#buffy should have been a lesbian

[symbioticsimplicity]

Okay so @sothatwassomething made this here post and it made me a little feral, so here is the promised essay.

So, I watched this show when I was really young so I didn’t originally notice, but having rewatched it recently, it’s flagrantly obvious. Buffy’s male characters are fucking terrible.

The original post is about Buffy’s boyfriends but I’m including Xander because he has committed too many crimes to not get a mention.

He’s supposed to be the funny best friend character who’s kind of a dumbass but you love him anyway. That is not what comes forward though, not even close. He has a crush on Buffy from the moment he meets her and he does not hesitate to make it her problem.

He makes every effort to insert himself into her life and constantly oversteps boundaries. Not to mention constantly being at least low grade misogynistic, which is admittedly both a product of the show’s time as well as J*ss Wh*don being on the writing team, but still it’s gross for a show that’s supposed to be all about girl power to have a prominent supporting character that’s like that.

He also constantly devalues Buffy’s feelings (when she tells him she doesn’t like something he or someone else is doing he’ll try to talk around it to change her mind), ignores her misgivings (Literally every time something is afoot she pretty much senses it but he tries to tell her she’s wrong or paranoid more or less), gives her terrible advice (See the whole thing with Riley, just that whole talk when she said she wanted to break up with him the first time which honestly makes so little sense to me since he didn’t even like the guy), interferes with parts of her personal life without telling or asking her (multiple times gatekeeping other people from talking to her without asking if she’d like to talk to them, ie Spike at Joyce’s funeral), won’t listen when she’s upset over something (This happens so often I would just say pick an episode it’ll happen at some point), and worst of all tries to talk her into not believing her own thoughts and feelings.  It’s not isolated to a single episode or season either, he is just consistently this bad throughout the show.

Despite all that, the narrative treats him favorably and clearly tries to frame his actions as justified because he likes Buffy, like he’s looking out for her. He’s treated like the “nice guy” who doesn’t get the girl but probably should have. He gets along with Buffy, sure, but I genuinely think that’s only because the narrative forced them to.

Now juxtapose him with Willow. She’s introduced as the cute quirky girl who’s maybe a little nervous but sweet. That’s true for about the first half of the first season. Willow gets so much character development in a way that Xander never really does. It’s almost like meeting Buffy started her on a journey to line up all the little parts of herself she either hadn’t known were there or hadn’t thought she had room for.

She immediately bonds with Buffy and proceeds to be ride or die with her in a way that triggers personal growth for both of them. She helps her with her homework, makes every oportunity to spend time with her that she can with no strings attached, doesn’t pressure her to do things she doesn’t want to do, including telling them Slayer related things.

Willow is who Buffy goes to for emotional support, she’s who she tells her secrets to, and she proves that her trust is not misplaced over and over. There are a few times when she’s not as good a friend as she could be, but it’s rare, and it makes their relationship feel more realistic. She’s usually very supportive and takes the initiative to help Buffy in whatever situation they find themselves in. She started practicing magic as a way to be more helpful to the group and ended up finding a passion for it.

Willow and Buffy continually build each other up, and there’s a genuine sense of comfort between them. They lived together for an entire season, and almost every scene depicting that had so much domesticity to it. They were the calm, soothing moments in the middle of a season full of chaos and change. They give off comfy cottage lesbian vibes and I will defend that to my GRAVE. (Was lowkey frustrated when they made Willow a lesbian but DIDN’T put her with Buffy like why????)

Then we have Buffy’s relationship with Angel. Which. Oh God where do I start??? Oh, I know where to start, at one of my least favorite aspects!

So their entire relationship is an allegory, we know that. It’s the timeless tale of a girl dating a seemingly nice guy, everything being great, then when she “gives it up” to him, he suddenly turns into an asshole. (Especially with younger girls and older guys as was the case here) Great, thanks I fucking hate it.

But, in addition to that, they made Angel the flattest freakin’ vampire ever. Like if y’all think Edward Cullen wasn’t based on this mo’fo right here, I’m sorry but you’re wrong.

Buffy is great at banter, it’s one of the things the show is known for, but almost every quip she made smacked into Angel like a brick wall. Like yes, he is being eternally tortured for being the most massive douche in a whole species of assholes, but still. He has a lot more chemistry with freaking Cordelia of all people than with Buffy. He and Buffy get along best when they’re tragic and dangerous together, which yeah, is chemistry but it’s not long term, and it once again doesn’t suit the vibe the show is trying to foster.

Angelus had great chemistry with Buffy, but in the villain way which is actually one of the only ways she does get to have decent chemistry with a dude. But you know, he also stalked her, killed her friends, and generally terrorized her that entire time so not real great on the boyfriend vibes there. 

Now contrast him with Faith, who was also an absolute nightmare.

Faith was clearly intended to be a narrative foil to Buffy. But the minute those two got anywhere near each other, holy shit. There’s magnetism there, there’s tension, and most of it is sexual. It feels as if Buffy is being drawn into Faith both by the promise of freedom she’s never gotten to taste, and the allure of Faith herself. She’s dark, she’s dangerous, and she can absolutely keep up with Buffy in every way. She’s who Buffy could be if she weren’t bound by the rules she keeps to. (She’s who Buffy could be if she weren’t so well loved.)

She shows Buffy parts of herself she hadn’t known existed, makes her confront things about being the Slayer that she’d never put to words before. She understands her in a way that no one else really can, and she’s not shy about letting Buffy know that.

She immediately moves in close, and while the plot frames her as trying to get close to Angel because she wants what Buffy has, I think it’s also to do with wanting to be closer to Buffy. It would be easy to argue that’s part of the confusion of being young and queer and not knowing if you want someone or want to be them. Especially for a character as love starved as Faith.

These two got on like a house on fire and they were every bit as dangerous to each other as Buffy and Angel were, but in a way that made me want to watch them for as long as they could draw things out. Honestly they could have dropped everything and made out and I would not have been in the least bit surprised.

There’s bad blood, there’s distrust and hurt and apprehension but there’s still that same magnetism underlying every interaction. I HATE that this show was made in the 90’s-00’s because goddamn would I like to have seen where that could have gone.

Which leads us to my absolute least favorite of the boyfriend bunch, Riley. I wanted to like him. I really really fucking did. He seemed like he was going to be the all american himbo, and honestly Buffy being the girlboss she is could absolute have vibed and thrived with a himbo.

But no. That’s not what they did with him.

Rather than just giving Buffy a pretty, sweet boy to protect, they gave her another asshole with an agenda. First of all, ACAB. (I know he was technically some bullshit sort of special ops, I don’t care, they acted like cops, they’re getting lumped in) Riley was another case of a guy who seemed pretty nice on the surface but just turned straight to suck as they got to know each other better.

He was portrayed as a supportive boyfriend but just about every time it came down to actually supporting Buffy, he either failed to do so or gave her the absolute wrong thing. I don’t know if the writing team just got tired of writing for him or what, but his downward spiral was terrible.

It was entirely centered around Buffy being stronger and more competent than him.

Seriously.

