Need to talk a bit about how important Bangel was as a ship to me when I was a tween. Because even though I prefer Spuffy and Fuffy now, and find Angel's early character to be a little dull and flat, theirs was still the first ship I remember being truly feral over. I recorded my first viewing of Becoming Pt 2 and wore the VHS out rewatching that episode.

And I think a huge part of that hyperfix, despite me not really being attracted to "boys" without fully understanding why at the time, was how much Angel was a part of the whole "flipped gender roles" the show was going for. Because back in the 90s, or hell even nowadays, the only male characters who were constantly needing to be rescued were scrawny nerd guys or fragile old men. And if a woman was a hero she was mostly rescuing either other, usually more petite, women - or kids. Angel was a very feared and powerful vampire, but the show brilliantly laid out the reason for why he's not the hero of the show in the first episode.

"Because I'm afraid."

Courage is typically seen as a "masculine" trait, particularly in the context of battle, yet it's Buffy - the sixteen year old cheerleader - who is braver than the two hundred year old vampire. To quote my favorite Doctor; "Courage isn't a matter of not being frightened. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway." Buffy is still afraid but she doesn't let that fear hold her back like Angel does. Also I think the fact Angel is humble enough to admit this to someone who is still a stranger at this point is pretty damn attractive. Hell, just the fact that he never complains about feeling emasculated or sidelined by Buffy constantly rescuing him or taking the lead in fights is Very Sexy, and I say that as a lesbian. It's one thing him and Spike have in common, these two are both proud simps for their queen (Spike probably a little more) and to this day I still don't see enough of Strong Man Saved By Even Stronger Girlfriend than I would like and why mlw ships rarely do anything for me because this show altered my brain chemistry so much. I will never not swoon at Buffy saying "No one hurts my boyfriend!" in What's My Line. Seriously, how often do you get to see the girl be the Protective Alpha in a mlw ship?! Not enough. Also I think it's telling how the least popular Buffy ships were involving the guys who did seem to take issue with the whole "not being man enough to be her equal" thing....*clears throat*

But as well as the fact he's the one being saved, he also owes most of his growth to her. When people say "Angel couldn't have existed without Buffy" it's true in both the meta sense but also who Angel was between S1 and S3. He starts off as someone too crippled by fear and guilt to act and cleaves to Buffy as his chance of redemption, starts to get more involved with the Scoobies only to eventually be trapped in his own body (and then Hell), then ends basically flying the coop to his own adventures. Even though Angel starts off as a mysterious guide and support role, in a way he ends up being her protégé because he learns how to be a hero from watching her. I truly believe she's what inspires him to stop lurking in the shadows and Do Something, which eventually leads to him getting his own show where he can be a more traditional hero (sometimes to the level of missing the whole point about gender roles of the OG show but we'll leave that for another rant).

Honestly imagine the reactions if they made a show like Buffy today, considering the vitriol haters have for something like the Barbie movie, or any female Marvel / Star Wars character just existing.

Honestly, I’m not a Bangel shipper or really an Angel fan… but I have to say that the intimate moment they share in ‘Forever’ has got to be one of the greatest character interactions with another character there is. It details so much about Buffy and Angel and why they actually would have worked so much better as a couple when Buffy was not a minor. When they were both consenting adults and not obsessed with the “love conquers all” passion and urgency of true love. It’s by far my favourite Bangel moment - although I do have to say that, for me, a lot of Bangel moments are not comfortable for me to watch or even think about. They’re on a level playing field. Buffy now knows so much about herself as a person and as a Slayer. Angel has come to the understanding that while Buffy will always be his true love,… he doesn’t need to have her constantly in his life for him to be either a person and hero in his own right. Both of them are not in the best place either emotionally or mentally, - but they’re also not dependent on each other for their sense of happiness (or fulfilment I guess in Angel’s case since he isn’t allowed to feel happy or his soul goes bye-bye) They’re needy but they’re not desperate. It’s not a “oh the sky will fall if I can’t be with you” scenario. They’ve accepted their unfortunate circumstances to the point where it would actually be healthy for them to be together (sans the loss of a soul situation) rather than destructive. And they can now be there for each other in a way that actually feels necessary for them. It’s a wonderful little scene that makes you see the amazing growth in maturity for the both of them. And I can always appreciate that in a romantic relationship even if I’m not necessarily a supporter of it being one.

It’s kind of ironic that I love, appreciate and support Buffy and Angel being friends and confidants more than lovers when it’s that very thing that actually makes me see how their love can benefit them rather than be a detriment to and destroy them. But then I’ve always been a believer that true love is friendship on fire rather than a naive obsessive romance where the individuals in it can’t grow from and through it.

This moment right here is absolutely glorious. This is the beauty of love when it’s based in mutual trust and respect and understanding. When it’s fully matured.

