck snapped like five minutes later and Buffy just kinda, moves on even though it would have been an easily preventable death.

Buffy getting mad at an abuse victim for showing textbook behaviors of abuse victims in bad relationships. Buffy is a good character because she is a hero, she can be empathic, but she really only understands heroism in term of defeating the bad guys, and when called to relate to people with complex trauma, especially trauma that reflects her own trauma she can't! She just can't process it! The expectations of being the ingenue, the perfect hero are so crushing she can't cope with a messy reality so she needs to have a black and white view of herself and other people.

Buffy needs to be firmly in the good category, and Faith needs to be firmly in the bad category in order for Buffy's brain to keep working.

Not only does Buffy's conflict with Faith characterize how much Faith suffers for being a bad victim, it shows how the pressure to be a good victim destroys Buffy mentally to the point where she starts using Faith as a punching bag.

Literallly.

It's all intentional too, Buffy gets called out on it, Faith always gets the last word and the final episode of the season makes out Buffy to be a hypocrite. After Buffy literally threw Faith under the bus, called her disgusting for murdering a man, Buffy is completely willing to murder Faith to get a cure for her vampire boyfriend who's been poisoned.

All human life is sacred and needs to be protected, but Fuck Faith I guess.

Faith: I could say the same about you. I mean, you're still the same better-than-thou Buffy. I mean, I knew it somehow. I kept having this dream, I'm not sure what it means, but in the dream the self-righteous blond chick stabs me, and you wanna know why? Buffy: You had it coming. Faith: That's one interpretation, but in my dream, she does it for a guy. Faith: I wake up to find the blond chick isn't even dating the guy she was so nuts about before. I mean, she's moved on to the first college beefstick she meets. Not only has she forgotten about the love of her life, but she's forgotten about the chick she nearly k*lled for him. So that's my dream. That and some stuff about cigars and a tunnel. But tell me, college girl, what does it mean? Buffy: To me? Mostly, that you still mouth off about things you don't understand. (Sirens) Uh-oh. I guess somebody knows you're here.

So the show goes to great length to show you that there are two sides to this conflict, Buffy demonizes Faith, because her friends expect her to be the perfect hero. Faith reacts badly to trauma because she has no support system, and the people around her have no empathy for her because they're too privileged to imagine the things in Faith's life ever happening to her.

Buffy and Faith are fully realized people.

Buffy and Faith are presented to the audience as the ingenue and the seductress but they're both fully realized characters. Buffy's not the ingenue because she's just as capable of murder as Faith is. Faith isn't the seductress because she's a homeless teenager. They are both victims of sexual trauma, though one reacts in what people consider an "acceptable way" and the other is a total slut about it.

Shows the pressure to conform to the "Good Girl / Bad Girl" label.

Buffy throws Faith under the bus specifically because the pressure in her life to be the perfect slayer is so immense that it could be her that takes the fall so she needs to believe in black and white concepts like she is inherently good and Faith is inherently bad to justify the bad things that happen to Faith and therefore convince herself said bad things could never happen to her. "You can't handle watching me living my own way and having a blast - because it tempts you. You know it could be you..."

Faith: Angel said there was no way you were gonna give me a chance. Buffy: I gave you every chance! I tried so hard to help you, and you spat on me. My life was just something for you to play with. Angel - Riley - anything that you could take from me - you took. I've lost battles before - but nobody else has -ever- made me a victim. Faith: And you can't stand that. You're all about control. You have no idea what it's like on the other side! Where nothing's in control, nothing makes sense! There is just pain and hate and nothing you do means anything. You can't even.. Buffy: Shut up!"

Buffy needs to fit her and Faith into neat little boxes because she cannot face the inherent senselessness of the world (and also that she is a victim too "you made me a victim")

Breaks down those two categories

Even in Seasons where Faith is not present she haunts the narrative, because the writers were well aware that Buffy and Faith are the same person under different circumstances.

All of Season 6 Buffy is faced with many of the same situations that Faith was, she suddenly becomes poor and in danger of losing her house, she has extreme depression from coming back from the dead (long story) she can't share those feelings with any of her friends because they treated her much like they did Faith - having no sympathy for imperfect victims. Buffy even gets into an unhealthy, sexual relationship, and like Natalie Portman basically changes from the ingenue into the seductress.

A relationship she has to keep a secret because once again, Buffy must fit into the box of the ingenue in order to be loved by her friends. This leads to her committing several bad behaviors, and at times borderline emotional abuse towards her sister (and debatably her boyfriend) and all comes to a head when Buffy is faced with the exact same situation as Faith.

Buffy in Season 6 believes she has killed a person accidentally while being the Slayer. It's a repeat of Bad Girls with several paralels, including someone trying to hide the body only for it to turn up later, and Buffy insisting she has to turn herself into the police and face jailtime.

However, in this version Buffy unlike Faith has friends who try to stop her from turning herself in and explain to her the murder wasn't her fault - and Buffy still reacts the same way Faith does. She basically borderline quotes Faith.

Faith: Shut up! Do you think I'm afraid of you? [Faith grabs Buffy and throws her down, then sits on top of her and starts punching her.] Faith: You're nothing. [Punch. Punch.] Faith: Disgusting. [Punch. Punch.] [Faith grabs Buffy's hair with both hand and bangs her head.] Faith: Murderous bitch. [Bang. Bang...] You're nothing. [Bang. Bang...] Faith: [Switches back to punches] You're [Faith is now crying.] disgusting.

This is an earlier scene which plays out as an exact parallel to this scene:

BUFFY: You can't understand why this is killing me, can you? SPIKE: Why don't you explain it? She hits him a few more times. He takes it, not fighting back. SPIKE: Come on, that's it, put it on me. Put it all on me. (She kicks him) That's my girl. BUFFY: (yelling) I am not your girl! She hits him hard. He falls back onto his butt. Buffy gets on top of him and begins hitting him over and over. BUFFY: You don't ... have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in you. You are dead inside! You can't feel anything real! I could never ... be your girl! She continues hitting him throughout this. Now Spike goes back to human face. He's looking very bruised and bloody, but he doesn't fight back, just takes it. Buffy hits him again and again, looking angry and desperate. Finally she stops and looks at him in horror.

So if Buffy can react the exact same way that Faith does, when faced with the same trauma there is no good girl or bad girl, there's only two people who are complicated human beings.

The story *gasp* lets the hero be a bad girl.

Redeems it's bad girl

Faith's redemption is a shocking contrast to MHA the plot of BTVS does not allow Faith to commit suicide in order to redeem herself. In fact, her entire arc is an argument against the "put her down like a mad dog" trope. Starting with the fact that the heroes who are partly responsible for Faith's fall in the first place, are all too willing to just let the homeless teenager fall by the wayside, and then put her down for her own sake.

As I stated above, the inherent hypocrisy Buffy shows in her calling Faith a murderer and irredeemable for killing someone on accident because all human life is sacred to her, and then going on to try to murder Faith at the end of the season already shows the "put her down like a mad dog" argument doesn't work. Faith isn't too far gone, it's just Buffy who sees her that way. And because Buffy has given up on Faith she's failing at being a hero.

As I said above, Buffy is not the one to rescue Faith. In fact, in the episodes where Faith's redemption arc starts, Buffy is the one trying to hunt her down and enforce punishment on her. The episodes "5x5" and "Sanctuary" are both focused on Buffy going to LA to hunt down and interfere when Angel is trying to help Faith get back on her feet. The two episdodes basically explore the concept of redemption vs. punishment and how punishment saves no one.

5x5 depicts Faith's spiral as she runs away to LA to escape Buffy who is hunting her down, and accepts a job to assassinate Angel, which if she succeeds will get her rich and also get the cops off of her trail. We're led the whole episode to believe Faith has learned nothing until the confrontation with Angel at the very end, which you should really watch because it's great television.

Faith: You hear me? - You don't know what evil is! - I'm bad! - Fight back! Faith keeps whaling on Angel, sometimes he ducks, sometimes the hits connect. Angel grabs a hold of her: Nice try, Faith. He tosses her away from him. Then walks after her. Angel: I know what you want. She hits him and he hits back dropping her. She comes back up hitting and screaming, but not making much of a dent. Wesley leans out of the window and sees Faith beating up on Angel. He goes into the kitchen and grabs a butcher knife, then heads for the door. Angel as he dodges another hit: I'm not gonna make it easy for you. Faith throws herself against Angel screaming: I'm evil! I'm bad! I'm evil! Do you hear me? I'm bad! Angel, I'm bad! (She begins to sob, grabbing a hold of Angel's shirt and shaking him) I'm ba-ad. Do you hear me? I'm bad! I'm bad! I'm bad. Please. Angel, please, just do it. Wesley comes running out of the house. Faith sobbing: Angel please, just do it. Just do it. Just k*ll me. Just k*ll me." Angel wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her against him. She over balances them and they sink to their knees, Angel still holding her as she cries. Angel: Shh. It's all right. It's okay. I'm here. I'm right here. Shh.

Faith tries to take the Toga approach to commit suicide in order to atone, but Angel actively understands that is what she's trying to do, and denies her the chance to die to redeem herself and instead holds her until she calms down.

Angel doesn't just save her once though he spends the entire next episode defending Faith from Buffy who has come to LA to take her revenge, and trying to talk Faith into believing she can still keep on living in spite of all the bad things she's done.

Faith: Are you saying I got to apologize? Angel: Think you can? Faith: I don’t' know. - How do you say 'Gee, I'm really sorry tortured you I nearly to death? Angel: Well, first off I think I'd leave off the 'Gee.' And secondly I think you have to ask yourself: are you? Faith: What? Angel: Sorry. Faith: And what if I *can't* say it? There are some things you can't just take back, no matter how sorry you *are*, right? Angel: Yeah, there are. I've got some experience in that area. Faith: Right. And you've been doing this for a hundred years! I'm not gonna make it through the next ten minutes. Angel: So make it through the next five, the next minute." Faith: "I don't think I can. Angel: Yes, you can. Faith walks away: God, it hurts. I hate that it hurts like this. Angel follows her: Oh well, it's supposed to hurt. All that pain, all that suffering you caused is coming back on you. Feel it! Deal with it! Then maybe you've got a shot at being free.

Angel's advice is "Guilt is supposed to hurt but if you face your pain you can try to find a way to be free of it" which is something much more profound then any of the forgiveness crap they peddle in MHA. More importantly though, the conflict the whole episode goes out of its way to show that revenge is bad, and punishment doesn't save a soul.

Angel: I didn't - I didn't think it was your business. Buffy: Not my business? Angel: I needed more time with Faith. I'm not sure... Buffy: You needed - do you have any idea what it was like for me to see you with her? That you went behind my back... Angel: Buffy, this wasn't about you! This was about saving someone's soul. Buffy: I came here because you were in danger. Angel: I'm in Danger every day. You came here because of faith. You were looking for vengeance. Buffy: I have a right to it. Angel: Not in my city.

Faith's suicidal ideation is a recurring theme that carries through her character arc in the following season - she does in fact go to prison for awhile (Elizabeth Dushku had to go make Bring it On) but Buffy remains anti-state punishment because going to Prison doesn't help her whatsoever. In fact, she just breaks out when she has to save Angel and spends the rest of the season free.

There are two episodes that actually are dedicated to showing prison didn't help, and what Faith needs to redeem herself is to spend every day of her life trying to be good, not just accepting punishment.

