#simply because they're parallel to cis men

[transfemme-shelterdog]

If you genuinely think that there's a single group out there that's completely immune to oppression, and hardships, then you're seriously mistaken and need to do some serious evalutations of your Weltanschauung.

[velvetvexations]

ik it's a little old now but i swear i Cannot stop thinking about that post about that one lady pushing things further into the shelves when her roommate asked her to get them. specifically bc i can kinda draw a direct parallel?

im 5'9, which isn't even that tall and yet ppl suck esp bc im also built Sturdy, got broad shoulders and a strong jaw. ppl tried to bully me for those things my whole life. i was never fem enough, too masc, too tall, too loud. found out i have 'naturally high testosterone' and got bullied for that too when someone overheard. my mom is a full entire foot shorter than me. in NO UNIVERSE would anyone w half a braincell conclude that her asking me to fetch things or to not put them on high shelves was her trying to remind me that i will never be feminine enough for the cis patriarchy, of every time someone tried to bully me for not being enough and being too much at the same time. the times I've been called slurs and threatened when ppl think I'm a trans or butch woman- bc remember kids hate crimes are based on perceived minority, facts not necessary! never mind that I've been called slurs and intentionally misgendered and even threatened even w/in the queer community. in fact, it's almost like it would be Actively ableist for me to push things back or purposely put them where she couldn't reach! the cognitive dissonance of not seeing that defaulting to body shaming specific things about her roommate that give her dysphoria as if they don't give trans men just as much?

its.. fascinating to say the least. i can't stop thinking about you calling it a skill issue from the two of them, that they've just never addressed their own dysphoria. bc well. yeah. i was a lil bitch for a while during my puberty when suddenly i kinda hated myself. and now, i had to grapple w the reality that no one will truly see me as anything other than 'woman lite', if that, unless i bend over backwards and break down pieces of myself to accommodate, had to sit w the self hatred and dysphoria and learn to be okay w ppl who can and do pull off the skinny-white-twink androgeny required of us to be halfway respected. had to learn to be okay w the body i have. i can make jokes now, im okay now, but i can make them bc i had to learn to be okay w the fact that i will never be enough for the ppl that hate me, had to learn that my body just is and wanting to kill it and myself only serves the ppl who hate me. i refuse to be nonbinary blaire white, thinking that if i pass well enough and hate well enough and parrot the right things, the ppl who hate me will respect me. they won't. ever.

and honestly if i was such a lil piss baby that being asked to give someone incredibly basic respect turned me into a bully just bc they had something i wanted, had any part of the body that would make ppl take me seriously, stop hating me and calling me slurs, make me love any part of my body, i simply would not proudly tell the world i was a massive asshole. but then. ive been to therapy so.

And this is all the most generous possible interpretation. If you ask anyone over there what they think of why other trans people are such misogynistic monsters they'll all go "uhhh because they're evil" but those other trans people are constantly writing out huge things like this examining how their behavior is influenced by succumbing to the pressures of oppression.

[olderthannetfic]

"Why I don't write F/F" thread proceeded just as unproductively as I expected. It wasn't about moralizing about the women not writing F/F, it was a question about why personal reasons for avoiding a configuration aren't reflected in opposite directions by other groups. Unlike race, gender has an almost 50/50 split, there's a scale to the proportions not there for other types of identity category. "The femslash police suck" is a factor I can understand. But why wouldn't "personal reasons I just don't feel it towards this configuration" end up an even distribution across the population? The expectation for women to write about women isn't a moral rule, it's that if you allow the logic "men in control of stories write about men (and that's why more mainstream stories center men)", then the flip side is, well, why people clamor for more women behind the camera and in the writers' room. Either accept the logic for both sides or challenge it for both sides. Instead we have the worst of both worlds, we accept it for one side and challenge it for the other. Where's the parallel universe where this imbalance somehow resulted in a different quadrant being the smallest proportion of ships?

--

Why wouldn't "personal reasons" be even? Because the kinds of issues people face based on their demographic aren't.

But I think the larger factor is how socialization affects choice of hobbies and volunteer efforts. Cis men and cis women, on average, go in for different flavors. The dudes tend to be more bothered by the idea of "not getting anything back" for what feels like work. When they do do unpaid labor, it's often the kind that accrues glory and career prospects rather than less showy social ties. Open source coding projects where they can be important, yes. Writing fanfic, no.