The Buffy Re-watch: S1E11 (part 1)

Out of Mine, Out of Sight

Not to be confused with the season 5 episode 'Out of my Mind' as that has a whole different vibe to it.

The Spring Fling. Do these types of school dances really happen? Or did I just go to a really boring school? No, I did go to a boring school, a shit one at that, but that's a story for another day.

Cordelia's boy friend doesn't know what colour her eyes are? Kind adds to her speech on loneliness later.

Cordy wants Shylock to get over himself an that his problems aren't the only ones in the world, yet she only thinks of herself in the same way. What's the word I'm looking for here? Irony? Hypocrisy?

Invisible girl wants revenge on the people who 'wronged' her. Played by Clea DuVall, who I know from the film 'Ten Inch Hero'.

Xander and Willow distracting Snyder with talk of lawyers, because lawsuits make people scared.

Getting out of talking to Cordy by doing research. You won't be doing that forever Xander.

Harmony gets pushed down the stairs and Snyder is worried about getting sued because of Xander and Willow.

Oh look, non-descript agents in suits.

Xander wants invisibility for the same reason as Sanji from One Piece, to peep on naked women.

I get the impression that Buffy is feeling disconnected from her friends and new life in this episode. Before, she was Miss LA of Hemery High, the mot popular girl in school. And now she was an outcast. Her friends don't make thing better for her with their inside jokes because they have a history that pre-dates her. And that's not Willow and Xander's fault, just something that can't be helped. She can't join in on that and that leaves her feeling left out, she can't join in on the laughs. She probably misses parts of her old life, or at least parts of it. We see this in the season 3 episode 'Homecoming' where she tries to be Homecoming Queen. She wants her normalcy back in some way as her duty as the slayer stop her from being seen as more than a trouble maker and a weirdo to everyone around her that doesn't know of her calling. It's something that is talked about often by Spike, who has the best understanding of her calling (see 'Fool For Love'). For some reason he has the best insight into the people around him, which is why he is so easily able to notice things were wrong between the gang in season 4. But Buffy won't accept what he says as true until season 7. So, for now, she is holding on to hope that she can be normal in someway. hell, even Angel tried to buy into in and left for LA so she could have that, even though he should have known, on some level, that that isn't possible for the slayer.

Giles and Angel first meet, and Angel wants to be helpful by enabling Giles' book hording habit. I have the same problem.

Marcie just wants to fit in, be liked and have friends. She went missing for 6 months and no one noticed. What a sad existence.

Who is your favorite buffy character?

Good question because I don't have a firm, Katara or Santana levels of favourite (at the moment) but there are several characters I really enjoy and sort them into categories.

First, you have the main characters with very best potential. I've liked both Willow and Cordy from the beginning. I don't think I'll ever go all that hard for Willow but those who know how I am about chs like Katara or Santana understand that I'm really talking about a whole new level there. Even if it isn't that, I still really really enjoy Willow's character in really all her aspects. From the beginning I've really appreciated what Alyson Hannigan brings to the character and her arc has been beautiful to follow. I await with nervous anticipation what season 6 will bring for her. She's both really fun but also growing steadily so I really dig that.

With Cordy, like I say I've liked her from the beginning so while her growth is stunning to witness it's not like I need her personal development as a reason to like her. I always just want more and more of Cordelia. Even now that I've seen two seasons of Angel I still don't quite feel that she's gotten her dues so waiting patiently for that.

I have this weird thing about protagonists where I usually find it harder to fully be into the central character and focus instead on deuteragonists or other chs, so Buffy herself has been a journey for me. The only exception to that protagonist "rule" I have is Korra and even her I didn't wholeheartedly love until the second half of the show. With Buffy, I never really had any problems with her ch but as we went into season 3 and particularly season 4 I felt like she was losing me a bit. I've never not liked her but I also found the Scoobies surrounding her to be slightly more interesting. Season 5, however, was an incredibly strong Buffy season tragically capped with her sacrifice. There's just something about making her a big sister that really pulled at my heartstrings. Again, looking forward to where they'll take her next. I know I know she's dead but girl's been dead already so just brush it off and pop back up again.

Another tier is what we'll call honorable mentions, all the delightful little gremlins who bring me so much joy. Anya is honestly such a joy to have on this show and I'm hoping she'll get more development, and I'm on the fence still but can't lie, Spike is growing on me rapidly. Also shoutout to Harmony as an ancillary character, she's great as a vampire. A completely different category but shoutout nonetheless is Tara, who took a while to really come into her own but I think she did in season 5. I'm very much hoping she'll have more scenes with Buffy and Dawn, and of course, I'll take what I can get of Willow and Tara before... yeah. Yeah.