ANGEL: Faith, wake up! FAITH: (wakes) I've rolled the bones. You for me. ANGEL: I used to think that. That there'd be a point when I'd paid my dues. Angel and Angelus are fighting in the alley again. Angel leaves the fight and goes over to Faith's side, holding her up in his arms. ANGEL: Faith, listen to me. You saw me drink. It doesn't get much lower than that. And I thought I could make up for it by disappearing. FAITH: I did my time. ANGEL: Our time is never up, Faith. We pay for everything. FAITH: It hurts. ANGEL: I know. I know. ANGEL: Get up! You have to get up now. Faith, you have to fight. I need you to fight. Do you understand what I'm saying?

So you have one manga series where the teenage girl who did bad things commits suicide because she believed she was going to be in prison for the rest of her life and had no future, and you have the other where the teenage girl tries to commit suicide - only for Angel to stop her and encourage her every step of the way that there's still a future for her even if she can't be "forgiven".

One work ends Toga's life because she's done "unforgivable things" and the other tells Faith that the things she should feel guilty for the things she's done, and she should feel that guilt so she can keep working to be a better person every single day.

One of these is a good message to send to your teenage homeless trauma victim, the other is incredibly harmful. With that out of the way let's switch to BNHA.

HOW TO BURY YOUR GAYS

Now I'm going to attempt to demonstrate why MHA fails to truly deconstruct the MWC, and this not only ruins any potential character development for Uraraka, it also sends a deeply harmful message with Toga's death.

I think I've gone to great length above explaining how BTVS communicates it's stance of being anti-punishment and pro-redemption and even goes as far to demonstrate how punishment does not save anyone. Yet, here is the manga about heroes saving people that completely fumbles those exact same themes.

MHA:

Doesn't show Toga and Ochako as fully realized people

Doesn't show the pressure to conform to the "Good Girl / Bad Girl" label.

Doesn't break down down those two categories

Doesn't redeem it's bad girl

So let me start by saying outside of the context of the story Ochako and Toga both had the potential to be great characters. Unforunately this isn't Gacha, so the way the characters are written in the story, and the quality of their story arcs affects how well they are characterized.

Toga is much better off as a character as opposed to Ochako who sort is reduced to a satellite that revolves around Deku, but their story arcs and the way they conclude does a disservice to both of them as characters. They fail entirely to be shown as fully realized people by their narratives, because of the narratives desire to force them into the good girl and bad girl box.

More or less, Ochako isn't allowed to have flaws, and Toga isn't allowed to redeem herself in any way that doesn't involve killing herself.

Let's get to the characters though, the basic premise of the comparsion between Toga and Ochako is that Ochako perfectly fits into the mould of what society considers a "good, nice girl" she perfectly embodies the ingenue. Whereas Toga was horribly abused for most of her life until she snapped, because she was unable to simply pretend to be the normal girl that Ochako is naturally.

One thing I will give credit to MHA for, it does Toga being pushed to the margins and eventually falling off the edge of society as a young eventually homeless girl that no one cared enough to help about as effectively as Faith did. Toga and Faith were also both demonized before they did anything wrong, and were further demonized because they didn't act the way good victims were supposed to act.

The manga is almost masterful at portraying how much being forced into the box of the ingenue caused Toga's mental decline, until she eventually snapped and became the seductress instead.

Toga hasn't even done anything yet, she's already being punished and demonized simply for appearing deviant. Because once again the categories of Ingenue and Seductress aren't for viewing women and girls as fully realized people, you are either a perfect, innocent, girl, or you're a whore.

Toga is also hypersexual the same way Faith is. Of course it's not done with any of the same amount of nuance of BTVS because Hori has a habit of using Toga for fanservice, but Toga does have a habit of sexualizing herself, in a way that would be classified as deviant love. We also in the manga first view her as nothing more than a shallow yandere who creeps Uraraka out with her blushing and hot desire for blood, only to be shown she's actually capable of being an emotionally intelligent and caring individual when it comes to how she relates to her friends.

Toga viewing sucking blood as love is a clear metaphor for deviant sexuality, or even hyper sexuality, it's something that makes her a literal vamp. Toga being overly sexually aggressive and suggestive with the way she sucks blood is something the society she's in demonizes her for, Deku even makes a thoughtless comment that pushes her off the edge that he'd never even think of hurting someone he loved.

Faith is a CSA victim who is constantly trying to play off her trauma, so she's totally into sex guys, she loves sex, she loves it rough, she goes to clubs and grinds on guys, she's all into sex and violence and safety words are for chumps.

Toga was told her way of expressing love and attraction was wrong and deviant from a young age, and as a result of that the same way that Faith embraces hypersexuality, Toga embraces her femme fatalle / yandere persona and plays it up. Well everyone was right about her, she's fine with being a monster, so she just wants to live as a monster stabbing people randomly and taking their blood before moving onto the next victim.

They can't ever be the ingenue, so Faith and Toga embrace being the seductress instead. Yes, Hori does use Toga for fanservice, but at the same time you can't deny she's deliberately playing up her sexuality like a femme fatalle in a way that is not healthy (Faith is a hypersexual teenager too, I'm saying it's a trauma response for both of them).

MHA also shows much like with Faith how Toga despite being just a teenager is someone all of society has given up on - the same way that everyone gave up on Faith for being a homeless teenager. Then further demonized her for acting in ways homeless teenagers act, until she at last finally committed one crime and they turned on her.

Toga's first crime was committed after her mental breakdown, but it's revealed much later on that Toga wanted to ask Saito for permission to drink his blood, and if she'd just been granted it or at least the emotional abuse heaped on her had stopped she never would have had her breakdown.

For Toga it was Saito, for Faith it was killing by Mistake, after being abandoned they endured violence that further radicalized them with no help from the heroes.

Toga's character also textually acknowledges that the heroes are not going to help her, and are likely going to kill her, whereas in Buffy it stays subtext. Which isn't a problem, it trusts it's audience to go "Oh, the good guys are being jerks here" however, it's a direct facet of MHA's worldbuilding that Toga has watched the heroes kill her best friend, and now thinks she has to fight to the death because the heroes will kill her too. She can't back down and let herself be saved, because the heroes don't even see her as human.

Buffy can't forgive Faith for accidentally killing some random guy because all human life is sacred, but also she tries to kill Faith multiple times, because Faith's not human I guess. Uraraka and Deku believe themselves to be heroes but they actively support people like Hawks, who murdered Toga's best friend and have done absolutely nothing to show her that they won't kill her.

Toga reflects a lot of Faith's suffering for being a bad victim that society allowed to fall through the cracks, and a Seductress who needs to be punished for expressing her sexuality. In fact if it were just Toga, you could call it at least an effective deconstruction of the "seductress/whore" because Toga is a fully realized character and her entire backstory is about how society's expectations for her to be a perfect ingenue, and then punishing her when she wasn't a perfect ingenue is what led to her complete mental breakdown. She couldn't be the white swan or the black swan, so she became the blood-soaked swan instead.

Where the comparison starts to fall apart is Ochako. Toga is a character, and Ochako is not. Just like Deku Ochako more or less just kind of morphs into a plot device that exists to save the villain counterparts to prove what good heroes the kids are - and then she doesn't even do that part. Failing to save Toga is the final nail in the coffin for Ochako being a character and not a plot device to show how good and virtuous the heroes are.

BTVS goes to painstaking extents to establish how Buffy and Faith are the exact same girl in different circumstances. They are both victims of sexual abuse. They're both the Slayer. They both lose their mom at different points in the story. They both struggle with the fact that slayers are also killers, they're both the "chosen one". They both have issues that makes them conflate sexuality with violence.

Buffy is put through several situations that parallel Faith, she loses her mom, she becomes financially destitute, she starts exploring her sexuality in a very faith-like way. The two of them swap bodies at one point and nobody can tell the difference.

There's no strong parallel between Ochako and Toga to give the audience a reason why we should care about the relationship between the two girls in the first place. Ochako's connection to Toga tells us nothing about her character, because there's no strong parallel as shown to us by the story.

There are some parallels, the story attempts to tackle the emotional repression angle of how much the ingenue suffers because she's forced to repress her emotions and how much she envies Toga's free expression.

Why does Ochako think that way? Why does she focus on Toga in particular? The plot tells us why Buffy feels she has so much in common with Faith, they're both the chosen one but Buffy feels like she's under such intense pressure to be perfect that seeing Faith get to act out and express herself makes her jealous.

The manga tells us that Ochako is emotionally repressed, but it doesn't show us, because there are never any real consequences for Ochako repressing her feelings. Natalie Portman in Black Swan, and Buffy both experience mental spirals because the pressure to be the perfect woman is too much for them - to meet the impossible purity standards of the ingenue while still being a sexual creature.

In Uraraka this is the extremely simplified belief that she can't have feelings for a boy, while also being a hero because those beings are selfish and she should be focused on saving people. However, we never see her suffer because of these feelings. We don't even get the bare minimum of having her angst over unrequited love.

I don't want to give Ochako too little credit, there are several things that could have been a connection to Ochako, but they all turn out to be non-starters. Ochako is poor and often makes remarks like "The best way to save money is to not eat" in omake and she hangs out with mostly rich friends. She had early angst about the fact that her friends were becoming heroes for mostly altruistic reasons and she became a hero for money.

That could have also connected to the scene where Ochako witnessed the scene of a hero quitting amongst all of the destruction after the end of the first war arc, to show her the consequences of all the heroes who were heroes for less than altruistic reasons.

Ochako could have even told Toga something along the lines of "I was poor, I know how it is to struggle" especially since Toga spent a good portion of time homeless after she was throne out by her parents.

Instead that goes unaddressed except in this scene which makes it look like Toga is ignorant for assuming Ochako never suffered.

Toga and Ochako both feel like they need to repress their feelings but Toga was emotionall abused by her parents, then experienced psychiatric abuse, and then was disowned after her mental breakdown led to a violent incident. Uraraka feels like she can't tell the boy she loves how she feels. One of thsee things is not like the others.

There are more possible connections that you could draw between them, Uraraka gives a big speech about how the heroes have it rough too guys and at that point it cuts to a picture of Toga crying and that could have led to a revelation that if Ochako is asking the common people to see heroes as human beings, then they should try to see villains as human beings too.

This could also couple well with the fact that Toga believes Ochako wants to kill her the same way that Hawks killed Twice. Both of these facts, Ochako originally only being a hero for money and watching heroes for money quit, and also Ochako learning about Twice killing Toga's friends could lead to some self-reflection on the hero system and Ochako could listen to Toga and be the one to convince her that heroes will save her.

However, none of these happen so we don't know why Ochako feels compelled to save Toga, other than the fact that Ochako is just that nice.

It is really a repeat of Deku's writing, we are told that Himiko just really, really, really wants to save Toga, but not only are we never given an in character reason why that is, but we're also supposed to ignore all the evidence that contradicts this.

Ochako wants to reach out and touch the sadness inside of Toga, but she never actually does anything to try to understand or talk to Toga until the last possible minute. In fact, it's Toga who reaches out several times and Uraraka who ignores her. It is Ochako who insists several times that Toga's deeds are unforgivable and then the conversation stops there.

There's also the scene where Deku and Ochako are looking over the cliffside and Ochako is actively reminding herself of the damage that Ochako caused as a reason that she doesn't have to think of her as a human being.

Ochako doesn't even go in with a plan to take down Toga non-lethally like Shoto did with Toya, nor does she even think about what she wants to say to her until the last possible moment.

Ochako's actions make her more like Buffy, someone who actively doesn't empathize with the villain and doesn't want to save her because of her own personal hangups. (However, we're given no personal hangups for why Ochako, the most perfect hero ever wouldn't want to save Toga). Her actions are like Buffy's, not reaching out a hand to Toga she only gets worse and worse, but we're told the opposite. That she's someone who wants to reach and touch Toga's sadness.