In a show, that’s main selling point is having a heroine who’s literal job it is to kick ass and take names, we’re going to give her a boyfriend who gets his feelings hurt about that very thing?? Riley was the champion of the fragile male ego (I could go on about how his whole character was pretty much just a male power fantasy run wild but that’s a whole other post) and it was a pretty consistent theme throughout their relationship that he felt inferior to her. But at the end it just went off the rails. A vampire blood drinking den hooker?? Really Riley???

Not to mention he had all the personality of a dry biscuit. He wasn’t even Buffy’s type to be honest, which even he knew. Their whole relationship felt like Buffy trying to force herself to be normal, to force herself to be something she isn’t. (Cough Lesbian symbolism, cough cough.)

Which brings me finally to Spike, my beloved trash man.

First, it should be said that he absolutely has some of the flaws outlined above. He started out a villain and did his best to stay that way for quite a long while. That said, he also went through a lot of character development.

One thing that never changed however was his chemistry with Buffy. He plays off of her beautifully, although he has a good rapport with pretty much every character. He's great at their style of banter and his attitude has him fit in pretty nicely with their sass. He’s a great foil to Buffy in a similar way to Faith. He constantly tempts her to live outside her comfort zone, outside of what people think of her and he encourages her to seek out whatever it is she wants. Buffy is more reluctant to latch onto that in Spike (she’s already seen where that leads with Faith, and she has plenty of history with Spike that tells her he’s untrustworthy) but ultimately ends up pursuing him as well.

Spike, for his flaws both in their relationship and as a person does one thing most of the rest of these characters don’t or aren’t able to do for Buffy, which I think ends up drawing her even further in.

He gives her emotional support.

That’s something absent from a lot of Buffy’s relationships in any capacity (JOYCE I’M LOOKIN’ AT YOU HONEY YOU WERE A FUCKING TERRIBLE MOTHER) and I think it adds a lot more depth to their connection than Buffy has with Riley or even Angel.

Spike is shown multiple times to pretty much be one of the girls, it’s played for laughs but it’s still there. He watches soap operas with Joyce and genuinely gets invested in them, he’ll talk about boys with Dawn even though he really has no reason to, and in one of the earlier seasons he kidnapped Willow and pretty much just…vented to her? Talked about his problems and his feelings about them. It’s really rare for any of the characters to do that, much less any of the male ones. Spike for all his mischievousness and villainousness has quite probably the most emotional intelligence in the entire group. (Which I suspect is part of why he gets girlfriend-vibe privileges.) His relationship with Buffy was the shortest and they spend a good chunk of it trying to force it not to become deeper (which is also pretty telling in itself) but I think it settled into one of the best she had, if not the best. Had they gotten time to work through their issues, I think they probably would have been the best canon relationship Buffy had.

But this whole issue is pretty easy to see even in some of Buffy’s more brief interactions.

Kendra the Slayer. She was only around for a few episodes, was wildly different from Buffy, far more rule oriented but just as dedicated to her job and eventually loyal to Buffy. They had a rocky start, but ended up bonding pretty well before Kendra’s death.

That one dude Buffy dated for like three seconds before Riley appeared that broke her heart for literally no reason other than to emphasize that every nice seeming pretty boy is going to be a jackass underneath it all. They barely even spoke before Buffy had a thing for him. He was supposed to come off as charming but pretty much just talked about himself, used a bunch of lines, and was a cheating asshole. Willow verbally incinerated him. 

I don’t know how this show managed to be so utterly bad when it came to it’s hetero relationships, but it sure did. Almost every single male character (with the exception of Giles, Spike, and Oz before they volleyball spiked his character straight into the ground, pretty much) was crap in some capacity which lent itself to the reverse version of the “Every woman in this show is a cardboard standee so we have to ship the guys together” syndrome. Buffy had much more going with the women in this show and it’s a shame she never got to kiss one.

#btvs #i told you i would write that essay and i did #i got a little off topic but i had some shit to get off my chest #buffy summers #buffy should have been a lesbian #willow rosenberg #xander harris #faith btvs #angel btvs #riley finn #spike btvs #kendra btvs #this show would have been so much better if they let buffy kiss women #and got rid of Xander just like altogether #i didn't go into her because i didn't have a direct parallel but Buffy also has more interesting interactions with Cordelia #the prom episode where they were being hunted down in the woods? #great loved that would have loved to see more #frankly i would have loved to see more of Buffy and adult Cordelia interacting #baby girl got so much development on Angel #not that I didn't already love her #(headcanoning her as autistic was the best thing I ever did)

[babisawyer]

the problem is I watched buffy the vampire slayer during my formative years and now buffy summers makes up for 90% of my personality.

#🐇 #if I could change anything about this show xavier and spike would.........not be there. #buuuut yeah the bimboness the rambling the talking fast the sarcasm the constant quips yes that's me she raised me #it's so funny when this was on I should NOT have been watching but I did and I wanted to dress like buffy all the time and my mom of course #was all for treating me like a little friggin barbie so she made sure I always looked on point for school and at a parent teacher meeting m #teacher was like 'um this is school and not a runway' and my mom got SO mad she was like what difference does that make what kind of a #teacher says something like that?! and like she's right honestly I was in a program for gifted kids which is sort of hilarious but like I #was SMART and that was even after I should've been on ritalin and my mom refusing to do it because she didn't want to give me a complex! #anyway....I wish I had a broody vampire boyfriend that would gift me a chunky crucifix necklace. but like in a lesbian sort of way #.........oh my god. if my doctor was like hey your daughter should be on ritalin does that not mean hey she's got adhd you should fix that #and my mom was just like lmao no it's okay #hilarious.

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

Now that submissions are closed, we can talk stats. There were 881 valid, unique submissions for 474 characters! Woof, women have it rough out there!

The most submitted characters, with a relevant propaganda snippet included, are:

1. Sakura Haruno (Naruto): 28 [where do i even fucking begin]

2. Cordelia Chase (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel): 21 [OH SO MANY THINGS]

3. Misa Amane (Death Note): 20 [The author of Death Note invented new forms of misogyny just to apply them to Misa.]

4. Kaede Akamatsu (Danganronpa V3): 15 [Oh, you thought we would have a female main character in one of our mainline games? With a cool defining talent, no less? That's stupid of you]

5. TIE: Kairi (Kingdom Hearts): 14 [I'm so mad. I think she deserves a gun.]

5. TIE: Stephanie Brown (DC Comics): 14 [She does eventually get retconned as surviving the event and hiding out in Africa (don't ask, it does not make more sense in context)]

The canons with the most submissions, with a relevant propaganda snippet included, are:

1. DC Comics: 61 [DC has SO MUCH sexism it's laughable]

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: 35 [Fuck Joss Whedon, man.]

3. Naruto: 33 [because Kishimoto hates women]

4. Warrior Cats: 26 [Warriors is one of the most misogynistic children's series I've ever seen]

5. Danganronpa: 25 [I honestly had to think about it just to decide which woman is treated the worst because this series hates them so much]

The canons with the most characters submitted, with a relevant propaganda snippet for a specific character included, are:

1. DC Comics: 21 [Free her from the huge tits back breaking pose.]

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: 12 [Anyways she was so hot and for what. 10/10 my lesbian awakening.]