Looking up any analysis of volunteering and unpaid work that makes such-and-such a part of society function will get you a lot of discussion of this gendered difference. It's pervasive.

Of course, this is just a broad trend. Plenty of guys do write fanfic, and when they dominate a fanfic space, we see tons of fic focused on the female characters they find attractive, including f/f fic.

And if you're asking about cis gay men specifically... well... again, gendered socialization means that the issues faced by cis lesbians and cis gay men are not equivalent. The reasons and ways that people employ allegory to talk about things "too close to home" will likewise not be exactly the same. Traditional US gay male culture goes in for drag and for an obsession with Hollywood divas and The Golden Girls. Plenty is being mediated through female personas; it's just not translating into fanfic specifically. But most people making "Leave the fujoshi alone" arguments are not thinking about cis gays: they're thinking about people in messier identity categories.

The biggest difference is not behavior but simply that cis men are a small minority on FFN, AO3, and Wattpad, the three big fanfic archives. (Some ancient FFN research found that it was 78% female, and that's the archive known for having more men!) The places with more cis guys are much smaller and don't get talked about as much by most fandom history and fandom meta types from the AO3 side of things.

The reason cis men's taste in favorite characters isn't being "pushed back against" isn't a double standard: it's because:

Cis men simply aren't that relevant to site-wide trends on AO3

and

2. The reverse pattern does happen all the time with vanishingly little m/m and lots of f/f

You sound like you think we'd make this fanfic-specific argument about pro media. In fact, plenty of queer women are open that they produce original f/f but not f/f fanfic or they produce f/f fanworks but not fic. A lot of the "too close to home" arguments are specifically about the kind of id fuel, naked-in-public vibes of AO3-style fanfic. Writing that is less id-driven may not feel that same way. A given woman might have a much easier time writing a mystery novel about a lesbian detective who never gets laid on page than a steamy f/f bodice ripper.

The parallel universe you ask about exists. It's horny imageboards full of fan art of anime girls.

The reason you sound judgmental and are getting "unproductive" responses is that you're phrasing things as though we're refusing to solve a problem. In reality, we're attempting to analyze the situation that exists. It's a descriptive approach.

[xaren-jo]

.

had a falling out with a friend yesterday over her continuous shitting on cis people (among other things). supposedly they are the enemy and are oppressing us simply by existing. yes, even those who are just living their lives and minding their own business - cuz if you're not directly helping an oppressed group, you're participating in their oppression indirectly somehow (???). it's cishets and cishets only who came up with all things queerphobic in the first place; if one of our own perpetuates that crap, it's still the cishets' fault, the poor dear is just traumatized and lashing out. as for cis allies who do put their lives on the line for us - their efforts don't mean shit, because they're an outlier, and cis people "as a class" are still the oppressor anyway, so her hatred is justified.

and when i point out to her that appointing a broad, diverse group of people as the enemy helps no one, least of all herself, that's just me being purposefully obtuse and/or a traitor to my own people. and if i keep disagreeing with her, it's only to piss her off and to attack her.

and she's a radfem, so i knew what i was getting into from the start, but this is still just so frustrating. she's such a bright, passionate young woman. how can she be such an ass.

we had both legally transitioned at nearly the same time, pretty much in parallel but in different directions, and we supported each other as we navigated that whole ordeal. it hurts because i understand why she's so angry and why she's so scared, but she just. won't. listen. living with this hatred is hurting her, but she clings to it like a it's a damn lifeline. because being a hateful little gremlin and an anxious mess is the only appropriate/possible response to the current situation, i suppose. silly old me, what do i know.