It would be better if Ochako DIDN'T want to save Toga, because at least there would be an arc to it. The lack of empathy would be a character flaw on Ochako's part, something that she needs to overcome to be a proper hero. It would be better if Ochako DIDN'T want to save Toga, because then she'd need an in character reason why she doesn't empathize with Toga, like Buffy does with Faith.

Ochako is supposed to be deconstructing the ingenue, but she's not allowed to have any flaws, or be anything other than the perfect, empathic hero and because of that she ends up reinforcing the Ingenue instead. The ingenue isn't allowed to be anything other than perfect, and the Seductress must be punished.

Doesn't allow the Bad Girl to be redeemed:

Toga's death ends up reinforcing basically every backwards double standard about the MWC including the need for men to punish and villify women who freely express their sexuality. Toga's entire character arc is asking the question if soemone like her is allowed to live in this society, if the heroes will save the life of someone like her and the answer we receive is: no she can't live.

Toga can't live in this world, she has to die. Not only does Twice die and never receive justice and his murderer get off scott free, Toga who asks the question of if she's going to die too, the answer is yes.

In both of these plotlines you have young woman who have done bad things but are still teenagers, who are struggling with suicidal ideation who believe their only escape is death. Faith is told that the guilt of the things she's done is painful, but she has to live in order to make up for it because that's the only way to free herself. Whereas, Toga comes to the conclusion that there is no future for her other than being in jail for the rest of her life and therefore it's not worth living.

Toga has to be punished by the narrative in a way that's completely unnecessary, because characters like Bakugo and Edgeshot somehow survived doing open heart surgery in the middle of an active battlefield, but Toga dies from a blood transfusion.

One of these narratives is telling a troubled young abuse victim who's still a teenager to live, and the other is telling her to die. Now which one of these plotlines would you want a young girl to read?

[sailorrhansol]

Still Watching? | l.c (m)

❀ Pairing: Lee Chan x f. Reader 

❀ Summary: Blood and Popcorn with your newly minted boyfriend is your favorite. Except now you watch a lot less Buffy and a lot more of Chan. 

❀ Word Count: 2,153

❀ Genre: Established Relationship, PWP

❀ Type: Smut

❀ Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging in and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately.

❀ Warnings: Shameless pwp, explicit language, explicit sexual content including nipple play, vaginal fingering, a little bit of teasing/edging, cheesy banter. 

❀ A/N: I am writing this as penance to @daechwitatamic to hold her over while I work on things that are not Lee Chan!! 

❀ A/N 2: This is the same couple from Blood & Popcorn but you do not need to read the first story to read this one :) 

❀ Disclaimer: Disclaimer: All members of Seventeen are faces and name claims for stories. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios. Moreover, none of my works accurately reflect, represent or take a stance on the nuances of Korean culture, cities, people etc. Seventeen members are not Seventeen culturally, intellectually, physically, or representationally in my stories, and should be considered name and face stand-ins for made up characters.

Main Masterlist ❀ Tag List Request Form ❀ Ask ❀

“Honestly, it is so obvious this show was written by a man,” You mutter, watching as Buffy yells at Zander. “He wants to be a hero for her soooo bad.”

“Xander is the worst,” Chan sighs. You rise and fall with his chest, your back pressed against his front where you lay against him. His knees cage you in on either side of your hips, your ass planted firmly between his legs with his arms around your middle, fingers playing with the hem of your shirt. “He really thinks he should win the girl just because he’s a nice guy.” 

“Truly, he has like… very few other qualities than being a nice guy.” 

He hums. “At least Spike knows he’s an asshole. It’s guys like Xander who think just because they’re not blatantly awful that it makes them dateable.” 

“A lot of guys think that.” 

“Mhmm. I’m a rare breed.” 

You crane your neck to look up at him. You can hear and feel the steady thud of his heart, smell the hint of aftershave and menthol from his shower earlier, feel the heat of his skin. It makes you a little dizzy and you unfocus on the screen, studying the gentle curve of Chan’s mouth. 

“You’re surely something,” you mutter in response, grinning a little as you look away toward the screen. His fingers slip under your shirt, skimming your waist. You suppress a shiver, suddenly hyper aware of the way his fingers scrape against you. 

“I’m a nice guy and I know that it takes more than being a decent human being to get the girl.”

“Oh yeah? Remember the time it took four years to confess your feelings to me? What do you know, Lee Chan?”

“Hmm. Data is insufficient. Need more evidence regarding that specific example.” 

For a moment, you’re unable to respond, lids fluttering as Chan continues to caress your lower stomach and hips. His touch is completely innocent, no suggestion that he intends anything. That he means anything. It’s a motion that is instinctual for him, so naturally to have his hands on you that it almost makes it worse. 

Just knowing how easy it is for him to love you never fails to surprise you. You don’t know how you never saw it before. 

Now it seems silly to have ever thought that Chan was anything less than in love with you. It’s in the way he naturally gravitates toward you in every room. It’s in the way he can be totally focused on something else, but his hand reaches out for you, not even really noticing that he’s seeking you out. It’s  in the way that you mold so perfectly into his chest, made to be there. 

“You don’t know your own data?” you shoot back eventually, snuggling a little closer to him. If you could crawl into his hoodie, you would. For now, this is fine. “Seems like you don’t know much.” 

“Hmm?” His fingers stop moving. You feel the question hum against you. “I don’t know much?” 

“Nope.”

Your heart starts to pick up. Chan’s fingers start stroking your skin again but you feel the difference. His blunt nails scrape across your skin, raising goosebumps on your arms. He skims his hands higher and back down, touch light over your ribs. Every time his fingers dance up your side, his reach goes a little higher. 

A tightness forms in your throat. You try to keep your breathing even and will yourself not to squeeze your thighs. You are pressed too close to him for him not to tell if you squirm. Chewing your lip, you stare at the screen totally unseeing. 

“Hm.” Chan’s deep hum hints at trouble. You feel your hands get clammy. “I think I know some things. Like for example…” He trails off for a moment, hand brushing under your left breast. Your teeth dig into your bottom lip, fighting a twitch. “I know that your favorite color on me is green.” 

“Green is a good color on anyone.”

“I know that you like the feeling…” His hand skates low this time, fingers dancing dangerously against the waistband of your shorts. “Of high thread count sheets.”

You snort. “Everyone likes good sheets, Chan.” 

“Good sheets are important,” he agrees. You feel him trace his pointer finger back up with deadly accuracy, following the swell of your breast upward, skating so close to your nipple that you stop breathing. “Everything alright? You stopped breathing.”

“What?” you squeak. “Oh, yep. I am great.” 

“I don’t know, baby. Are you feeling well? You seem… warm.”

Chan presses his palm flat to your chest, fingers splayed wide. His palm is warm and rough, his touch igniting a fire inside of you. The heat spreads outward, licking at every one of your nerves and setting them ablaze. 

In an effort to ignore him, you lick your lips and say, “Never felt better. I like her boots.” 

His chuckle is low. Throaty. You’re barely holding it together, feeling the ache between your thighs at the firmness of his touch. “See, I don’t know a lot about women’s fashion. But I do know those are not boots. Just like I know you’re not paying attention to the show, Bambi.”

You blink and stare at the TV. Chan’s right. Buffy is in sneakers, though in your unfocused haze they had been blurry and looked like boots from a distance. You swallow down the dryness in your throat, Chan’s hand still pressed flat and warm against your chest. 

“I know that your heart is pounding,” Chan murmurs, voice barely audible as he presses his mouth by your ear. Your eyes flutter shut. “I know that you’re trying really hard not to squeeze those thighs.” 

“You can’t possibly know that.” 

To prove his statement true, Chan’s thumb brushes upward, skating gently over a nipple. On command, your thighs squeeze and you feel the shake of his laughter behind you. 

“I know everything about you, Bambi.” His voice brushes against you like his soft touch. You melt, feeling your weight sink into him further. “I know that you don’t share your food with anyone but me. I know that your favorite episode of Buffy is Hush. I know that you think Buffy should end up with Spike. I know that you are probably soaked right now because being caressed drives you crazy.” 

“Insufficient data,” you breathe. “I recommend research.” 

“You know what? Agreed.” 

Chan moves fast. His hand moves from your chest to between your legs, hands slipping under the waistband of your shorts and panties before you can blink. Your lips part, a breathy noise escaping you as Chan drags a slow finger up your sticky folds. 

“What do you know,” he observes. His fingers idly trail up and down your slit, making you twitch against him. “I was right. Do I win anything?” 

“I thought you said nice guys shouldn’t just win the girl.” 

Chan presses his fingers firmly to your clit, a ripple of pleasure ebbing through you. Your hips lift off the couch slightly but he pushes you back down into his lap, other hand looping around your waist to lock you to him. “Maybe I’m not that nice.”

Slowly, he starts to retract his hand. You whimper, both of your hands shooting to grab the wrist belonging to the hand between your legs. He pauses, fingers pressed between your folds. “You are nice!” 

“Oh?”

“Very nice. You’re my very nice, very sweet boyfriend.” 

“I see.” 

He doesn’t move his hand at all. The space is filled with the low hum of Buffy fighting vampires, the blue flash of the screen falling against your silhouettes, body to body as he holds you tight. You try to get control of your racing heart, but that’s never been easy around Chan.

He knows it.  

“Maybe you know some things,” you admit slowly. “Maybe I was wrong.”

Chan’s resounding chuckle is dangerous, but he slides his hand back down. You loosen your grip on his wrist but keep your hands resting on his forearm, feeling the muscle flex under your fingertips as his fingers resume their debauched exploration. 

“See, that’s another thing I know. I know you hate being wrong, so if you’re wrong… it was because you were doing so intentionally.”

His words fall on unlistening ears. You’re too worked up by the simple way he plays you, too focused on the way his fingers gently circle your clit, the perfect stimulation. Too distracted by the way he dips his head down to sweep his mouth across your throat in open-mouthed kisses. 

“I know you’re… not listening.” He stops and you let out a strangled sound, nails digging into his arms. He presses a wet kiss to your pulse point. “Didn’t think so.”

“Chan.” 

“Hmm?”

“Please don’t tease me.”

“Why not? You were teasing me.” 

You pout. He can’t see it, but you know he knows it’s there. “I like to tease you. I have to keep you humble.” 

A long moan slips from your lips and you tilt your head back to Chan’s shoulder when he presses a finger into your aching cunt. You feel yourself twitch around him, hips swiveling for more friction. 

“Humble? How are you ever going to keep me humble when this pussy gets this wet after I’ve barely touched you?”

Well that’s true. You don’t care, though, turning boneless as Chan strokes you with his fingers properly. It feels so good. Only he knows how to touch you like this, familiar with every button to press and every contour to mold to. 

Heat flushes your neck. Chan presses his lips against your cheek, working your cunt with his fingers as he holds you steadfast. It feels like you might suffocate, totally trapped against him. His skin and breath are hot against you, the air thick. He breathes out a groan when your hips buck upward, Chan dropping all pretext of teasing you.

“Like that,” he breathes, heavy. “Do it exactly how you like it.”

Another finger drives you wild. You fumble over his name, squeezing your eyes shut and meeting the quick strokes of his hand. His palm presses firmly against your clit, letting you grind yourself against him for the extra stimulation. 