3. Supernatural: 11 [Yeah, she got randomly killed off-screen for shock value and manpain, but she sent an email right before she died so at least her death wasn't in vain, right?]

4. TIE: Star Trek: 9 [She literally gets teleported out of her clothes in one episode.]

4. TIE: Yu-Gi-Oh!: 9 [One loss is particularly brutal as she falls from a large height directly onto her head and goes into a coma (again. yes this was the second time).]

5. TIE: Warrior Cats: 8 [I'm sure she'll get submitted again just ask any reasonable fan they'll tell you about her and her sister]

5. TIE: Attack on Titan: 8 [As a child soldier, she does commit some war crimes]

And here are some charts to show how some of these entries fucked the scale on my charts:

Look at Sakura, fucking up my chart with her numbers.

On a similar note...

Good god, DC, I know what you did, but add fucking up my charts to your list of crimes.

And now, enjoy some rankings of my favorite things:

My favorite universal sentiment quotes from propaganda are:

She lived she served cunt and then she got killed off super early so that the male characters could experience man pain and also because I guess she would have been too powerful if left alive. [Wen Qing (Mo Dao Zu Shi)]

That design. Dear god. I don't want to live on this planet anymore. [Mitzi (The Queen's Corgi)]

In the end she may have girlbossed too close to the sun, but I support her anger. [Ling Wen (Heaven Official's Blessing)]

the victim of “writer doesn’t understand women and also hates them” disease. [Naomi Misora (Death Note)]

She could 100% kill somebody but nobody ever effing lets her. Rip queen. [Kairi (Kingdom Hearts)]

My favorite raging at a writer quotes from propaganda are:

1. You took every single protagonist to weird lion heaven, Clive, but suddenly Susan isn't good enough. [Susan Pevensie (The Chronicles of Narnia)]

2. Being a woman written by Joss Whedon should automatically entitle her to financial compensation tbh. [River Tam (Firefly)]

3. A lot can be summed up in a couple words, namely, "Furman, why?" [Arcee (Transformers)]

4. Can you tell respect women juice ran in Tolstoy's veins. [Lise Bolkonskaya (War and Peace)]

5. TIE: (specifically a guy called Dan Didio, who we all hate) [Stephanie Brown (DC Comics)]

5. TIE: until Geoff motherfucking Johns comes into the picture [Pantha (DC Comics)]

My favorite quotes from propaganda that have nothing to do with misogyny, y'all are just funny:

I wish I could use bold here, because there's no such thing as uppercase numbers. [Arcee (Transformers)]

the most convoluted and lore dense piece of media this side of the afton criticality. [Jane Crocker (Homestuck)]

ended up starting a gang war by accident [Stephanie Brown (DC Comics)]

Ashfur, who later turns out to be a murderous incel [Squirrelflight (Warrior Cats)]

Hawkfrost is actively seeing Brambleclaw and his evil father in cat hell. [Squirrelflight (Warrior Cats)]

#not polls #stats

[rahirah]

You know, I have been seeing ‟Those hormone-addled Spike fangirls, amrite, hur hur, you only like Spike because you want to fuck him!‟ posts for over twenty years now, and I‛m getting just a teeny bit tired of it. And I could write a big ol' meta post about how no, I am a lesbian and I don't want to fuck Spike, or James Marsters, and I find Spike fascinating because in many ways I identify with his struggle – the whole bit about a creature without a soul trying to grapple with 'how can I be good?' hits narrative kink buttons I've had all my life, not to mention that characters which challenge the boundaries of their fictional universe – really challenge them, and force both creator and audience to think about those limits, what they are, why they exist, SHOULD they exist? – are just *chef's kiss* and combine that with Buffy's conflict between her duty as a Slayer and her personal life which hits ANOTHER set of narrative kink buttons, and how characters which blah blah blah far into the night, but I've done that at least six times before on as many different platforms, and we are STILL in the Year of Our Lord 2023 getting posts which boil down to "You only like Spike because you want to fuck him lol!" so ya know what?

WHO THE FUCK CARES? Maybe some Spike fans do want to fuck him. Many of the Xander fans I've known either A) want to fuck him, or B) identify with him and want him to fuck the characters they think are hot/important. Many fans of every single other character do the same! This is American television, pretty much everyone on it is gorgeous by normal person standards, and unless you're ace you probably notice this fact and think "Hmm, wouldn't toss them out of bed for eating crackers," about half the characters of your preferred sex(es). THAT DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY INVALIDATE EVERY OTHER THOUGHT YOU HAVE ABOUT A CHARACTER.

CAN WE JUST TAKE 'THE CHARACTERS ON THIS SHOW ARE PHYSICALLY ATTRACTIVE' AS GIVEN AND MOVE ON?? CAN WE? THANK YOU!!!!

#btvs #look I'm sorry for the capslock but TWENTY YEARS DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN

[thedrarrylibrarian]

Several people have been kind enough to let me publish their thoughts on fandom, community, and queerness to celebrate Pride in the Library. Today's piece comes from @wolfpants.

Dear readers, dreamers, and purveyors of the glittering, gilded aisles of the Drarry Library,

Fandom life began for me at age fifteen. We just got our first family computer, taking pride of place in the utility room between the boiler and my dad’s boxes of tools. I had recently come out as bisexual to my friends at school, who, props to them, had all taken it quite well despite the small town we grew up in (I was very lucky, they were great - everyone else though? Not so much). Still, even with supportive friends offline, I never felt like I could talk to them about what I really enjoyed: watching Buffy, reading Harry Potter and looking for queer subtext (I could never have convinced any of them that Harry’s story screams gay allegory–no matter what JKR has to say on the topic back then or now), scouring bookshops and libraries for any sort of queer content I could get my hands on, desperate as I was to read something that spoke to me, to read about love outside of the heteronormative landscape of the popular media. I wasn’t just tired of boy-meets-girl; I had never identified with it in the first place.

The year we got dial-up internet was the year I discovered Livejournal. The absolute joy I felt, stumbling upon an LJ community specifically dedicated to roleplaying Harry Potter characters in queer pairings. Discovering, beyond that, that people wrote stories about Harry and my other favourite queer-coded character of the series: Draco Malfoy. And then it was Wolfstar (specifically Sirius), then Drarry again, and somewhere along the way my lurking fell off and I stopped reading fic for a while when I moved to London and settled into my first job, my first real relationship, and sitting uncomfortably atop my bisexual identity and not really knowing where that shift happened and why. All the while, I was pursuing a writing career on the more journalistic side: writing for music and film outlets, doing a little bit of secret creative writing on the side, dipping in and out of HP RPGs but never really—connecting. In “real life”, my relationship with my ex was falling apart, and I felt very disconnected from the LGBTQIA+ community because, even though I knew I belonged, I never felt like I could be truly me with anyone—perhaps because I was, unknowingly, still discovering who I really was.

When the pandemic happened, it gave me the breathing space I needed to get to that point. It brought me back to fandom.

It started with reading The Popular Wolfstar Fic Everyone Was Reading, and reopening my ao3 account to re-read some old favourites from over the years. It then unrolled to, hey, I have some free time, why don’t I try writing my own Wolfstar fic for my oldest, dearest friend (who I met RPing on LJ at 15!), which then turned into: you should publish this, and see what happens.