i got it into my head that i have to help her because she's younger than me, and she's trying to do good for the community, and she's broke and hurt and has suicidal tendencies, but fff. i just can't do this anymore. i feel like crap almost every time we talk. the hatred and the fear just keep spilling out of her to land onto my head. it's like i'm a dumping ground or a fuckin outhouse or something. "oh, men are at the root of all evil, they just suck fundamentally because they're men - not trans men tho, and def not you, you're cool :)", "am i passing??? fuck, i have so much internalized transphobia. how's my woman voice??? i feel like i'm never gonna be a "real" woman, i need this and this surgery", "all sex work is rape, are you in support of rape???", "it's been five whole minutes, why aren't you answering me, i feel like we barely talk anymore :(", "i'm anxious, i'm terrified, i can't get out of the house. i'm taking a break from arguing with terrible people on the internet, it's been taking a toll on me - oh wait, nevermind, i'm back to arguing with terrible people on the internet, because SOMEONE HAS TO", she keeps telling me, day after day and week after week, nothing seems to change, "i want to kill myself right now - what do i want you to do with this information? i don't know, i guess i just want some support", "i remember you told me you feel like you're being used for your money and it makes you feel like crap, i feel so bad about this, but could you lend me some money???", and after i had just told her that i was kinda struggling financially at the moment - "oh, you're so boujee, you should give me money, hehehe :P", "i know this comes off as manipulative and i feel so bad about this, but i'm gonna do/say it anyway, please forgive me", and she begins to cry. "i got it into my head that you will save me - can you please save me?" - springing that shit on me in a public place, during a smoke break at a support group we both regularly attend, girl, wtf. how am i even supposed to respond to that. "let's drop the g and the l, this is a gay exclusionary support group - hehehe, jk, i just mean the cis gays of course :P i'm just mirroring the shit that gays say about us, it's fine", and now she's a moderator of said support group. just great.

AND forwarding me a bunch of articles and videos of trans people getting bashed (including one such video of herself), with no warning, because she's been gathering evidence to make her case for immigration, and she thought she should get it all in one place, that one place being my dms - i got so upset i was close to tears, i walked around in a daze for a week. AND THEN a week or so later forwarding me a bunch of transphobic death threats she's been getting, with, again, zero warning??? not the kind of light recreational reading i've been looking for, fuck you very much.

and again, this is frustrating because she's not a bad person, but damn. she's toxic. it feels like i'm a shitty friend, abandoning her for being inconvenient, but. fuck. i can't anymore. fuck it.

[daisyachain]

hi!! i've been reading through your ao no flag liveblogs lately and they're really interesting! i enjoy seeing someone so passionate about this manga and it makes me want to reread it .... i'm really interested in hearing what you have to say about masumi's ending though!! part of me thinks it makes sense but i'm mostly conflicted on it and would love to see it from your perspective ^^

haha well thank you! ah yes, the arc that created as much controversy as you can get in an active readership of like 10 people...

Blue Flag is an imperfect story, but it also gets a lot of flack for things that a) didn't...actually...happen, b) didn't happen in the way people think they did.

Part 1: Is it actually straightwashing?

The most common criticism I see of Masumi's ending is that she was written as a lesbian character and straightwashed at the end. Marrying off a female character as a way to 'fix' her issues is a common and harmful trope, and saying that lesbian women just need to get a man is a widespread homophobic trope and talking point. So, it's not a good look. To have a character angst over interest in a woman and end up happily married to a guy reads like a '50s pulp novel that just uses f/f attraction for marketing.

But, if the intention of the ending was to show that Masumi should give up on women and force herself to date men, then it doesn't. Mitsuyuki's description of her is 'look at my bisexual wife who has dated both women and men and could also have married a woman', which is an odd choice if the intention was straightwashing. It feels more like a clumsy way to make sure that, in a series full of ambiguity, there could be no argument that Masumi was queer. That isn't to say that cisstraight people don't view bisexuality as less/better than/straighter than her being lesbian and that making a previously gay character bisexual isn't still straightwashing (increasing the appearance of straightness).

Part 2: Was it actually a retcon?

So: Masumi's ending reaffirms that she's a WLW. One question is, was she always meant to be bisexual, or was she originally written as lesbian?

Blue Flag doesn't have a lot of straight (no pun intended) answers. Taichi never expresses any explicit attraction to guys, but there is enough subtext to suggest he's attracted to Touma well before the finale. Futaba believes she is attracted to Touma at first and is shown to be attracted to him using the visual shorthand of manga (blushing, etc.), but she later says that it was just misinterpreted admiration. Mami doesn't want to date Touma or any man, but she implies that she is attracted to Touma when she says around him she was 'glad to be a woman.' Within the main romance, Futaba says that it was specifically because Taichi was a friend to her that she grew to like-like him. The lines between friendship and romance are blurred in Blue Flag, and sometimes romance can only grow out of friendship.

Masumi has a tense conversation with Taichi in the first half after she breaks up with her boyfriend that most people (me included) read as her saying that she tried guys and she just isn't and can't be attracted to them. However, it's Blue Flag, so the conversation is unfocused and doesn't paint a complete picture.