You burn up. Briefly you wonder if this flash of euphoric heat is what Icarus felt before the fall. The thought is chased away from the intense pressure in your stomach as Chan presses up against that spot inside you, making stars burst behind your eyes.

“Wait - I’m gonna come in my shorts,” you whine, realizing you still have them on. “Chaaaan.”

“So come in them,” he says simply. “Research has revealed that you have a washer and dryer down the hall, baby. Go ahead.” 

“Fuuuuck.” 

“Come for me. I know you want to.” 

You do want to. A moment of static builds up, your thighs squeezing around his hand so hard he can’t move and then you’re coming around his fingers, your nails biting into the skin of his wrist. His grip across your waist is like iron, holding you to him as you come undone. 

Chan’s mouth presses gentle kisses on your jaw, muttering soft I love yous and fuck yeahs against your burning skin. The burning doesn’t stop, your body flushed with heat as you sink away from your orgasm, turning to molten metal and melting into his hold. 

He leaves you like that for a few minutes, thighs shaking around the hand still shoved between your legs, fingers pressed deep inside of you. It feels intimate, and you crane your neck, driven by the desire to kiss him. Chan’s lips are already there because he knew you would want his lips against yours. 

Just like he knows everything about you. 

Chan’s lips are soft and gentle. His tongue brushes against yours in a slow dance and you lean up into him more, desperate for him. He laughs into the kiss, letting you have your way until you’re panting, sweaty and out of breath again. 

You sag, head on his shoulder as you pant. “Your fingers are still in me.”

“Mhm.” He presses them in harshly, making you jolt. It earns a deep laugh from him. “Maybe we should call this Popcorn & Pussy instead. We’ve barely gotten through a full night of episodes since we started dating.”

“Are you aware you make the worst jokes?” You open your eyes and glance at the screen, only to find that the show has paused between episodes, asking if you’re still watching and if you want to continue. “Are you still watching? No, Buffy. I’m not.”

“No problem.” Chan pulls his hand from between your legs, the wet squelch making you whimper. “I have something else you can watch.” 

“Oh?” 

Chan kisses your temple sweetly before getting up, letting you fall back against the couch while he kneels on the couch and pulls your legs toward his face. You inhale deeply, watching as he looks up through long lashes, a smirk on his face. “Still watching, Bambi?” 

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[coraniaid]

buffy/faith for the ask game

(Reverse unpopular opinions)

Easily my favorite Buffy ship and one of my favorites in any work of fiction. I think the main reasons it works so well for me are:

The way it resonates so strongly with what's going on in the rest of the show the season Faith arrives. I mean, Buffy comes out to her mother (as a Slayer), which is treated by the show as ... well, as Buffy coming out ("it's because you didn't have a strong father figure, isn't it?" / "have you tried ... not being a Slayer?" / "I've tried to march in the Slayer Pride Parade...") and a handful of episodes later Buffy meets another girl who is also a Slayer and who she starts spending a lot of time with (because they have a connection -- "it's kind of a Slayer thing" -- which she doesn't have with her other, non-Slayer friends). And while they're busy patrolling cemeteries and looking for vampires every night, this other Slayer is keen to (1) talk to Buffy about sex and quiz her on her love life; (2) repeatedly tell her that "all men are beasts" and "losers" who can't be trusted; (3) suggest that Buffy should be more open to having sex with the people she spends her nights hunting vampires with (like ... who, Faith?); and (4) is delighted when Buffy breaks up with her boyfriend (and later furious when she gets back together with her previous ex) and immediately suggests that she could replace him ("You're still going to that dance, right? [...] Why don't we go together?"). If this was deliberately laying the ground work for an explicitly romantic arc, it would feel pretty heavy-handed. The fact that it apparently wasn't (at least not on the part of the showrunner or of most of the writers) almost makes it work better, in some ways.

The way that Faith is, from the very beginning, very deliberately written as a foil for Buffy, a person Buffy might have been if things went just a little differently in her life -- because she goes through things very much like things the audience has already seen Buffy go though (living alone in a small place in a strange town with no friends all season the way Buffy did in Anne, panicking and starting to pack to run away in Faith, Hope & Trick in the same way Buffy was accused of doing just the episode before, killing a person the way Buffy thought she had in Season 2's Ted, the way her fear of Kakistos mirrors Buffy's fear of the Master in When She Was Bad) and because she is so aware of the fact that she's always being compared to Buffy and coming up short, either by other people or herself ("you get the Mom, you get the Watcher ... what do I get?") it's very easy to tie Faith's arc across the show back to Buffy and to her feelings about Buffy. Faith wanting Buffy to accept her becomes Faith wanting this idealized version of herself to forgive her failings. And likewise Buffy recriprocating Faith's feelings and admitting to herself that she is attracted to Faith becomes Buffy accepting that Faith (and the things she represents) really are an integral part of Buffy herself; that Faith isn't entirely wrong when she says that Buffy enjoys being a Slayer and that being a Slayer is something she should be proud of (or, again, being "a Slayer").

Apparently this wasn't the original plan for the character (if there ever was anything like an 'original plan'), but the fact Faith's arc in Season 3 so clearly mirrors Angel's in Season 2 -- and the fact she is so very weird about Angel all season (and that Buffy is equally weird about how attracted to Faith she just keeps insisting Angel must be) just naturally suggests that Faith might have a similiar role to Angel in the narrative beyond just the circumstances of her betrayal of (and later not-quite-being-killed by) Buffy. And Angel is -- for the first three seasons of the show at least -- primarily cast in the role of Buffy's doomed tragic love interest who she has to (metaphorically) kill but will later be reunited with. Which makes Faith ... well, something.

Even if not all the writers were on board, the fact that Eliza Dushku was deliberately playing Faith as attracted to Buffy (and that SMG was playing Buffy as alternately frustrated by and protective of and tempted by Faith) gives their scenes together a chemistry that I don't think most of Buffy's (or Buffy's) canon relationships ever managed. Whether that's the Amends porch scene or Buffy kissing Faith in the hospital in Graduation Day or any and all of their various fights across the show. And those fight scenes are all great, which is another thing I love about the ship: is it really a proper enemies-to-lovers arc if one of the people in it hasn't tried to kill the other one and left them in a coma for months?

Faith's return to Buffy in the last five epsiodes of the show is one of the last season's saving graces, and it helps that by this point the writers definitely seemed to be playing up the ship deliberately ("Willow said you needed me: didn't give it a lot of thought" / "Defensiveness and weird mixed signals ... I've got Faith for that" / "Deep down you've always wanted Buffy to accept you. To love you." / "It feels like it's mine ... I guess that means it's yours"). Even without ever being canon and without wandering what happens post-Chosen, it feels like there's a real narrative arc to their relationship, from their initially rocky start through to "just good friends" to bitter enemies through to Faith seeking (and finding) some measure of redemption and Buffy cautiously letting her back into her life. Faith isn't in the show much (or even mentioned in the show in most episodes), but it feels like she has a genuinely meaningful connection to Buffy that most characters who appeaer in less than a season's worth of episodes can't manage.

The thing that made the ship work for me, rewatching the show after several years back in 2020, is the fact that Faith is -- even at her worst -- incredibly sympathetic precisely because she is such a loser and hates herself so much. She boasts about being a great actor despite the fact we see her awkwardly telling the sort of transparent lies that ... well, normally only Buffy manages (compare "There's this big party ..." in Amends to Buffy trying to tell her old crush Ford that "there was a cat ... and then there was another cat, and they were fighting"), she wants people to think she's cool so badly but only manages to fool Xander and Willow, she tries to act as though she's happy without friends but we only ever see her alone sitting watching old tv shows or lying listlessly on her bed, she insists she doesn't need a Watcher and "has a problem with authority figures" but she is so openly desperate for any sort of parental guidance in her life that she sides with first Mrs Post then the Mayor. She ties Buffy's mom up so she can have someone to listen to how sad she is that Buffy's moved on to a new guy in college and "dumped" her. The scene in the church in Who Are You? where Faith-as-Buffy furiously attacks Buffy-as-Faith while screaming through tears that she's "nothing ... disgusting ... murderous bitch" is, I think, a strong contendor for the best scene the show ever produced.

As Doug Petrie said, the reason Faith works as a character -- and the reason that Buffy/Faith works as a ship -- is that Faith is incredibly unhappy. If Faith was the cool loner she tries to pass herself off as -- and which some of the fandom seems to think she is -- the ship wouldn't be nearly as compelling to me. Faith isn't just the part of Buffy who loves Slaying and pushes back when other people give her orders, and she's not just another verison of Angelus. She's the part of Buffy from Becoming who lost everything and ran away from home, only unlike Buffy she never got to go home again. As Angel asked Buffy in that episode: "no friends, no hope ... take that away, what's left?". Well, Faith is what's left. Of course Buffy would see herself in Faith, right from the beginning. Of course Buffy would want to protect her. As Buffy (Sunnydale Class Protector 1999) tells Angel, Faith is in pain ... she's somebody who "some people ... protective-type people" are naturally drawn to. The show is very consistent about the fact that Buffy's type is friendless losers who look good in leather and can fight alongside her in battle (but not quite as well, so she can protect them and look after them when they're hurt). And what bigger loser in the show is there than Faith?

[lol-jackles]

https://www.tumblr.com/teamfreewill2pointo/750106101611151360/hi-finale-anon-here-thank-you-so-much-for-your

I’d love to get your take on this post. I don’t agree with it. Supernatural was about Sam’s hero journey which the finale completes the arc established over the 15 seasons.

Why is it difficult for people to see the basic and timeless story construct?

Supernatural is Sam Winchester's Hero Journey, it's all here in the "Hero Journey" tag. Dean Winchester is a very popular character, the awesome sauce but not the main course, which I explained in the "Support Protagonist" tag.

Link. Here I had thought Will viewed the finale through Destiel-rose-colored glasses but it turned out he was interpreting it through BiBro-stanning-lens. And Will's proof that SPN is just as much as about Dean as it is about Sam is, wait for it, "Dean was given a myth arc"', as in singular.... out of 15 seasons. Did he mean season 10? Because according to Jensen, season 10 was a “rare Dean centric storyline” and how "Dean's rarely in this position of being the focal point of the general story's motivation," (X). Is Will disregarding Jensen's own words?

Will: "you can't remove one brother without the whole thing falling apart."

True you can't remove Sam, otherwise there is no story. Once Jared planned to leave SPN, WB canceled the series. Remove Dean and with some minor tweaking, SPN will mostly still be the same (X) but it probably wouldn't have lasted 15 seasons. It would be more like Buffy with 7 seasons. (X)

Will: Sam returned to the ordinary world and got a wife and child because it did it for Dean.

Actually Dean gave his blessing and permission for Sam to return to the ordinary life he always wanted for himself. It's why season 15 clumsily shoehorned "Drag Me Away" episode just a few weeks from the finale to remind the audience that Sam wanted out of the hunting life since he was a kid. Yes Sam went to hell for Dean but it was unquestionable that Sam also did it to save the world. It set Sam apart from Dean's motive for going to hell which was only to save Sam, he didn't care about the world.

Will: "everything Sam did was for Dean".

Yes, by giving up his own desire for an ordinary life so that Dean wouldn't be alone. Sam told Charlie back in season 9 that he only stayed in the hunting life because he loved Dean. But that's not enough for AA stans and even some Bibro stans because they may have realized that Dean and the hunting world is the "belly of the beast" that every protagonist enters as part of their hero journey arc, which goes against their personal biases or agendas.