So, I did. And I made a tumblr account, and I lurked for a while, shyly reblogging things and scrolling through author accounts I’d admired from a very young age, astonished and really fucking impressed that they were still in the game. I read their new fics, I was drawn back into Drarry, and from there I discovered what a wonderful community this is, not only for its immensely talented creatives, but for its values as a inclusive, equitable, supportive, uplifting, and joyful group of individuals who genuinely welcome everyone with open arms and love. That, in itself, has made it easy to reach out to like-minded folks here, to make life-long friends, to chat to people who have been through similar experiences in questioning their identities (it is truly thanks to this fandom and the many discussions I’ve had with people here that I’ve been able to realise my identity as a NB lesbian). To write! To share! To not be ashamed of my kinks and to discover fun, delicious rare pairs! To look at breathtaking art and read some of the best goddamn writing I’ve ever set eyes on!

I have spent thirty-seven years on this planet. A good chunk of that time has been spent questioning many parts, pieces, and niggly jiggly bits of my identity. Who am I? What am I? Is there anyone out there who is just like me?

After many years of searching in the dark, of asking these questions over and over, I can joyously say that the answer is: yes. And oh, how thankful I am for that, for all of you, because fandom has really been the community I can categorically point to and say: they did that for me, we did that for we, and I will do anything for you.

Happy pride.

Thank you, Wolf, for joining me in the Library. Your love and joy for fandom have left me feeling quite tender-hearted, in the best way. It's so so good to ask the question "Is there anyone out there who is just like me?" and find over and over that the answer chorusing back is "yes." Thank you for adding your yes to our chorus, and joining me for Pride in the Library.

If you want more @wolfpants be sure to check out their work on AO3! I can't help but recommend the fic that made me fall in love with her writing in the first place, Pages of You, which I've featured previously for Happy Hour. It's got Drarry and Wolfstar, and is one of my favorite comfort rereads.

🏳️‍🌈 Lots of Love and Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈

#pride 2023 #pride in the library #pride in the library 2023 #lots of love and happy pride #friends of the library #fandom community #wolfpants

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Based on your recent answer about why you watch BL in which you mentioned many narratives like to punish lesbians with death, I wanted to prompt you to speak on that a bit more if you're willing. I will wait here chin in hands for when/if this is interesting to you because it's a bugbear of mine and I'd love to read your thoughts!

Hello Twiggy! (can I call you that? What should we shorten your url to? t-t?) 

Anyway, I would be happy to speak more on that!

To establish my lens, I am a Westerner, I grew up with no queer elders, and did not really realize I was queer until after I graduated college, so my experience with queer media was limited at best. I know there are films and television out there where the sapphics live, and there are films and televisions where I am completely fine with a queer character dying. I am not a “if any queer character dies they are burying the gays!” kind of person. 

Now, I’ll admit that when I wrote that in my answer, I was mostly saying it based on knowledge of the tumblr discourse I’ve observed over the past decade I have been on this fucking website. In other words, I didn’t know the full extent of the issue, because to be perfectly honest, despite the absurd amount of television I do watch, seeing queer women in my shows has been few and far between. I don’t think I saw a girl kiss another girl until I stumbled upon the YouTube web-series Carmilla in high school. SO, your ask required me to do a little bit more research. 

Here is a link to an article listing 230 dead lesbian and bisexual characters and their causes of death which include toxic envelope glue in Seinfeld??? The list is so long that the article is split up in to FOUR PAGES!

Here are a couple of names from shows I either have seen or recognize: 

Tara Maclay in Buffy the Vampire Slayer 

Lexa in The 100 

Tosha in The Wire

Poussey in Orange is the New Black (which I will absolutely never forgive this show for) 

Toshiko Sato in Torchwood 

June Stahl in Sons of Anarchy

Patty O’Farrel and Veronica Cortes in La Reina del Sur

Jamilah Olsen in Black Lightining

Dani in The Haunting of Bly Manor

I do not want to count how many times I have seen the words “died in her girlfriends arms” in this list, and I’m only a page and a half in. I do not want to count how many times I have read “Cause of Death: shot/stabbed/blown up/murdered/throat slit” I have seen three separate queer women from True Blood on this list, three separate queer women from Boardwalk Empire, four from Orange is the New Black, four from Killing Eve. The cause of death for a character named Emily in Teen Wolf is five lines long. We know how Supernatural is about killing women and killing queers, and killing queer women (there are three on this list I’ve seen so far). And there are some truly convoluted deaths in here, and unsurprising a number of the most fucked up ones are…you guessed it, committed against queer women of color. 

And there are plenty on this list from like…American Horror Story, or like Scream, or you know other shows with very obvious ‘this is kind of an everyone dies’ situation. Like I’m not surprised if multiple queer characters from The Walking Dead die, I’m not going to hold it against the television show Spartacus for killing a bisexual woman in the final battle where everybody dies. (I will blame them for systematically killing off any and all interesting, complex female characters until we were left with almost nothing, when we had such good ones in Season 1). I do not see Dani dying at the end of Haunting of Bly Manor to be a ‘Bury Your Gays” situation in the least. 

And I am a lot more prone to being comfortable with a queer character dying if there are other queer characters in the story, as long as they don’t all die, you know what I mean?  

Hell, even in shows written and/or performed by queer people where at the end everyone lives, they’ll still sometimes kill (and then resurrect) the characters. Laura in Carmilla  for instance. 

According to a study by LGBT Fans Deserve Better, 62 lesbian and bisexual female characters had died over the past two seasons of television (at the time, which I think was like 2014-2016) and the 2015-2016 year saw the highest number of deaths of queer women in one season of television (42 characters accounting fro 10% of all deaths for scripted television shows that season)

In 2016, a GLAAD analysis was published stating “25 lesbian and bisexual female-identifying characters have died on scripted broadcast and cable television and streaming series since the beginning of 2016” and went on to say that most of those deaths were used to further the plot of the often cishet main character, and violent death was the most repeated ending for queer women in media. 

Looking further back in time, the Hays Code of 1930, which had major influence over United States television, did not allow for positive portrayals of queerness. And those impacts linger for far longer than those rules were put in place. I’m thinking of the very obviously queer coded lobster person in PowerPuff girls (which was one of my childhood shows) named HIM who was the personification of evil. Ursula in The Little Mermaid being inspired by a drag queen. [And it is here I will put an aside to say, I love queer coded villains, I think the person that made most of DIsney’s villains in like my generation of Disney films was queer himself, yada yada I’m covering my ass from anyone who wants to engage with this post in bad faith blah blah]. 

Hell, I’ve seen one GL out of Thailand, which was GAP the Series and even they killed off another queer female character and made Sam suffer abuse at the hands of her grandmother. I’ve heard about how The Shipper treated its lesbians. 

The TL;DR version of this is that, for a very long time in (at least Western) television, a sapphic existed in a narrative, and a sapphic died, often violently, often in their lover’s arms. And thanks to studies like the one by LGBT Fans Deserve Better, these disparities were made glaringly obvious, and rates of lesbian death in shows has been going down since 2016.

