#but unfortunately her solution was pouring gasoline on the fire and then vacating the range where the fire would burn

[lightdancer1]

See the further irony is:

That in using 'Mall Goth Sauron' as the take on Dark Willow over 'misogynist has character randomly killed for LULZ' it also allows for greater accountability on the one hand and for Season 7 to thematically focus on repairing all this damage in the midst of facing an enemy of shadows reliant on lies to further itself. The only way to break the Druj is the absolute Truth in a very Zoroastrian sense. Characters don't get to neatly skip past accountability for their actions, and this would spiral over into further later seasons with the essential reality that in an otherwise lower-level setting this one random girl from California is a Dark Phoenix-tier reality warper and the most powerful person on the planet, or the universe.

And the questions of how that power could and should be employed on the one hand and that Willow is essentially a Doctor Strange type who beats up Gods and Eldritch Abominations for her regular line of work where her counterparts deal with the more 'street level' crises would in turn be the logical conclusion of where the show ends. She doesn't do as much physical fighting for the same reason that Stephen Strange never uses magic to go punch the Hulk in the face, her narrative role is ultimately that of Sorceress Supreme of Earth, with literally nobody in an ancient established war anticipating that this one random ginger from California was and is the new Sorceress Supreme and that if they had had such awareness the realities are that this power would and could have taken worse forms.

Unfortunately for the world, the reality too is that it is a shy computer geek who has a not at all subtle dark side and the usual teenage anxieties and insecurities given the equivalent of being able to reliably actually do things other people might dream of but can never do.

But again as long as Dawn Summers being a good thing is a narrative convention that's established memory magic is a poor choice to show the corrupting effects of reality-warping. It's a case of 'yes as established in canon all of this is true for that one season but then they decided to retcon it, so the fans are not obligated to care about it any more than the canon does about this itself.'

#willow rosenberg #tara maclay #dawn summers #you will never convince me as long as Dawn Summers is a plot device that 'memory magic unforgivable' is anything but bad writing #it was the choice used but there are other equally toxic things that could have been done instead #the basic theme of 'very powerful person decides things for another in an abusive fashion' works just as well without it #Tara's growth arc in refusing to tolerate abuse even from the person who brought her out of her shell can stand perfectly fine #it works even better with a budding Sauron than abruptly deciding 'wholesale memory rewrites good retail unforgivable.' #killing Tara off also denies her any sense of closure or ability to get that closure with the person who does this #the entire element here with the way things went down is bad writing from Point A to point Z #and it's also easily forgotten but Tara wasn't in fact intended to be Willow's love interest #she was replacement Willow for sympathy points #her entire arc as such became Willow X Tara but it was a choice from actor chemistry #So in giving Tara a role besides 'Willow's Girlfriend' it arguably does better by her character #tara x willow #btvs #and yes yes the 'scale changes things' argument is true but only to a point #it's really no different to introduce Dawn than what Willow did #if the retail is wrong so is the wholesale and the decisions to make this that point of no return is an avoidable mistake #plus honestly imagine a Season 7 Tara going 'sweetie no' and a Season 7 Willow dealing with those consequences in real time #equally one can have Tara's cold turkey approach stick exactly as it was #and serve as her role in the time bomb because she's a product of an abusive family and not an infallible moral guide #she rightly sees the problem and at least tries to address it when nobody else did #but unfortunately her solution was pouring gasoline on the fire and then vacating the range where the fire would burn #still further between that and Willow being human enough to resent being told to take that pain and do it going it alone #there'd be plenty of reasons for a surviving Tara and Willow to spend season 7 broken up as is #Tara would not at all be wrong to be wary and not want to touch reformed Sauron with a 400 foot pole #Willow equally would resent someone whose bad advice helped create the problem and who evades any recognition thereof #good old fashioned drama with entirely human motives