Will's Anon was only talking up to Return of the Jedi in their Star Wars analogy and Sam never became a witch and he never "used his powers". Holy smoke that was the whole point of depowering Sam after season 5 so that he doesn't end up an ex dues machina! Or am I mis-reading Will's writing and he was actually talking about Sam's power in the first 5 seasons?? Regardless, Sam is NOT a witch, what the heck is Will smoking???

Will, listen to me carefully: Luke's hero journey goal was to become a Jedi. Sam's hero journey goal was to return to the ordinary world. It was never supposed to be a one-to-one comparison, Kripke never said that.

Now we come to Will's streaming value argument by using the 2023 chart to "prove" that the Carry On finale isn't driving equal watch time for each season. How is that supposed to even make sense? Will is ignoring the very basic human nature of simply tiring out from watching so many episodes. The rate of decreasing viewership from season to season is fairly consistent. Unlike hellers, the general viewers will start with the first season and gradually peter out.

A bad series finale will kill the popularity of the show and gets memory-holed. A disappointing series finale will put a big question mark in the rewatch value. "Carry On" finale did none of this because it made narrative sense, as Jensen said when he paraphrased what Kripke told him.

See my "Carry On finale is awesome and here's bunch of reasons why" tag.

[ravelqueen]

One thing that is actually super interesting - character wise is how stark the difference between Angel and Angelus is when compared to Spike and be-souled Spike.

Angelus and Angel might as well be two completely different people - the way they act, react and conceptualise the world around them is honestly completely opposite.

Meanwhile, besouled Spike is a lot more aware of his past actions and isn't interested in killing humans for sport etc, but in the way he interacts with the world around him, he's actually still very similar - he's snarky and sarcastic, romantic yet cynical etc.

It's extra funny when you consider that probably this was never supposed to be a Deep Philosophical Ponderance Of The Nature Of A Soul

In my opinion this came out of happenstance: a writing choice forced on the Buffy team, based on when in the narrative it happened.

Angelus was always set up to be this enormous threat, this absolute monster tormenting Buffy, while Angel was supposed to be this fairytale first romance of a wonderful older boyfriend - the dichotomy was probably decided upon before /in season 1.

Spike on the other hand was never planned to get a soul - he wasn't even supposed to stick around longer than the 2nd season! However, the ensoulment made sense with the progression of the story/character if the writers wanted to adhere to the rules of the universe they set up namely:

Vampires are Evil Demons, inhabiting the body of the human before them, and most importantly they are irredeemable and incapable of true human affection. This is extremely important lore in that universe, because Buffy kills a lot of vampires - in the later seasons they aren't even really a major threat and more background ash. If you suddenly introduce the idea that Actually vampires can be fully redeemed, your main characters has been just murdering Possibly Good People willy-nilly for several seasons

Unfortunately, at this point in the narrative, Spike might as well have been ensouled already - he was acting altruistically, out of love (self-reported) and was mostly just helping our heroes, with motivations unrelated to villainous impulses

So really the writers had to give him a motivation to go and get his soul (the writing choices on how he gets there Being Bad notwithstanding).

HOWEVER, they really really couldn't pull the same move with Spike that they did with Angel re: his 180 degree personality switch simply because the audience liked non-soul Spike. They enjoyed the personality and character that had been crafted for the last 5 seasons, so changing him too much would have with almost complete certainty been met with negative reactions .

Which is why I assume they decided to simply soften parts of his personality, make him stop wanting to kill humans and called it a day on his other less-than-cuddly personality traits.

Which leads us to question on why two people in the same circumstances turned out so wildly different ESPECIALLY since William seemed Basically Alright when he's human.

Does that mean that Angel is fundamentally a worse person, only held back by the morality of his soul? Or that he was fundamentally a much more virtuous man and therefore the loss of his goodness had a larger impact, as removing those parts took away more of what he used to be?

That William was a lot more acerbic and mean deep down and therefore not too different? Or that actually William lost way less of his morality/capacity for empathy when he turned because Something and that led him to doing less awful things that would lead to a personality change??

Those are such interesting questions that somehow the show never addresses (as far as I know? comics people?) aside from Angel Being Mad that Spike got over his angst so quickly and it's just hilarious to me that if I'm right this basically was never meant to be that deep and simply just a byproduct of What The Fuck To Do With Spike

[dateamonster]

the good weed will have u waking up the next morning like theres a connecting thread of monster hunting shows where the main characters are simultaneously symbols of the status quo charged with identifying and often eliminating the Others of the world while being othered themselves in such a way that upholding the institutions they do can be read as acting directly against their own best interest. this is especially obvious in something like x-files where the characters are literally agents of the fbi and the show is structured more or less in the format of a police procedural, while half of the main duo is defined primarily by his love and fascination with the paranormal, a curiosity about the greater world which the very powers he serves we know would seek to contain, to secret away, or to destroy. or even like supernatural where monster hunting has this inextricable tie to a sort of stereotypical rugged masculinity and stoicism that is supposed to appeal to the audience even while we see it emotionally and physically destroying the characters who most strive to embody it. within both of these shows, and im sure others within the genre (looking at you buffy, tho i dont have time to unpack all that rn), there is this vein of suppressed queerness that runs through the narrative, as if in embodying this role as the defender of hegemony and eliminator of that which disrupts the perceived natural order, the archtypal monster hunter is made to recognize and subsequently repress the aspects of that cultural deviance that manifest within themself. going back to supernatural, this i think is especially evident in the conflict between the text of show and its large queer fanbase, who seemed to recognize within its otherwise pretty cut and dry story of a manly man who likes cars and guns and follows almost blindly the demands of his patrilinial inheritance a sort of self-parody, the conformity to the role of this cishetpatriarchal protector ideal so complete and almost excessive that it doubles back and becomes a kind of drag, yet so fragile that continuing to uphold it appears to be a constant source of pain and conflict for its characters.

im not saying such and such monster hunter show is inherently a secret queer narrative, but i AM saying every monster hunter is a huge fucking closet case.

[thisonesatellite]

Tagged by the always wonderful @fsbc-librarian -- thank you so much, darling! 💖💖💖

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

42 works

2. what’s your total ao3 word count?

677,643 (how do i have so many?)

3. what fandoms do you write for?

MCU/Stucky -- this is my main focus and current sandbox. i love to play with these two. OUAT/CS -- that is where i started my fic writing journey and it still makes up the bulk of my works. i no longer write it, but it will always have a soft spot in my heart. Dramione -- i wrote one dramione fic a while back, and it is a ship dynamic i really enjoy. i still have one big, rather epic fic idea for it, too. Since this idea -- (and @mysteriouscatstellation) -- have been bugging me about it for over a year, i absolutely have to write it. Eventually. Obvi. (Actually, it's up next after i finish my East German Stucky Spy Lunacy, shhhhhhhhh.) Leverage -- i also have one Leverage fic. i have literally no idea how that happened. None. This fic basically walked out onto the page and said, my turn. 😂 It did give me a really good opportunity to create an original character though.

4. do you respond to comments? why or why not?

Always. ALWAYS. i love and appreciate each one, from a row of emojis to a page of analysis. i go back often and re-read them, just to motivate myself. People who leave comments are the real heroes. (Although i do understand that not everyone has the spoons to comment, and that's OK, too. Just know that if you leave me a single emoji i will love it no less than if you write a dissertation. 💖💖💖)

5. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that i know of. But i haven't checked either.

6. have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes -- The Sword and The Heart, an epic rewrite of OUAT S5 i tackled with the amazing @ohmightydevviepuu. If you have never collaborated with another writer, i strongly urge you to try it. i learned things about myself and my writing that i am still benefiting from to this day and i am immensely proud of what we created together. However, that is pretty much due to dev being the best collaborator ever. (Get yourself someone you trust and love and yet challenges you at every turn, is what i'm saying.)

7. what’s your all-time favourite ship?

That's a hard question, because affinity does change -- and why wouldn't it. We change, become different people, and sometimes the things we used to bleed for no longer resonate quite as hard. Like - my OG ship was Buffy /Angel, and i have the absolute soft spot of all time for them, but also i'm (obviously) no longer in high school and so the urgency has subsided. There have been a few other ships i've sideswiped over the years, characters i absolutely loved but never quite got 'ship-invested' in. (Shipvested? 😂) Personally, one factor is definitely that i did not know what a fandom was, or even that there was 'fandom' (as a concept, a community, a Thing) until Captain Swan tore a hole in my heart five years ago. i didn't really know what fanfic was. Or AO3. Apparently i live under a rock. But currently, the tl;dr is a dead tie between Stucky, Captain Swan, and James Holden /Naomi Nagata from The Expanse. With lots of honorable mentions bringing up the rear. 😂

8. what are your writing strengths?

Plot, dialogue, world building, and having characters stay true to their nature even when seen through various AU lenses, i think. Also action and fights and sometimes even battles. And i think i have a knack for letting exposition bleed through action and dialogue, instead of writing it outright. (That last one is a hard-won skill and kills me dead at least once a chapter, you feel me.) i also put a ridiculous amount of research into everything. Seriously, it's a sickness. i once spent more than two hours looking up radio dramas from the 30s that had a supernatural bent and might appeal to teenagers. For half a throwayway line. Possibly i should not list this as a strength. 😂

9. what are your writing weaknesses?

Smut. SMUT ALL THE WAY. i cannot write it, i don't know how. People who read my fic will always get shortchanged in the E department and for that i am sorry. But i really am completely useless on the smut front. And fluff. i can do soft scenes, but i cannot write pure fluff. i don't know how to do that either. i'll write a fucking coffee shop oneshot, or a thieves AU that doesn't even crack 5K, or even a BARTENDER fic, and yet complex back story and plot and action will still burst out from between the lines. All you people out there who can just tear off a sex scene or a fluff piece, i salute you. Also all you people who have multiple WIPs. i don't know how you do it. i can only ever write one fic at a time. You are all wizards, aren't you.

10. first fandom you wrote for?

OUAT /Captain Swan, back in 2019.

Zero pressure tags: @sparkagrace @cable-knit-sweater @bittersweet-in-boston @late-to-the-party-81 @metalbvcky @voylitscope

[the-pen-pot]

Fangirling on chapter 40

'Mercy?' Lord Berhart managed, sounding strained. 'Your Highness, you have left him with nothing.'

'I have left him with his life. It is more than my father would have offered in my place, considering the nature of Vernell's crimes.' 

I can totally get that, even without seeing the whole show (I did see some snippets of Uther and recognised Giles from Buffy, the vampire slayer, that was a nice surprise.)

'Tom's still alive?'

Arthur inclined his head, aware that more than one councillor had taken notice of their conversation. He smoothed his face into an impassive mask and noticed that Merlin had done the same, erasing his shock. It itched at him, all the little differences they kept stumbling across. He wanted to find out what had happened to Tom in Merlin's world, just like he longed to hear about the scars that no longer stained Merlin's skin and the stories behind them.

It was not an idle curiosity, but a burning desire to understand more about this version of Merlin. The intensity of Arthur's own longing almost took his breath away. He wished to know him – everything that made him different and all the little ways in which he was still the same – but once again he told himself that now was not the time.

You know, it must be super fun for fans of the show to notice all the little (or/and big) changes in this story and this version of Camelot. It probably gives it an extra layer of meaning and in some instances delight or agony.... I am coming in rather blind (apart from the 'how long have you being training to be prat, my Lord', I haven't seen a lot more beyond that. I do know what the main characters look like and I also know that Morgana turned evil in the series. (She's that stunning actress Katie McGrath! 😍) But for me it's a whole new world and a whole new story and I'm really enjoying it!