#bury your gays #powerpuff girls #the 100 #orange is the new black #the wire #supernatural #carmilla #spartacus #buffy the vampire slayer #haunting of bly manor #killing eve #la reina del sur

[emilykaldwen]

Fic Rec List 2

I cannot find the link for my first fic rec list. I'M SORRY! Anyway here's another one. These are on AO3 because that's where I read 99% of my fic but if I can find a tumblr handle for people, I will add it! This isn't just HotD/GoT fic, I also included a few other fandoms should anything strike your fancy!

World on Fire - @theothermaidoftarth - In which Nettles is sent North after the Battle of the Gullet. It's Cregan x Nettles! SIGN ME THE FUCK UP! If you love rare pairs, please follow this author. She writes fantastic stories and I just really love their work.

Inertia - @lesbian-kyoru - With the Cat’s confinement approaching, Kyo and Tohru attempt to avoid their feelings as ineffectively as possible. Hi yes do you love Fruits Basket? Do you love a good friends with benefits AU with two emotionally fucky individuals in Tohru and Kyo? Then please run, do not walk, to read this lovely series. I was introduced to this via someone bookbinding this series on the renegade guild and devoured it (I reblogged this series ages ago screaming in my tags)

Something Old - Ducks - Miserable after Oz's departure, Willow casts a spell to have her will done. Predictably, it goes awry, having some interesting affects on Buffy and Angel. A re-imagining of the Buffy episode "Something Blue". One of the first really fandomy fics I got obsessed over (back when Ducks ran their own site, which might still be up?) anyway yeah, it's Buffy x Angel, which teen me was utterly obsessed with and one of the first fics that really ever entered into my mind that you could write long ass series AU fics. There's also an eventual Blade crossover in the final part.

A Game of High Stakes - In_Dreams - In theory, the task is simple: kill Draco Malfoy. In practice, putting a curse through the Dark Lord's favoured lieutenant will take everything Hermione has―especially since he's trying to kill her, too. Even more so when the lines between them start to blur. Sometimes, the only way out is through. Hello yes it's another dramoine fake marriage/real marriage AU but it's so good, really goes into the fuckiness of the war, I just devoured it in a weekend.

Taken - Wheater - An AU set after 2x15: Elijah succeeds in kidnapping Elena, Katherine is out of the tomb and the Salvatore brothers have one hell of a mess to fix. Sometimes you have no choice but to make a deal with the devil. If you can get the devil to make a deal with you… Another oldie but goodie for if you liked your obscure TVD ships. And I was such an Elena x Elijah fan (also Tyler and Elena too pls)

Kingdoms At War - deathwalker - What if Ned Stark wasn't executed at the Great Sept of Baelor? Instead, what if, he had been removed from Kingslanding before Joffrey could give the order for his head? What impact would this have had on the Game of Thrones? It's a Robb x Marg, Ned Lives AU y'all and one day, one day it's gonna be completed and it's going to be amazing. So far it's sitting at just under 700k words, and Marg and Robb are about to take on King's Landing and my body is ready.

Parlour Trick - @stannisfactions - What if Aemond was born with dragon features and hidden away, and Helaena is his bride. Hi yes I scream about this story a lot, Kinderhook is one of my all time favorites, and not only is this fic amazing, but they have a ton of TG fics. A lot of the content is of the angstier variety, as well as a lot of dub con so please mind your triggers.

Aesthetic Chills - sloelimbs - An Eddie/Chrissy fix it picking up where Vecna started, and the Party's adventure taking a different turn. - It's an Edissy fix it fic and just very thoughtful, very moody, very everything. Pretty sure this was the only ST fic I read and it sits in the bookmarks for a reason.

#fic recs #fic reccomendations

[bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls]

The Daily Dad — Feb 1, 2024

Things you might want to know:

•Norman Jewison, Oscar-nominated director of ‘In the Heat of the Night,’ dead at 97 💭 To me, he was the “director of Jesus Christ Superstar and Moonstruck”. Fare thee well, old man.

DC's new Supergirl is House of the Dragon's Milly Alcock ❝ Milly Alcock will play Supergirl in the new DC Universe, alongside David Corenswet's Man of Steel and other heroes.

Syphilis cases soar to highest level in 70 years — staggering 207,000 syphilis cases reported in US in 2022 — 80% increase since 2018 💭 What the flippin’ furry fuck are you horny weirdos doing out there? What bubbling cauldrons of genital-shriveling disease are you embracing? And what’s next? Macramé vests, AMC Gremlins, and 8-tracks? I mean, clearly, you desperate little shits are aiming to bring back all the worst aspects of the ‘70s…

Even princesses of Hell fail sometimes, as shown in this exclusive clip from Prime Video and A24's Hazbin Hotel ❝ The princess of Hell has a breakdown in this exclusive clip from A24's Hazbin Hotel

Disney aims to revamp Buffy the Vampire Slayer (with help from Dolly Parton) 💭 It’s a nothingburger of a story, and amounts to glorified Dolly Parton clickbait. But just to be clear: where there is no Joss Whedon, there should be no Buffy. If we’ve decided we no longer wish to hear from Joss —and “I” among “we” have not— then we should no longer have Buffy. I don’t want to see Jay & Silent Bob written by Tina Fey, either. Or Legally Blonde directed by Wes Anderson. (Okay, technically, I’d love to see those things. But only in trailer form.)

Arc Search Review: My New Default iPhone Browser ❝ Every once in a while, I come across a new app whose design, feature set, or combination of the two redefines my expectations for a particular category of software. The new Arc Search app for iPhone, which is launching today on the App Store as a separate app from The Browser Company’s previous Arc Companion

Pokimane's main reason for leaving Twitch: 'So much manosphere, red pill bullshit' 💭 I’m wondering if this was the inevitable result of the internet creating thousands upon thousands of micro-celebrities? I mean, what if the only reason this “manosphere” bullshit caught on is that thousands of men were suddenly vying against thousands of women for views, and the women had boobs on their side? Brazen macro-misogyny probably looks like a viable weapon when all you’re packing otherwise is a micro-penis and a backward baseball cap.

Florence Pugh: Camera Broke During 'Oppenheimer' Sex Scene ❝ The actress joked that the malfunction was “bad news for whoever had to give [Christopher Nolan] the news.”

Amy Hart reveals trolls dubbed her the 'fat one' on Love Island as she shares throwback bikini snaps 💭 Amy darling, first, I’m glad your life is going so well. Good for you. Second, you were never, ever “the fat one”. That was Anna. You were “the crazy-eyed desperate one”. But dysmorphia gonna morph, I suppose.

Meet the sexy Egyptology scholars who dress like Indiana Jones characters 💭 I’ve only read the first few paragraphs. But I looked at the pictures. Good grief.

Apple Introduces Transcripts for Podcasts ❝ I switch to Apple system apps every summer to test the latest versions of the company’s OSes. I usually return to my favorite third-party apps over time, but Apple Podcasts has been an outlier since last summer for various reasons. The app has come a long way in recent years…

Award-winning lesbian realtor, 50, is jailed for tricking 90 year-old man with dementia into thinking they were lovers 💭 Congratulations to whomever wrote that title. I don’t think you could make it more sensational without including a reference to “Satanic terrorist strap-ons” or something.