"Even if I get a boyfriend, I can never make it work"/"I don't know why [I don't like him anymore]" seem to imply that Masumi realized that she was feeling compulsory heterosexuality and that she will never like men. "[I don't know] why he like someone like me"/"You can be friends with potential sexual partners? With both guys and girls?"/"I just wanted to hear how you men feel about [a girl liking other girls]" seem to imply that Masumi is bisexual and is afraid to date because someone might find out. Maybe she's written as questioning--she knows she likes Futaba, but she's feeling out other possibilities. It's Blue Flag, so it's unclear.

Part 3: How does it work with Masumi's arc?

Diving further into Masumi's story, she acts as a foil to Touma (and Futaba, see later). Touma feels free to show his affection for Taichi as a friend as well as a love interest and almost confesses to him of his own free will, well before he's forced to. Touma tells her that he intends to try and set Taichi up with Futaba (because they would be good for each other), and also that he intends to pursue Taichi in some way. He tells her he's "not like [her]."

For Masumi's part, she tells Touma that she wants to express more affection for Futaba--not necessarily in a romantic way, just to participate more fully in that relationship--but she's afraid to, she doesn't feel confident enough to try, and that she's "the worst" because of it. We see this theme repeated, that Masumi is pessimistic, is afraid to trust people and hates herself for being afraid. Her conversations with Aki and Mami explore this; Aki tells her that it's not bad to be insecure or unready and that it's fine to keep a secret/stay closeted until she's ready, Mami tells her that she does have people she can trust, who care about her and who will do their best to understand her and help out. Why am I typing all this out? Because Masumi is a bitter, insecure wlw and that is an Established Trope, but her twist on it is that her negativity or bitterness isn't over her attraction to women/to Futaba or even over the reaction she might get from others (as Touma's is), it's over her own insecurity. Like Futaba, she's hesitant to act on her feelings, and like Futaba, she gets frustrated and hates herself for her own inaction.

All that is to say--Masumi is never shown to have a problem with her attraction to women. Her angst isn't gayngst, she's not ashamed of her feelings for Futaba bur rather her inability to express them. Her problems are with social attitudes and more with her own personal feelings--she and Touma face similar problems, but Touma is simply aware of the consequences (being roughed up and ostracised by a certain group of people) while Masumi feels a more generalized and ambiguous fear.

If Masumi were shown to have mixed feelings about her queerness/were shown to be in denial/were shown to be trying to move on from Futaba, then her ending would read more as straightwashing. As it is, there's nothing in her character and arc to say that she'd ever want to erase that part of herself or get rid of it, rather, she wishes she could embrace it but she just doesn't feel confident in doing it. Her ending shows her as an openly bisexual woman who is out to her friends and husband at the very least, which is a completion of her arc in the manga (of learning to trust other people and express her feelings honestly).

Part 4: What context clues does the rest of the series give us?

This is branching off a little from the strict text of Parts 1-3. As I've said, as we know, Blue Flag is 50% subtext and interpretation. Characters speak, but they don't say what they mean, characters think, but they're not always honest with themselves or in tune with reality. Mami is an ominous and antagonistic figure in the first half, but then it just turns out that Taichi was jumping to conclusions. Taichi is the main character and narrator, but we get radio silence from him for like 7 chapters after the climax. Taichi is bisexual, but the reader has to guess that from the way the art style shifts between PoVs, the similar panelling between Futaba and Touma's confessions, the things he does and does not think about Touma and how he feels about them. It's safe to say that there is room for speculation.

First, there is no explicit evidence that Taichi could be bisexual before ch 54. It's easy to tell that he is, but again, there's nothing specific. Some people reading Blue Flag have said that him marrying Touma was out of character, unforeshadowed, bizarre, inexplicable, etc. because their experienced is coloured by their own heterosexuality. Masumi is shown to have dated a guy and in saying she didn't like him "anymore," implied that she did like him. Her conflicted feelings over her bf could well have been foreshadowing her liking men as well, and my reading that as comphet could have just been my own experience colouring the text. Who knows! Taichi's bisexuality was intentional from the start but could be read as a last-minute twist, so why not Masumi's?