'Would you then like to explain how you made a large sum of money selling grain across the border to Mercia?' Morgana arched an eyebrow as he spluttered. 'No? Then maybe you can tell the council why there is no evidence of a fire, nor any recorded births whatsoever among your working populace in the past five years?'

Arthur settled back in his seat as the Lord rambled through long-winded, meaningless excuses. Morgana's expression did not falter, but she emanated an air of icy disdain until Fennis' voice dried up like a stream in summer.

'Yours is not the only estate with inconsistencies,' she added at last, picking up the sheaf of papers and placing them in front of Arthur. 'Obviously, this is a matter requiring urgent investigation. For the sake of Camelot.'

OH! Morgana is so damn good! She is not taking any prisoners for sure! Those Lord's their lives will totally change for sure and they can all feel it now! I bet some of them won't sleep well from now on... Oh, being called out on their greed! I love it!

That's what I like about your stories, they are 'fully filled' stories. As in, it's not just about the main pair, it's not just about the romance or the leading up to the first kiss... It's about Everything in that world and with the people inside it.

'Neither your mother nor I truly knew the price, but it was not I alone who approached Nimueh for help. Your mother... She wanted to do her duty – to provide Camelot with an heir. It drove her every waking moment, and I could not deny her. When you finally flourished inside her, she was the happiest I had ever seen.'

As if, I don't believe him for one moment. From what I've read in the story so far he is the kind of man who totally knew what would happen and decided to do it anyway. 😡

He sucked in a deep breath, leaning forward to brace his hand on the back of Uther's chair. His position was awkward, but he did not care. He needed to look into those eyes and see realisation's dawn. 'Besides, if you knew you would lose your beloved queen to your quest for an heir, would you have stayed your hand, or would your ambition have outweighed your love for her?'

'How dare you!'

'Was I worth it, or not?'

Oh no, that must be one of the worst pains out there... knowing your parents don't think you are worthy, knowing they don't love you unconditionally, knowing you dissapoint them on an almost daily basis. Thank god Arthur as a close group of friends to counter all that poison.

'All right.' He glanced around the forge, taking in the frightened faces. 'Everyone out. We don't know what will happen. It could still go wrong, and if it does...' He didn't finish. They understood, but that didn't mean anyone was happy about it.

I love how they all would jump into the fire for each other and how they all worry so deeply for one another. Even over the smallest cut or bruise. Sometimes it's a bit funny, how they can 'overreact', specially Arthur and Merlin about each other. But at the same time it's precious and amazing and just warms my heart.

Oh wow, the ending of this chapter. I don't want to include the line because I don't want to spoiler it for future readers (alhought maybe I already did for some parts of the story?!) but I had no idea that was even possible?!

🤣 Knowing the same actor was Giles and Uther was a real experience. I adore Giles. uther? Not so much. And Katie McGrath is stunning!

I liek to think it's one of those fics where if you now the show, there's little easter eggs and things, but if you don't it's still enjoyable. You certainly seem to be loving it, which is brilliant 🥰

Thanks so much, as always, lovely!

(For those who want to try it out, Hiraeth is here)

[allchoseny]

Rewatching Season 3 Of Buffy...

and I think I have to re-evaluate my most hated character. For years it has been Xander, and I suspect it will always be Xander. However, Mr. Trick is up there for an entirely different reason. I know the 90s and early 2000s were basically the wild, wild, west, but I really want to know who sat in the writers room and said to themselves, "this Mr. Trick guy is a good character." Aside from him being corny, he is completely problematic. I know what you're thinking, "stop looking at early media with a 2024 gaze." Trust me, I hate that shit with a passion. No, I've always had a problem with Mr. Trick. The fact is that as a teenager, I didn't have the lexicon to describe why I disliked the character. As a teenager watching Buffy in the 90s, all I knew was that there was something skeevy about Mr. Trick, and he made my skin crawl.

Before I go any further, let me preface this by saying. I'm an Afro-Latina who grew up in Harlem, New York. Not exactly your target audience for shows like Buffy other than being a teenage girl. In all honesty, I couldn't relate to the more mundane aspects of the show, but I loved it because somehow I saw myself in Buffy. She was strong. She didn't take crap from anyone (except her friends, but that's another topic of discussion), and she was 16 like me.

Growing up, representation for people who look like me was scarce. There certainly weren't any teen dramas on the WB with a black girl as a main character, so I took what I could get. With that being said, back then, I feel like a lot of people in the writers room thought characters like Mr. Trick were acceptable. It was like they took every negative stereotype of black people--particularly black men, and said, let's create this modern day Sambo for television.

If you're unaware of the history of the Sambo character, please look it up. It's disturbing, and I didn't plan on going into a history lesson.

I wonder what might have been the outcome if they had some POC in the writers room to say, "hey, no, don't do that." Conversely, I loved Charles Gunn when I watched the show. I think I could relate to the black boy from the "hood." But upon subsequent watches, I also see moments when the hood kid got over played. I did admire how he didn't code switch to fit in with his friends, so that's refreshing. I have become a master at code switching, and it is second nature to me. Though there are times when I get second hand embarrassment watching him because he comes off as a cartoon character---over done.

Out of the two of them, Mr. Trick is the absolute worse. I think Principal Wood was a good representation of a black character on the show, but I'm not there yet in my rewatch, and I wanted to get this out before I forgot.

[daisyishedwig]

Writing meme about me!

@lusthurts tagged me over two weeks ago but I have been so busy with work I haven't had a chance to answer it.

How did you get into writing fanfiction?

Unofficially I just liked messing around with the characters in the media I consumed, I've always had a habit of pausing in my watching or reading to daydream and theorize about what could happen, or maybe just what my brain wished would happen and so at a very young age I started writing those ideas down.

At some point when I was twelve or so I discovered FF.Net through the Supernatural fandom, I don't remember exactly how. But that was when I went from writing Stargate and Inuyasha fanfiction purely for myself and started writing and publishing Supernatural fanfiction. I really love the weekly 100 word drabble challenges that fandom had back in the day and most of my oldest surviving fic are for those prompts as most of my other stuff I've deleted over the years.

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

So Glee is obviously my most prolific, and then Supernatural would be just behind that. In the past I've also written for Stargate, Inuyasha, Naruto, Buffy, Harry Potter, The Vampire Diaries, Doctor Who, and Takin' Over the Asylum, but most of those have been deleted and lost over the years. I do have unpublished WIPs for Stranger Things, OMGcheckplease, The Real O'Neals, Captive Prince, Magnus Archives, Hatchetfield, and probably more, no idea if any of those will actually see the light of day though.

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

I've been publishing it for about fifteen years but writing it for probably twenty which is an insane number to type out. Like I know I've been writing for pretty much my whole life but seeing it in words puts it in a new perspective. But yeah, my earliest posted work is from 2009.

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

It depends on the era? Currently I've been writing more fic than reading, purely because I've been focused on reading so many regular books at the moment (my roommate and I are in a race to read the most books this year, and I'm currently winning, but the rules are that I can't count anything that isn't already on StoryGraph and most of the fics I read are not).

5. What is one way you've improved as a writer?

I think my ability to write banter has improved a lot. I've been writing for so long that everything has improved, but the most noticeable to me is my dialogue, especially when it's witty. I used to struggle so hard with that even though I loved good banter in stories. It's part of why I used to not write Kurtbastian, because banter is so integral to their relationship, but I've been getting more and more comfortable with it .

6. What's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I'm going to ditto Lusthurts Ohio geography, which is especially frustrating considering how much Glee itself ignores Ohio geography so there's this line of making it not sound completely stupid while also remaining true to Glee's own absolute disregard for it. Also songs and movies that came out in 2012 specifically since I write a lot of stuff set in season 4 of Glee and I try to keep the media I reference contemporary.

7. What's your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

I love all comments! But if I had to chose my favorites it's probably anytime that I drop subtle hints or foreshadow something and people pick it up and point it out, either on the original read through or during a reread. I also love when people point out symbolism I didn't intend or realize I was making.

8. What's the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

Idk I kinda write a lot of infidelity and toxic relationship stuff. Seblaine is the main ship I write for nowadays, and the nature of their relationship lends itself to a lot of infidelity in their process of getting together. I also just love writing angst, so even when I'm writing established relationships, they end up being sort of toxic throughout especially given the traits of both characters. I just find it more fun and probable to write a slightly toxic relationship than a 100% healthy one.

(I did not intend to just leave Lusthurts answer for this one, but also, ditto. I love the messy toxic relationships, they've always intrigued me and they're so fun to sink your teeth into. I also love writing a lot of polyamory, which idk how fringe it is nowadays but I've been trying to breakaway from the throuple mold and branch out into more interesting, complex, and realistic polycules)

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

I tend to stick very much to the emotional side of things, so stories that get too physical or actiony are the ones I struggle with. Since I've been reading more I've been getting better but it's still not great.

10. What is the easiest type?

Hurt no comfort, lol. Like I do enjoy writing the comfort but sometimes my brain gets hung up on it not being realistic, things getting better too quickly, things like that. But it gets less anxious about just having the angst, even with no happy ending.

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

I tend to write on my couch, I do like going to the library down the road when I really want to focus, but usually I just write in my living room. I usually just write to google drive, I'm interested in alternatives but I've been using google since jr high so I'm just very used to it and it has so many years of documents. And I just write whenever, but usually in the evening after work, but really whenever I have time.

12. What is something you've been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

I love ensemble fics and all the distinct personalities of the different characters and I would love to write one that focuses on many characters one day. I'm kind of trying that with my Season 2 AU but that still mostly focuses on Kurt, Blaine, Sebastian, and Sam, which is exactly who most of my fics focus on, so I'm not sure if it will fit full ensemble status by the time I'm done.

13. What made you choose your username?

So Daisy is an old nickname of Darren Criss' (he's talked about it in a few interviews, how he was studying abroad in Italy and when you say his initials in an Italian accent it sounds like Daisy) and when he was in Hedwig and the Angry Inch the username DarrenisHedwig was already taken but I thought DaisyisHedwig would be fun and I've been it ever since.

Oh boy, I'm going to tag @kurtsascot, @calsvoid, @fallevs, @cryscendo

@bitbybitwrites, @annepi-blog, @sperrywink, and @backslashdelta

[btvspolls]

i was thinking again about faith & dawn parallels bc of course i was and i couldn't remember the exact order of some of their shared scenes, so I went back and watched dirty girls. and uh. was viscerally reminded just how much i loathe the majority of faith's s7 dialogue. almost every line feels like a piece of exposition that has been run through an automated 'buffy-ifying' program, a thesaurus of unwieldy portmanteaus and half-assed [insert ironic detachment here]s

and tbh at first i was like...did she always speak like this? is it just that hearing a teenage faith's verbiage being delivered by a grown woman is what makes it fall flat? but no. s7 faith speaks and behaves like a parody of her former self as written by people working from a vague idea about the concept of her character and attempting to imitate buffyspeak. which uh. turns out is exactly the case.

the main writers for faith heavy episodes in s3/4 were david greenwalt, david fury, marti noxon, and my main man/pusher of the Sapphic!Faith agenda douglas petrie. and while all four were still involved in s7 as directors, all the episodes from dirty girls to the finale were written by ppl who weren't around for faith 1.0, and god does it show. like. eliza dushku is doing her best but no one could sound natural with the dialogue she's given. i genuinely have a hard time watching her scenes with spike as every single one plays out like a contest of who can be the coolest seventh grader on the playground (and not in a fun 'the writers are aware of this dynamic' kind of way). the only times the character of faith as i remember her makes any sort of appearance is in her scenes with buffy which, you know, thank god for that.