#news

[thecsquirrel]

Holding my Black queer girls real close today.

Representation really does matter and the fact of the matter is that it's just so nice to be able to see yourself on the screen- big or small. Yes, Black and POC folks understand the point of universal themes and how you can find parallels in stories that often lack us, but sometimes it's just nice to look at a screen and see someone that looks like you and sounds like you.

Personally, I have been waiting basically 84 years to see a badass Black Vampire/Monster-slaying woman on screen, ever since Rona showed up on season 7 of Buffy. Heck, I just knew we were going to get a spinoff about the Hellmouth in Cleveland and Rona was going to be leading the charge! Obviously, that didn't happen, but some 20 years later (holy crap!) in comes Ms. Calliope Burns/Imani Lewis and the possibilities were endless. The potential was there! I didn't need First Kill to be perfect, nor should it have to be. It was a fun premise that was focused on the characters who would otherwise be sidelined in other shows. And damn it, it was just fun.

The most hurtful thing of course is the very loss of a character like Calliope Burns, and the Burns family for that matter. The last few years of superhero films/tv shows have both given and taken away. Yes, we got the women of Black of Panther, Misty Knight, Monica Rambeau, Maria Rambeau, Ryan Wilder, Sophie Moore, Anissa, and Jennifer Pierce. That list has gotten a bit smaller and other than the BP women, the Rambeaus remain and even then Maria may just be a memory. (Ugh it hurts to write that.) I won't pretend that the entertainment business is easy, but it certainly seems like the stories and characters that are expendable, more often than not, belong to those of us often pushed to the margins. We cannot and we must not overlook the fact that First Kill had a dark-skinned Black co-lead, a Black woman showrunner, and a crew/staff full of women and queer people. Additionally, we cannot overlook that the folks making decisions about these shows tend to be cis white heterosexual men. It is really hard to make/keep diverse content if BIPOC arent' even in the room.

Anyway, deep sigh. I'm doing all this rambling to say that it sucks to lose this show in general. It sucks to lose this over-the-top, enemies to lovers to enemies fated love story. And it is extra awful to lose a young Black QUEER/LESBIAN character with so much potential. To get a character with agency and vulnerability. A character with some flaws but also with such strength. (And obviously, the accolades should go to Imani, Felicia, and the writers for not just creating some stereotype.) We deserve all the things. The great characters and even the crappy ones. We deserve camp and frivolity. We deserve to be superheroes and super villains. And again, we deserve all the things because our stories matter. And we should be allowed to escape into fantasy and build worlds upon worlds.

So, yes, I'm going to be cranky for a bit on this one because it feels like one after another. And to make matters worse, it feels like there's no place to go. HBO sure as hell ain't saving Batwoman, because they won't even let Batgirl (what in thee whole frak is that! I'm sorry to Leslie Grace.) see the light of day and Disney is too busy running paperbag tests (I will be mad about America Chavez's casting forever!) to be bothered. Although, crazier things have happened and maybe Netflix will be financially bothered enough to either sell the rights or give it a proper series finale. Give me a freaking 2hr movie at this point.

So, to my queer babies who feel like they are going through it right now, be easy with yourself. Kick and scream and fight and rage. Write and create and keep putting it out there in the world. And if no one has said it today: You Matter. Your stories Matter. You belong. And You have something to say.

#First kill #calliope burns #imani lewis #queer black girls #queer black women #representation matters #Netflix is on some b.s. for this one #save first kill #I want good things for this whole cast #rants and rambles

[mothmans-wedding-photographer]

Mothman's Buffy Rewatch: Season 2, Episodes 12 and 13 "Bad Eggs" and "Surprise"

Bad Eggs

The girl exited so quickly after Buffy said he was cheating sjskej

The fucking cowboy vampire I'm crying its so funny

The way he scrambles away lmfao

XANDER WHY WOULD YOU RAISE YOUR HAND man he was so enthusiastic about it too 😭

The look on Buffy's face when said she was a single mother oh my gosh

I had to take care of an egg in junior high but I didn't get a partner :( we were all single parents

So much kissing in this episode already

The Texan accent guys are so silly they just ramble on I love them

Eggbert is an icon

Wait no he's hatching ew wtf nvm

ITS CRAWLING INTO HER EARS WHAT THE FUCK

Xander fucking hardboiled it that's so iconic

RIP Mr Whitmore (maybe I should have done a death counter but oh well)

My dad said that there's been so much kissing it feels like a Mexican soap opera

Poor night security guy :( omg FNAF reference

Oh god it fucking hatched why is it like that ew. It's like the facehugger

Damn Willow is already possessed I think (this got confirmed like a minute later)

"It's an egg Buffy, it doesn't emote"

Cordelia???

Lmfao bonk

Damn I actually didn't think Giles was possessed that surprised me

EW THE MOTHER EW EW EW NO

THE SMACKING NOISES AS BUFFY KILLS IT AND EVERYONE JUST WATCHES BLANKLY

Unironically I think they should've redeemed the Texan vampires

Joyce?? You wanted your daughter to stay in the library with a gas leak and you're punishing her for not doing it???

Surprise

Drusilla jumpscare

The monkey with Willow in Buffy's dream sequence is amazing

BUFFY BIRTHDAY

Something very creepy about Buffy talking about her school to Angel

Aww Oz and Willow are so cute. It's hard to enjoy them because Willow later comes out as a lesbian, so I don't know entirely how to feel about it :(

I love their dialog though they're so silly and sweet

Drusilla getting angry at the flowers not being right is so OCD (I have OCD, like actually diagnosed. The distress it causes her is relatable)

Nice freshadowing Jenny's death and Angelus return

God I love Cordelia. "Surprise!"

Oz seeing the vampire for the first time and just going this explains a lot is so much funnier if you don't know he's a werewolf

Jenny is NOT giving them a moment

The scene at the docks would be so touching if Angel wasn't a predator

Drusilla hosts iconic parties

Is this the guy that Buffy kills with machine gun because that is iconic but I'm not sure it's him

Ew they had sex

#buffy the vampire slayer #mothman's buffy rewatch #buffy summers #xander harris #willow rosenberg #rupert giles #cordelia chase #angel btvs #btvs

[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

@allvalley100

Prompt: Superstition

Pairing: Hawkmetri

The rest of this AV100 prompt that I didn't have time to finish before the prompt closed XD This one is a 7-parter--700 words total! Only fitting they should get a happy ending for the last AV100 post I write for them <3

***

Day 38

Talked to Eli about his…interesting new lady friends. They’re making me miss when he was hung up on Moon, honestly.

Anyways, turns out they’re just some exiled lesbians he took pity on. Families disowned them for kissing women, growing fangs, etc etc. Last I heard, Yas is single—maybe she’d want their numbers?

Woke up with a couple (bite?) sores on my neck, so I asked Eli about his pest control situation. He says everything’s fine, but I have my doubts.

Side note: Are metal allergies possible? Had to toss that silver crucifix—damn thing gave me hives.

*

Day 40

Confession: I’m worried about Eli.