Second, Mitsuyuki is Futaba 2.0. Same colouring, same personality. This could feel like a way of saying "Masumi just needs to like guys instead," but to me it reads deeper with some of the trans subtext around Futaba. One of my issues with Blue Flag is that it doesn't go further into Futaba's admiration/envy for masculinity and her uncomfortable relationship with femininity. As a cis woman who wants to be buff and mildly masculine, I can understand why she's a cis girl throughout and I don't necessarily think that she was supposed to be a trans guy. However, her relationship with masculinity draws a parallel to Mitsuyuki. Reading Mitsuyuki as a cis man, he is the combination of Futaba's personality and looks with her 'ideal form.' So, Masumi marrying Mitsuyuki can read as Masumi marring Ascended FutabaTM.

Third, Futaba having a faceless prop husband is interesting in the context of Mitsuyuki getting a name and personality. Mitsuyuki = Futaba and Mr. Kuze is a blank space, so the reader is prompted to reduce the scenario and slot Masumi into that blank space. Given Masumi and Touma's history as foils, I'm inclined to think that Mitsuyuki exists to show the road not taken. Back at the fireworks, Touma tells Masumi that he hasn't given up on Taichi, and Masumi says she doesn't intend to pursue Futaba even though the pining is making her miserable. Given that Futaba reacts a lot better to the idea of Masumi liking her than Taichi reacts to the idea of Touma liking him, given that we see Masumi has successfully wooed male!Futaba, I think that Masumi's ending shows that she could have ended up with Futaba if she chose to pursue her. She didn't and she still got a happy ending where she is confident in her sexuality and unafraid to trust, but she could have also had a happy ending where she married Futaba. Mitsuyuki is a man because desire-for-masculinity is a key aspect of Futaba's character, and Mitsuyuki is a named character with a personality because KAITO wanted the reader to know that Masumi could have ended up with Futaba (as Touma ended up with Taichi).

Fourth, KAITO's notes on volume give us a few hints. He comments that there was remarkably little interference with his story and that he was able to tell it as he wanted, and that the ending was meant to be a "question" to the reader. The way I see it, Masumi's ending wasn't meant to say "maybe you'll be fixed if you get a man" but rather was meant to complement Taichi's ending and say "things happen in ways you might not expect, but that doesn't mean they're bad."

Fifth, Touma/Taichi ending up together shows us that the series is willing and able to show queerness as a good thing and a happy ending, so it's unlikely that Masumi was meant to come off as "actually she just needed a man" and more as "life can be unpredictable but you can always find happiness"

Summary

It's unclear whether Masumi was written as a bisexual woman or a lesbian woman or a questioning wlw

I personally read her as a lesbian and I wish that part of her character had gotten more exploration

Masumi's ending wraps up her arc (struggling to trust other people with her feelings in general and her queerness in particular) in a satisfying and logical way

Masumi being bisexual does not in any way negate or lessen her identity and experienes as a wlw, bisexual people still face external and internalized homophobia and all the associated issues

Masumi's bisexuality may well have been foreshadowed, but the execution makes it easier to read her as a lesbian, which makes her ending seem like a homophobic cop-out in the style of the Hays Code

Masumi's ending doesn't straightwash her and goes to unusual lengths to affirm her attraction to women

Masumi's ending seems to be written to contrast Touma's ending, showing that getting or not getting the love interest depends entirely on whether you choose to pursue them

It's unlikely that authorial intent was to straightwash Masumi

[velvetvexations]

i really appreciate posts of yours like /785898263731634176, and anons like /785915459931340800, which talk about how trfs seem to be playing at being cis in a way. i used to think i was imagining things when i was seeing trfs talking about their place in the world wrt their genders like they were cis, but i'm glad to know that i'm not.

i get the sense that they're afraid of being trans (understandably so), which is why they accuse certain transmascs "misgendering themselves". maybe they won't admit it, but to them, being trans = not being /truly/ whatever gender they are, which is why they identify themselves as trans with the backing of this aggressive "roleplay". this is really sad to me, and i hope that it's a temporary phenomenon.