(it also makes me even more reticent to watch faith's tenure on ats. but maybe the writers did a good job with her? faith girlies who have watched ats hit me up please and thankyou)

[girl4music]

Healthy codependency.

That’s a really good way of putting it.

I often talk about how codependency depicted in this show is bad or negative surrounding the characters of Willow, Riley and even Xander. But codependency in itself is not bad or negative. There is heathy versions just as there are unhealthy versions. And yes, despite how much I can’t stand the way the Scoobies treat Buffy sometimes, she’s definitely better off with them in her life than without them. And vice versa of course.

The main problem I have with Season 7 is really how they don’t consider this even half as much as they used to even though it’s the season where they need to work as a team the most. I mean the ‘father figure’ starts to act like your average Council Watcher again and a lot is taken away from Buffy and Giles’ dynamic because of it. The intelligent nerdy girl and best friend is suffering with her own self-control issues and therefore can’t be as useful as she probably wants to be to the Slayer. Plus their relationship is in shambles following the events of Season 6 and doesn’t get properly reconciled. It’s sort of just skimmed over as a “necessary” requirement to the final plot. And as for Xander… well… perpetual victim mode is just something that never really seems to change for him and as for how that informs his relationship with Buffy… well, let’s just say he deserved to say what he did in ‘Empty Places’ as much as I hate that episode.

I don’t know. They’re all just sort of ‘Scooby Gang but less’ in this final season. They’re so distant and empty. It’s not enjoyable to watch. It’s frustrating because everything just feels forced rather than natural. The organically built significant character interaction just isn’t there between really any of the main characters and because they bring in a load of other characters (the potentials) that may be the focus of the season but don’t really get proper development either, it all plays out like one big chaotic mess. But not like the way it does with Season 6 - which the point is for it to play out like one big chaotic mess for the sake of the main character’s representation and development (both negative and positive). In other words: it feels unintentional and therefore unnecessary. Like the writers didn’t know what they wanted to do but because it was the season to end off the entire show, just did what they thought might be entertaining and compelling but, to me, ended up being anything but.

Yeah, Buffy is one of the greatest superheroines ever. But only when they they knew what they were doing. And I’m not convinced they always did. Still, it’s a hell of a lot better than what we get today with female superheroines - which as you’ve pointed out - may as well be cardboard cut outs given the lack of emotional vulnerability they display on screen.

You’ve got to hand it to Gellar - she definitely knew how to portray a very relatable and human superheroine. And you can see how she was stronger for it, not weaker. That is indeed the problem with depiction of “feminism” on TV today. Which is why I just turn it off. It is not inspiring or motivating to watch. It’s fucking insulting. Well-written characters have layers… depth… nuance. They fluctuate because real people fluctuate. They’re flawed because real people are flawed. Females characters in particular get shafted of all of this characterisation because it’s “feminism” written by people who don’t know or understand how important keeping the balance is.

Sure most of it is because of how she’s written. But Gellar understood the assignment. I just wish they ended the show the way they began it. As a family. You have the parallel shots of Buffy, Willow and Xander walking off side by side together and Giles staying behind and making a witty comment about how “the Earth is doomed” with this rag-tag lot in ‘The Harvest’ and ‘Chosen’ which is meant to be as a tribute to how far they’ve come but that they’re still the same as they always were and it just doesn’t land in the same way because of how much they’re NOT “together” in it. Other people might think that that’s a satisfying conclusion to a wonderful character-driven saga but I don’t feel it because it’s contrived. I like the idea. I like the message. I just don’t like the execution of it all.

[buffster]

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been (ATS 2.02)

This is part of my ongoing Buffyverse Project, where I write notes/meta for every episode in an attempt to better understand the characters and themes of the shows. You can find the BTVS list here and the ATS list here. Gifs are not mine.

I know I said I've seen Angel the once, but I swear I've seen this particular episode ten times. But it's a good episode! I always enjoy a look into Angel's past.

This is the episode in which we find the Hyperion Hotel, home for our protagonists over the next few seasons. A hotel is a pretty brilliant choice for them. There's plenty of rooms and hospitality for the needy. But first we gotta vanquish a baddy.

Over on Buffy, Spike's vampire nature is treated with disgust. But Angel is afforded a quiet respect, with Cordelia even bringing Angel blood (with a sprinkle of cinnamon) as she hands Wesley his tea. Angel keeps his cards close to his chest as he asks them to investigate the Hyperion.

We flash back to 1952, where we find the hotel thriving and buzzing about the mysterious resident...who happens to be Angel. Looks like he didn't always hide in alleys feeding on rats. There's lots of mysterious activity going on in the hotel, but this version of Angel has no interest in it. He's no hero.

We might have forgiven Angel for not chasing down hints of trouble, but then we see him outright ignore it even when it comes knocking. A young woman named Judy is clearly in trouble and being chased by a man. Angel gets his back up when the man gets cocky with him and beats him up a bit, but he's still not interested in truly helping.

One of the things that most draws me to Angel as a character is his apathy towards other people. He seems to genuinely struggle to like them, which you don't normally get in a main character. You get the sense people tend to let him down, and the version of him we see here is resigned to being an apathetic loner. He barely blinks when he hears a gunshot next door.

He also ignores the hotel guests as they become increasingly paranoid. Judy practically forces her life story on him: her mother was black and she's been passing her whole life. Things were going well and she was set to get married, but then the bank she worked at discovered her secret and fired her. Then her fiancée dumped her. Judy stole a bunch of money from the bank and fled. Her persistence pays off and Angel decides to help her.

Cordelia: A Thesulac. Paranoia demon. Whispers to its victims, feeds on their innate insecurities.

If things had gone differently, this event might have been a turning point for Angel. He decided to help the humans and if it had worked he might have found a real sense of purpose. Instead he was betrayed.

The first time I watched this through I understood Angel's POV. He was going to help Judy and she turned on him like that? People, man! But on the tenth watch I got to thinking...can we really blame her in this case? She was being victimized by a demon! Unless I'm mistaken, each of the characters is pushed to irrationality by a demonic force that feeds on their darkest thoughts. Judy especially seems like her true nature is optimistic--she apparently ignored the blood in Angel's room and thought if she gave the money back to the bank they'd forgive her. I think what Angel did here was pretty shitty.

Okay, the bellman was pretty shady though.

Back in the present, Angel calls everybody in to defeat the paranoia demon.

Gunn: "Orb Of Ramjarin please" makes it happen.

Wesley: Please. And do be careful. Ancient conjuring orbs are notoriously fragile.

Gunn: Now do I look like the kind of guy who doesn't know how to handle an ancient conjuring orb to you?

Little trouble with the new AI team member, it seems.

Back in 1952, the heartbreaking part of everyone at the hotel forming into a mob that's going to kill Angel is how not surprised he looks. He doesn't fight back as they throw a rope around his neck and push him off the balcony...but he wakes up looking pissed. The scene where he pulls himself up the rope was pretty cool. Revenge fantasy unlocked.

Thesulac: Well, I don't know about you, but I am stuffed! God, I love people, don't you? They feed me their worst, and I serve it right back to them. And the fear and the prejudice turn to certainty and hate -- and I take another bite! What a beautiful, beautiful dance!

Where're you going? You know you're paid up through the end of the week. Oh, you got your feelings hurt, didn't you? See now what happens when you stick your neck out for 'em? They throw a rope around it!

And you thought you'd made a friend. Newsflash: You had! That's what made her the yummiest morsel of all! You'd reached her, buddy! Restored her faith in people! Without you, she would've been just another appetizer. But you plumped her up good. Stuffed her with hope, filled her with gratitude. When she betrayed you, she betrayed everything! She's a meal that's going to last me a lifetime! You know, there's an entire hotel here just full of tortured souls who could really use your help. Whaddaya say?

Angel: Take 'em all.

What happened to Judy was really dark. Like...really dark. Poor woman has lived her whole life in that hotel, terrified to even leave the room. But this is a show about redemption. We're not shying away from the things Angel, or anyone else, has done.

At the end of her life, Judy asks for Angel's forgiveness. Poor woman.

In a show filled with second chances, it makes sense the Hyperion Hotel itself is going to get one. Angel declares that the hotel isn't a house of evil anymore. It's got to prove itself, just like our heroes.

Character Notes:

Angel: He's very offended when a shop owner thinks he was turned "north of thirty". Once again, there is a divide between Angel and the rest of AI. He tends to go off on his own while the others try and figure out what he's up to.

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce: The demon accuses him of being especially paranoid, which makes him paranoid. But Angel reassures him he didn't find him especially paranoid.

[coraniaid]

I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to suggest that, if Buffy the Vampire Slayer were being made today – in the age of streaming and binge-watching, when even as many as twelve episodes in a single season seems like a luxury – neither Phases nor Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered would ever have made it to the screen.  

To use a term I’m not sure Tumblr really approves of, they’re both very clearly filler episodes: moments of relative calm between the major events of Innocence and Passion. They don’t do much if anything to advance the main plot of the season, and they’re primarily focused on characters other than the star of the show.  Phases is about Willow and her relationship with Oz; Bewitched… Is about Xander and his relationship with Cordelia.

Actually, I think these are a type of episode that we haven’t really seen in Buffy before.  In Season 1, there wasn’t really any obvious season-long arc for the monster of the week episodes to distract from.  The Master didn’t have a concrete plan to escape the Hellmouth that we ever saw after the first two episodes, and between The Harvest and Prophecy Girl Buffy didn’t exactly do much to try to stop him.  Yes, the episodes of the season still fall into a fairly natural order and sometimes have long-term consequences – we meet the Anointed One in Never Kill A Boy On The First Date, say goodbye to Principal Flutie in The Pack, learn about Angel being a vampire in Angel, meet Jenny Calendar in I Robot, You Jane and Principal Snyder in The Puppet Show  – but there just isn’t the same divide between “arc episode” and “filler episode” that I think there is for the later seasons.

And that didn’t change immediately in Season 2, even with the introduction of Spike and Drusilla.  These characters, let’s not forget, were not really interested in Buffy except as an obstacle.  Spike was in Sunnydale looking for a cure for Drusilla.  It never seemed particularly strange to spend a few episodes focusing on something else.  It’s only now, in the second half of the season, that there’s a sense of urgency.  It’s only now – with Angelus out there and actively planning to hurt Buffy and her friends – that it starts to seem a little strange that the show isn’t carrying directly on with that part of the story.

Of course, neither of these episodes is entirely divorced from the events of the wider season. It’s not at all an original observation on my part to note that both episodes are, on a metaphorical level, very much about Buffy and Angel’s doomed relationship.  

In Phases, Oz is Angel: the show repeatedly makes a point of reminding us that he is older than Willow; Xander worries about the fact he is “attractive��� (compare with his complaint in Teacher’s Pet that nobody had told him that Angel was “a very attractive man”); Oz’s peers can only think of one reason why he might be dating somebody younger than him: “she’s got to be putting out, or what’s the point?”.   

And that’s before we learn that Oz is cursed to transform into something monstrous, something that  “acts on pure instinct: no conscience, predatory and aggressive.”  A monster that, Buffy is told, her refusal to kill makes her uniquely responsible for: “if that thing out there harms anyone, it’s gonna be on your pretty little head.”  You don’t need to look very hard to find the subtext here.