There was an…incident a few days ago, and I hoped if I mulled it over enough times, it’d start making sense. Wishful thinking.

Was shaving the other morning when Eli barged in. Funny, I didn’t see him coming in my shaving mirror—can those things glitch? Thought that was only Smart Mirrors™️.

He started ranting about how “mirrors are for pussies,” and threw mine out the window??? Incredibly inconsiderate.

He insisted I didn’t need to shave because I’d look hot with a beard. How do you tell if someone’s joke-flirting or actual flirting?

*

Day 45

Have I mentioned Eli’s weird about blood now? Unsure I like it.

Cut myself on some loose board (this castle needs renovation), and he freaked out. Wouldn’t even look at it! Wailed about “blood being too precious to waste” and ran away. Huh.

Townsperson banged on the door today, telling Eli to stop eating people. I opened to tell him that was nonsense, but I noticed he smelled...appetizing? Like a gyro wrap.

He made himself scarce before I could say anything, but…kind of hurtful, honestly. I know I’m a bit gangly, but I’m not that ugly, am I?

*

Day 47

Finally got a wifi signal in here! Only took 4 hours of fiddling to make Eli’s TV work.

We binged Castlevania today. Eli’s favorite character is Dracula, supposedly because he’s “such a badass and is gonna kick the asses of every one of those lame humans.” I think it has more to do with Dracula having a soft spot for a smart, good-hearted human who he goes absolutely batshit avenging, but Eli’d never admit to this.

Side note: Is it hypothetically possible for one’s reflection to gradually grow more and more translucent and dead-looking? Asking for a friend.

*

Day 50

Bad news: Eli ate the mailman today, and I…may have helped.

Walked in on him draining the guy’s blood, and naturally demanded an explanation. Eli said to settle down because “there’s plenty to share!” What an insane suggestion.

But since the mailman was already dead...

In my defense…best AB positive I’ve ever had. Not that I’ve had much. I’ve dabbled a couple times, but who hasn’t?

In better news: Wearing the “amnesia” down! We’ve been reading through the library together, and Eli’s instinctively remembering what kinds of fantasy and sci-fi I like. He remembers me—I FEEL it.

*

Day 60

Okay! Know what’s going on now.

We were reading Buffy comics when Eli clutched his head and started shrieking. Everything came back at once.

After I calmed him down, he spilled everything. Getting involved with a Kung-Fu-practicing vampiric “organization” promising nigh-unlimited badassery. Being taken to Europe, undeadified, and given a blood-only diet…none of which sharpened his memory.

Admitted I’m not inheriting a Greek estate, and I only came to find him. He tearfully told me that’s a shame. He imagined us building a life there. Maybe raising some goats?

Fuck it—if he wants, I’ll make that happen.

*

Day 140

Been a while! Busy, busy!

Surprisingly easy talking “distant family members” into giving us a land plot. Maybe it’s superstition. Maybe it’s healthy fear. Regardless, people don’t like saying no to weird, sharp-toothed out-of-towners.

Made Eli promise he’ll discuss with me before joining any new martial arts-related cults (especially ones that strand him in isolated castles as soon as he “isn’t evil enough”). Now he only feeds every so often! We’ve gone through some neighbors, but it’s an improvement over Transylvania.

Also, our eldest nannygoat gave birth! Eli named the kids Hellraiser, Slayer, and Wrathchild. I love them.

#allvalley100 #amnesty week #hawk x demetri #demetri x eli #binary boyfriends #hawkmetri #hawkmeat #elimetri #demetri x hawk #eli x demetri #demetri alexopoulos #demetri cobra kai #vampire!demetri #(spoilers lmao) #eli moskowitz #hawk #vampire!hawk #vampire!eli #cobra kai #dracula au #vampire au

[dawnssummers]

i wish people were more nuanced about willow she's just as terrible as spike okay. not in the way that willow and/or spike vitriolic haters think. or a little in that there's a category of spike criticisms that extend to willow it's just that i like both characters still especially willow. they juet both have very blurred moral boundaries eg both helping dawn in forever. or honestly even willow and spike both kind of trying to fix their love lives with a spell in lovers walk bc they are struggling to cope and process. then this post about them in becoming / the gift / chosen. this other post too.

then in s6 both are comparable to the trio in how they: seek to control others to the point of violating boundaries; view buffy on a pedestal and position themsleves as villains in opposition to the hero (spike does this with all slayers); again call moral categories into question; have an attitude of self-pity however buried, etc. like it isn't just spike, willow does it tooooo she forced buffy back to life!! and i do feel like willow is "good" while doing all this and spike is "evil" and then "not good but okay" - upheld by the show and the characters views of themselves - until s6 when willow resurrects buffy "for her", and buffy sleeps with spike to feel something where i truly don't think spike realises that it's also a form of self destruction. obviously a selfishness to both / refusal to see how buffy could be hurting that is also present in willow erasing tara's memories and then everybody's memories.

i also have thoughts on seeing red as their turning points, for spike to finally finally realise that something needs to change and then follow angel's footsteps to get a soul, whereas willow at the end of the episode follows faith's spiral into evil (unconsciously but still a parallel) because she had an already fragile sense of worth broken by tara's death and so for her there's only descent until xander gets through to her. seeing red also having sexual violence and a lesbian dying right after a moment of happiness to manufacture character development is bad and it should at the very least have been filmed with sensitivity and not for a double shock but whatever. anyway. if anything that run of episodes is proof that a soul doesn't force you to be good and that you can't just decide that you are good (or evil, which dark!willow tried to insist she is bc she thought goodness was no longer available to her) but rather good is a choice enforced with each action...! willow does choose not to end the world, spike does choose to get a soul. buffy does choose to live in the world, this world she has chosen to protect, and with dawn beside her.

this is just thoughts thrown at the screen but look. willow is my special girl and she is already in the coalition of characters who have evil phases and beyond that are not always very good people tm however i am advocating for her to be in subset of people who do insane things for or because of buffy. she even has to make a physical journey back in s7 which spike faith then angel also do. okay.

#btvs meta #i guess. mostly its nonsensical dont read this ok im anxious just posting it bc its so incoherent

[jennycalendar]

part of why the "is Willow bi or gay" frustrates me is because there's so many avenues to explore the biphobia in BTVS? like the moment Buffy starts having fun with Faith the narrative punishes her, or vampires get to be bi because "sexy evil". you don't have to pick the one lesbian for this debate I guess?

i do understand where you're coming from! i just don't think there's an answer that's gonna satisfy every person here. if it's been 20 years and there are still people who find meaning and beauty in willow being bisexual, then that says there is a compelling story that can and should coexist with the people who find meaning and beauty in willow being a lesbian.

i don't want to carve anything into the rocks and say This Is Irrefutable And Can Never Change -- not about any part of this story, or any story! to me fandom is all about transformative works. it's gotta be in flux. debate implies that it's one side vs. the other. i think all sides should exist at the same time.

#asks #i think my issue with this is larger than the willow thing! #but it manifests in the willow thing bc this is where i see it the most in this fandom

[coraniaid]

Finished The Dark Age.  It’s not as well-constructed an episode as Lie To Me, nor as fun an episode as Halloween, but despite that (or maybe because of it?) it’s still one that I really want to talk about.  So this is probably the first of a few posts.