i don't think trfs or their cis, trans-exclusionary predecessors are the only people to do something like that either. i think there's a number of other political and social groups out there that end up (to put it very, very simply) aggressively projecting grievances outwards to harmful effect. "acting like their oppressors", since in our world oppression is a form of power. not all of them have the same reach and impact, but they do all end up being harmful in some way. but there seems to be...something that may blind people to seeing that this sort of a thing /is/ something that can actually happen, i think? like, i'm "brown", the country i was born in practically only exists because of this sort of a political group, and as a result my relatives were raised to be and still are raging racists towards the people that country is oppressing. i've talked to people here in the us, leftists included, of all sorts who's brains blue screen when i tell them that. like my relatives can either be racist OR "brown". maybe there's a lack of perspective in that, but i do notice the parallel with things like the rf refrain (both te and ti) of, "because this political movement is made by oppressed people, it's righteous and incapable of harm, all insults towards "lesser" groups are justified". essentially, that "oppression" and "privilege" are a binary and there's a morally "correct" side to be on, which they are by virtue of birth. sort of like inverse bigotry/supremacy in a way. this is the same way my relatives think.

all that's to say is that, i wish there was a way to encourage people to think about why they're drawn to what they are politically and socially without sounding condescending. and that there were more outlets available to people for expressing the difficult emotions that come with being oppressed in whatever way it is. but it feels sometimes that the world is so far from people even realizing that this is a problem that it makes my head spin. again, posts like the ones i linked earlier are a small gesture, but i appreciate other people seeing that this sort of a thing is something that happens for that reason.

Yeah. And they'll take this and say like "oh so you think trans women aren't women" or "so you think trans women aren't treated as badly" when the actual point is that trans women are treated differently and you can't just copy+paste cis gender dynamics onto the trans community. They say "trans men are the men of the trans community" because it makes them feel validated to imagine they have that relationship to a class of men and not because any of it is actually true.

[herinsectreflection]

I just automatically assumed this was a dry joke, because of how obviously absurd that statement is.

I don't like to be snobby about TV - as pretentious as the writing on this blog is, I think that all kinds of shows have their value. A view of media that takes only a narrow, specific list of shows/films as worthy of Serious Analysis (and that list is usually solely informed by the sensibilities of straight white cis men), is pretty reductive and misses the value that can be found in all kinds of media. But Buffy is very clearly a show with artistic purpose. It's not always perfect, or even adequately successful, but it is always trying to do something, for some kind of value on a thematic or character level. Without wanting to sound like a Rick and Morty copypasta, it was always trying to say something of import. It used metaphor, symbolism, parallels, cultural references, and other techniques that go beyond the surface level to make these points. It was a show with substance.

Without wanting to bash The Vampire Diaries, or other CW shows - I watched several seasons of TVD back in the day and even enjoyed some parts of it - it's very clearly not that. It's not a show that plans character arcs over multiple seasons. It doesn't do things for a specific thematic purpose. It doesn't deal with symbolism or foreshadowing or metatextuality. As Nicholson said herself, it exists so that people can enjoy hot fictional monster boyfriends, and also to sell Hyundais. It doesn't plan anything for artistic aspiration, it just reacts to whatever's popular with the fans and whether or not they got renewed. And there's nothing wrong with that - there's a certain skill involved in making memorable fictional monster boyfriends. But it's very clearly working on an entirely different level to Buffy.

Buffy obviously uses a lot of tropes common to YA fiction, and it didn't invent all of them. Angel and Spike for example are not entirely not hot monster boyfriends. Their decisions in building the cast was indeed influenced by fan reactions (e.g. Spike sticking around a lot longer that originally planned). But there was ambition beyond just existing. The writers in Buffy generally approached each season and episode with thoughtfulness and a vision in mind. So it just bugs me when people compare Buffy to something like The Vampire Diaries, or even the slightly more purposeful Supernatural, which by the end existed largely just to produce content. Buffy is still spawning blogs, video essays and academic writings analysing it. I don't see The Vampire Diaries doing that in 20 years.

I don't mean to frame this like "how dare you compare the flawless and sacred Buffy to these silly inferior shows", it's just that they clearly did not have the same ambitions. It's fruitless and self-defeating to even try and compare something that does have an artistic vision and thematic statements to make with something that simply does not. They're trying to achieve wildly different things. To categorise Buffy alongside alongside The Vampire Diaries is to do it a disservice. It is its own kind of snobbery to assume Buffy belongs in the same category as something like The Vampire Diaries, as if it being a supernatural teen drama means it should be judged against other junk-food shows of little deep meaning, rather than against the kind of Serious shows that win Emmys. In its ambition, Buffy is much closer to the latter.

just watched jenny nicholson’s 2.5 hour video on tvd and it was all valid and funny and whatnot but i genuinely can’t get over how she unironically said that tvd is better than buffy without even attempting an explanation