Meanwhile, while Xander and Cordelia’s relationship in Bewitched… isn’t quite so obvious a parallel to Buffy and Angel, the spell Xander is responsible for casting has an impact that’s not totally dissimilar to the curse affecting Angel.  When Giles says “it’s not love, it’s obsession.  Selfish, banal obsession” he could just as easily be talking about the nature of Angelus’s new obsession with Buffy as he is about the actual plot of the episode.  “He would think of it as affection, I suppose.”

But other people have gone into all this in much more depth than I can, and I don’t really have anything new to say about that.

What’s more interesting to me is to realize that it’s not the only thing these two episodes have in common.  Not only are these episodes that I don’t think we saw in Season 1, in a sense they are episodes that we couldn’t have seen in Season 1. 

I’ve talked a bit before about how Season 2 has started fleshing out the world of Sunnydale a little bit more, with more minor recurring characters and callbacks to the events of previous episodes.  These minor characters and history are, in some sense, essential to the plot of both episodes.  Xander brings up his memories of being possessed by a hyena spirit in Phases while Oz stares curiously at the statue that imprisons Amy’s mother; Cordelia’s friend Harmony returns for the first time since Season 1 in Bewitched… and this is the first episode that really solidifies her group of friends. This is a show with a history now, and these episodes take place in that context. It helps a lot that we’ve met so many of the minor characters in these two episodes already.  It’s just a shame the show couldn’t have made Angelus’s victim of the week Theresa somebody we’d seen before.

And as well taking advantage of this existing world-building, both these episodes continue that trend: bringing back a character who’d only appeared in a single episode of the show before and making them recurring.  Phases brings back Larry Blaisdell, who’d previously only appeared in Halloween, while Bewitched… brings back Amy Madison, last seen almost a year ago in Season 1’s Witch.  But neither character is quite the person we thought they were.  In Phases we find out that Larry is gay – the first and, in fact, only man on the show to explicitly come out as gay (no, obviously Scott Hope doesn’t count, come on) – and in Bewitched we find out that Amy has (for reasons the show will never bother to explain) taken up her mother’s interest in witchcraft.

How consequential either of these things really are in the longer term is perhaps a matter for debate.  After Phases, Larry will appear in just three episodes of the show, all in Season 3, before being killed off in the season finale.  Amy will be a little more fortunate – she will also almost be killed in Season 3, and while she survives she will be almost written out of the show for some years, but she will at least be talked about quite a few times before finally being brought back for three episodes in Season 6 and one last episode in Season 7.

The show won’t forget that Larry’s gay – in fact it will quite literally be the second-to-last thing anybody ever says about him – but at the same time he’s out in a very limited way.  We never see any of the boys his grandmother is apparently setting him up with; nor do we see Larry show any sign of being attracted to any other man on the show.

Equally the show will never forget that Amy is a witch, but it will discard almost everything else about her.  The show reminded us about her mother in Phases, but has already forgotten about her father.  She uses her magic purely for selfish reasons here, but Season 3 will have her practicing “harmless” magic with Willow for other people’s benefit, while Season 6 will retcon her as a magical junkie.  Amy will go on to be mentioned in or appear in every single season of the show without the writers ever bothering to give her a consistent personality. 

(It’s a little odd too that, despite the show very firmly settling on the idea that being a witch is a metaphor for being a lesbian in its fourth and fifth seasons – and despite the fact that this episode introduces Amy by having her ask Willow if she’s planning to go to the school’s Valentine’s Dance – there’s never any suggestion that Amy might be gay.   In fact, Season 6’s Smashed tells us that she was planning to ask Larry out to the end of year Prom before she turned herself into a rat.  Perhaps he wasn’t quite as out as he told Xander he was?)

The longer term consequences of the main plots of these two episodes are also rather limited. Cordelia chooses to give up on her social standing because her friends are “sheep” (for which read: susceptible to magical mind control, I guess?) in order to date Xander (who might have spent the season insulting and belittling her, but did buy her one (1) nice gift) but this relationship will last for only a dozen further episodes.   And while Oz and Willow will stay together for much longer, the show won’t ever find anything interesting to do with the fact Oz is a werewolf until Season 4, when it uses it as a pretext for writing him out of the show.

So yes, these episodes aren’t just filler – they have something to say about the season arc, even if they don’t advance it directly, and they introduce real changes into the world of the show – but they are still somehow insubstantial.  I don’t think anything happens in either of them that really matters.  If you forget that Oz is a werewolf, or that Cordelia apparently thought Xander’s attempt to mind control her for “revenge” was romantic, you really won’t be missing much.

And in the interests of transparency, I should probably admit – if it wasn’t already obvious – that I simply don’t think either of them is very good.  Yes, on one level, I’m glad that the show’s writers had the space to make these sorts of episodes – episodes that explore characterisation and flesh out the world and don’t directly advance the plot – but the specific episodes that were actually made honestly kind of suck.  

Phases has its moments, but it’s decidedly uneven with at least as many misses as hits,  and overall I think it’s a pretty average episode at best.  The fact that Oz’s werewolf costume is terrible is balanced only by the knowledge it will somehow get worse.  And Bewitched… is, by some distance, the episode I’ve least enjoyed of all my current rewatch.  Even just trying to summarize the plot makes me feel a little sick.  I would genuinely think better of the show if this episode hadn’t ever made it to air. 

(So, yeah: for those following along, I think the worst episodes of the rewatch so far, by some distance, have been Teacher’s Pet, The Pack and now Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered.  No need to point out the common theme or character-focus of these three episodes.

Going into this rewatch I really didn’t think of myself as somebody who hates Xander Harris.  He certainly isn’t my favorite character, but I think the show does ultimately find some pretty interesting and sympathetic things to do with him.  And I think the popular fandom idea that Xander is uniquely a ‘Whedon self-insert’ while all the other characters on Buffy are somehow not is pretty silly.  But quite a large part of my rewatch experience so far has involved having to remind myself, over and over, that Xander gets better.  Eventually.  Surely.

And … well, it must be true.  Because right now his character has nowhere to go but up.)

[bloomfish]

My controversial and long-winded Willow/Tara thoughts

I honestly don't mind, narratively speaking, that Tara was killed. Obviously I love Tara with all my heart and was devastated when she died but I keep trying to see another way forward for Willow's arc and... I can't? Honestly I think this would have been Oz's fate had he not been written off because Seth Green had to leave.

I also think that nowadays we're very conscious of the "bury your gays" trope and there's obviously a lot to criticise about this when it's gratuitous. But especially given what Willow and Tara represented at the time... It was a different world in terms of LGBT representation. It's common knowledge that they had to fight for the onscreen kiss in The Body, the fact that a main character was even portrayed in a lesbian relationship at all on a show like Buffy was groundbreaking. All that being said, I personally don't think Tara's death was gratuitous.

The only other permadeath of a Scooby love interest until the finale is Jenny Calendar, and you can definitely make a case here for the "killing off a female love interest for manpain" trope but where would S2 be without Jenny's death? Like it just doesn't make sense without it. Passions is the moment where the stakes of the series as a whole suddenly explode into astronomical new levels. Sure, Giles could have been a woman and Jenny a man, but that also undercuts many of the themes and ideas behind the Giles+Buffy relationship and the Watchers in general.

Similarly, from the moment Willow's use of magic was introduced, EVERYTHING in her arc was leading up to Dark Willow. We got a taste of it in S5 but if the show had ended there it would never have actually reached a true conclusion. She's not punished for her Dark Moment, she's rewarded. It would have gone unresolved, and the looming threat of Willow turning to the dark side would have been hanging over the heads of the surviving Scoobies forever. Tara being mind sucked by Glory feels like a sort of... idk hasty first attempt at killing her thematically (an idea that was obviously in the works) except that her death in S5 would undercut those of Joyce and Buffy. So it's natural to resolve this in S6.

The reason I think Tara had to die for Dark Willow to emerge is that we're shown that Willow needs a grounding presence to keep her from losing control. Her 'darkest moments' almost all occur when she feels abandoned. When Oz cheats on her in S4 she tries to curse him and Veronica, when he leaves Something Blue ensues. When Tara is mind-sucked she goes apeshit on Glory. When Buffy dies she does the resurrection spell. When she and Tara fight in S6 she uses magic to make her forget, the subsequent breakup causes her to spiral. Like this is a HUGE pattern for Willow.

Oz and Tara function fairly similarly in that they are stabilising presences that pull Willow back from the brink, and so nothing short of the complete, permanent removal of Tara could force her to completely go over the edge. She couldn't have "just left" because that leaves the glimmer of hope that, like Oz, she will return. She had to die and Willow had to try and fail to bring her back.

Obviously it's not a pleasant thing. But it's just... Idk, it's narratively cohesive for me. It's so far from being even close to the worst moral failing of the writers in that single episode, let alone the series as a whole. The reason it stings so much is because Tara's death wasn't just shock value, she was a character that made a lasting impact on the show and had visible effects on characters outside of Willow (mostly Dawn and Buffy but still) so even though she was doomed from the start I don't think it's a case of a lesbian character being gratuitously killed off for angst. I get that it's a touchy subject but I also don't think it's accurate to paint every single instance of a gay character dying as 'bury your gays' when it's not necessarily so.

Anyway. There's a lot to criticise about Buffy but this isn't a personal gripe of mine- even as someone for whom Tara and her relationship with Willow was deeply and personally important at the time.

[thepunkmuppet]

gonna incorporate this into my alternate season 7 fic, and wanted to make a quick brain fart post about it here:

spike should’ve had the chip taken out in season 7.

frankly, I think they only gave him his soul back as a way to still have him be a functional main character after doing what he did to buffy in seeing red - and even then it’s still hard to look at him the same way after that.

spike was already growing as a character on his own, beginning to do things for unselfish reasons, like comforting buffy in fool for love and (most notably) staying with dawn and the scoobies when buffy died. and it was so interesting and compelling! his struggle between his nature and his changing morals and feelings: wanting to be a monster again, to do what he wants and have what he desires, but at the same time wanting to be a better man for buffy and doing good deeds because of how loving her has slowly and imperceptibly changed him forever.

giving him the soul was just… pointless. his characterisation literally didn’t change at all, he spent maybe 3 or 4 episodes moping in a basement and acting crazy before being literally fine the next episode and seemingly not feeling that much remorse for killing robin’s mother anyway. the sleeper plotline was also useless, and would’ve been made way better if he was killing of his own accord having had the chip taken out, and feeling all sorts of complex feelings about it, leading to some juicy drama and character insights.

I think having the chip be removed would be PERFECT, as we could then explore how different he is to other vampires and how much he has grown. I can imagine him trying to feed on innocents and go on killing sprees, but not being able to, which doesn’t even make sense because vampires don’t have consciences, but regardless he just can’t bring himself to do it. I can imagine him feeding on rapists, kidnappers and murderers, much like angel when he first got his soul back, and being so utterly FURIOUS that he isn’t what he used to be (and especially furious that he kind of doesn’t WANT to be that person anymore).

idk man I just feel like there was such a clear route to go down, and instead they took the black-and-white approach and just said “he’s got his soul back he’s good now that wasn’t him” (even though his characterisation was exactly the same, but i digress). personally I prefer the much more interesting “he just got everything he’s ever wanted for over half the series and got the chip out, but he doesn’t want to be a monster anymore because he grew as a person, which vampires shouldn’t be able to do but spike is somehow unique and his love for buffy fundamentally changed him and now he has to deal with that fact and choose whether to become a hero or a villain of his own accord”.

OR SOMETHING I GUESS IDK WHO AM I TO COMMENT I WASN’T EVEN FUCKING ALIVE WHEN THEY WROTE IT GODDD IF I COULD TIME TRAVEL TO THAT WRITER’S ROOM-