(Also I’m going to cover both parts of What’s My Line? at once and I don’t know when I’ll have time to watch them back to back the way I think they should be watched.)

I noted before that Giles’ Ripper backstory can be summed up as “when he was younger Giles briefly dropped out of Oxford, experimented with drugs and had sex with Ethan Rayne”.  

Yes, the second and third parts of that sentence are not explicitly canon but this is a very popular reading in the Buffy fandom and has been for over twenty years. And it's a reading which I think is heavily implied on screen: both in this episode itself (among other things: Giles admits that summoning Eyghon resulted in “an extraordinary high” and, while researching in the library, Willow notes that “ancient sects used to induce possession for bacchanals and orgies”) and in the wider context of the show (where magic is frequently used as a metaphor for both drug addiction and, in Seasons 4 and 5 in particular, for lesbian sex).  It only becomes more heavily hinted at in Ethan’s next two appearances on the show, particularly in A New Man with Ethan’s description of himself and Giles as “a couple of old … mystics”, or his off-screen comment that “you know, you’re really very attractive” that Giles clearly assumes is aimed at him.

The thing is though, once you’re viewing Giles’ past in that light, the way it’s actually handled by the narrative – as something Giles is deeply (and correctly!) ashamed of; as something which fundamentally threatens his relationship with Jenny once she learns about it; as something which is intrinsically tied up with death and criminality and (to quote Ethan himself in Halloween) “degenerate” acts – becomes more than a little uncomfortable. What, if anything, is the show actually trying to say here?

And it’s particularly galling too to know that Ethan – who, let’s not forget, was only introduced a couple of episodes ago – will appear in just two more episodes across two more seasons before the show’s heroes cheerfully allow him to be abducted without trial and taken to “a secret detention facility in the Nevada desert” to be “rehabilitated” by a branch of the United States military. One that Buffy and Giles already know is engaged in all sorts of unethical practices quite beyond being, well, a branch of the United States military, and which Ethan himself has correctly warned them is “blundering into new places it doesn’t belong, throwing the worlds out of balance”.  And to know that – while Buffy will later turn on the Initiative and plan to rescue Riley and Oz from their control  – Ethan himself will never be seen on screen again.

#btvs #buffy rewatch 2023 #(with bonus paragraph about how much I dislike S4's A New Man) #also there is an Insect Reflection essay that (unsurprisingly) puts the first half of this a lot more eloquently than I can

[dufrau]

I'm in a bit of a buffyverse mood today so: any thoughts on the female characters of both Buffy and Angel? Like, who's your fave, who do you think was underrated, who were the lesbians, how big of a crush do you think Cordelia had on Buffy etc etc that type of thing.

Oh man!

Cordelia is so good on Angel. She was great on Buffy but on Angel she is amazing and I love her so much. I do not think she had a crush on Buffy, I actually think Cordelia is very heterosexual which as you know is rare for me!

Fred was my favorite when I was younger and I still love her and the end of her story destroyed me extremely hard.

Angel was unkind to its women pretty much across the board. I love the show for those characters and also for Angel himself because I like that he is basically just a cringe grampa instead of an edgy sexy vampire? But the show was very mean to them!

Buffy and Anya are my favorites on Buffy.

And I love Faith on both shows.

I loved Willow when I was young. But. I am going to put this next part under a cut because i think this is the only fandom opinion that has actually ended friendships for me 😬

Like I get that it was a very different time in the world and in terms of what we had as representation on tv (basically we just had willow and tara tbh!) but like... i find it very strange the way that relationship has endured as nostalgic/fondly remembered?

If Willow's season 6 storyline happened now she would be immediately recognized as a full on villain. Again i forgive us for the way we rooted for them at the time! But in hindsight?

Tara's backstory is basically being mind controlled and abused by her cult family, and then she gets mind controlled by Glory.

And then when she raises concerns to Willow about her overreaching with her magic, Willow erases her memory. Which is more mind control. She does the exact thing Tara was already upset about but this time aims it at her specifically for the purpose of controlling her, in the same way that she knows Tara has been abused in the past.

Under Your Spell is really hard to watch when you take into account that Tara cannot and would not consent to it if she knew at that point what Willow had done.

And then when Tara DOES find out and points out how fucked up it is, Willow just does it again!

And all this is contrasted with the actual villains of the season whose turn from silly villains into serious villains is when they mind control a girl so she would be agreeable and willing to have sex with them (which is what willow did!) and wind up killing her.

It is very hard to watch these two storylines happening in the same season and see Willow as a redeemable character or this relationship as one that should have survived. Poor Tara, man! She died for this shit???

Anyway. I hate this opinion! i want to love Willow! But I hate her! She's a terrible person! I cant look at Willow/Tara and feel good about it at all! Tara deserved better from the show but she also deserved better than Willow!

#im sorry please dont hate me #asks #annieofvibes #controversial buffy opinions

[girl4music]

Hmmm Ian. I think for the first time I actually disagree with you. I DO think the Oz or Tara conflict of the episode pays off. I DO see it as an informed choice. I think it’s perfectly possible for Oz to still be around Willow even after this episode revealing that Oz can just basically wolf out now whenever he gets angry. I feel like that’s something she could deal with and it’s Oz that can’t accept it. But she accepts it along with him because she’s actually chosen to be with Tara and probably finds it easier if he just disappears as to not come between them.

What doesn’t work for me about this episode is that Oz wolfs out because of the information that Willow and Tara are involved. That to me seems like violent masculinity and therefore doesn’t exactly put Oz in the best light since he now just seems like an aggressive and jealous asshole and therefore Riley is actually in the right about him being dangerous. But nevertheless, Willow has handled danger like that before and she will again. So Oz’s inability to control ‘the beast’ is not the issue here, although it very much should be. The issue is that she’s with someone else. With Tara. So I believe she does very much make an informed choice because Oz driving back into her life asking for her back is something she still has to consider regardless. It would make it easier to just go back to the man she still has feelings for, right? There’d be less stress and fear.

Maybe the right word for it isn’t “choice”. I think “affirmation” works better. And I think to truly understand this as an “affirmation”, you need to have personally been in the predicament Willow is in in the episode which is probably why you don’t have much to say about the confession scene. It’s not something you can relate to or resonate with on the level of a closeted lesbian or WLW. Willow has an affirmation to continue her relationship with Tara - a woman - even though her previous lover - a man - has come back into her life specifically to ask for her back as a lover. It’s a validating affirmation.

Willow had already chosen from the start. What she’s grappling with is whether it’s the right choice to make now that her ex wants her back. Something she’s wanted most of all has unexpectedly happened. There’s not a single point in the episode where Willow specifically states whether she should stay with Tara or go back to Oz. The only thing she tells Buffy - and us - is that it’s complicated. It’s hard for her but her choice remains what it always was. Tara. It’s an affirmation what Willow goes through in this episode. Whether her love for Tara will prevail or whether what she still feels for Oz will change her mind. It didn’t. In this moment her relationship with Tara mattered more than that of what she desperately wanted with Oz. It’s a statement of choosing what makes her the happiest.

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