And then there's Faith, probably the favourite character if I had to say. The thing is, my feelings about Faith are complicated and I did go into the show fully expecting to unapologetically love her. I think she just has that special fave character draw that can't be forced, it has to come naturally when a ch just speaks to you. And she has, but with her more than any other character I would like to wait for her story to be over and then draw conclusions. Faith is... Faith. Probably the simplest answer to your question but like I say I have just So Many feelings and thoughts on her. I'm sure she has that effect on others, too.

What a long and wordy answer to a simple question! It's why y'all love me.

Ok but you must tell us about ur vampire diaries phase, and, if u wish, ur thoughts on stefan/damon being a reiteration of angel/spike

omg. what a question. literally i havent thought about tvd in years but it WAS the foundation of my teen years like. in the early-mid 2010s delena was my lifeblood like, one of the first fics i ever obsessively followed was a delena fic . what a moment . (shoutout to bourbon in your eyes, the fanfiction dot net era coffee shop au that was the world to me). i watched the never let me go motel kiss 80 times a day. it was such an era.

dksfjslkdf i probably wont have as detailed thoughts on tvd-btvs as someone who has seen vampire diaries more recently (i never finished the show actually -- though i did pop in for the series finale and i was very confused lmao. but i did have a good time). but just!!!! iconic of tvd to be like oh we can think of a plotline ummmm ok what did they do on btvs :))) julie plec icon status for that :))) they said ok everyone gets the gem of amara :))) they said weird btvs soul lore??? we will one-up you with the 'humanity switch' which doesnt totally mean anything and falls apart the moment u think about it for more than a second :))) also pls dont take this as me dragging tvd. i LOVE when tvd is bad and doesnt make sense. i think it's sexy and hot and praxis <333

ANYWAY djfklssjf the stefan-damon->angel-spike thing is so funny to me bc literally stefan being a ripper is SO. they said hey. hey sticky-uppy-hair first love interest??? who comes across as so effortlessly ~good~ yeah actually it's because he is fundamentally repressing a deep essential part of himself that will INEVITABLY lead to violence they said hey. hey let's talk about angel of galway's deeply fractured sense of self and how it leads to pain and danger for those around him. UGH!! icon shit!!!!! as for the damon - spike stuff . on some level it feels so funny to me to compare them bc it's like . okay james was one of the best actors in the buffyverse the things he did with her FACE AND VOICE AND BODY. and meanwhile i*n s*merhalder is like ... jenny nicholson vampire diaries video voice ... if you were a RACER you'd know what im talking about but youre NOT .... ... (not to say he is a Bad Actor just like,,, they are at such different levels and so are the shows that it feels odd doing a 1:1 comparison) that said!!!! i think both shows do that very fun thing of like :) oh oh oh he's less evil than he seems oh oh oh he actually loves and cares so deeply it's his fundamental trait :)))) oh oh oh the one who seems good maybe is not oh steven sondheim voice nice is different than good!!!! i also like that damon takes on spike-traits of just girlbestieism. remember when he hangs out with caroline's mom. remember when he and bonnie are besties. yeah that's spike-joyce and spike-willow prove me wrong :)))) anyway i just spent SO much time trying to find the right timestamp in that jenny nicholson video for that lightning mcqueen joke and it took up all my energy to keep talking about this but thank u so much i had fun :)))) anyway my delena era was also like. the era of my blog when i actually had a consistent tagging system so if u go to my archive it is still my third most common tag which i think is funny. #btvs rewatch ... she is coming for you .... ok bye!!!

wait no i thought of another thing which is that i think it's very sexy and valid that both btvs and tvd do the protagonist has now died and suddenly the ~bad boy~ (lmao that term) is the one who fundamentally understands her. like buffy returns from the dead and IMMEDIATELY locks onto spike like they See each other and it's like oh!! oh we are the same!! and tvd does a really similar thing with elena's post-vampirism relationship with damon, and i think it's kind of beautiful that they have that whole thing where it's like no it's not real love it's just the sire bond. but then it IS real love!!! she is different than the person she was and yet she is still HER and HER loves that guy!!!!!!!!! teeheee sounds familiar :)))))))) ok bye now for real

really not liking how the minute cordy went into the coma it was like she barely existed

I want to talk about this scene, from Bargaining when Willow kills the fawn. You might guess from my icon that I am a big fan of this scene. It's pretty short but it sets the stage for Willow's arc throughout S6 excellently.

It opens with her in this gorgeous riverside greenery, dressed in pure white, the very picture of fairytale innocence, bathed in bright sunlight. It's such an unusual shot for the show, which almost exclusively either has shots inside or at night (for obvious reasons of being a vampire show), and that immediately makes it quite memorable. Especially as the rest of the episode is almost entirely set at night, filled with demon bikers, dismemberment, fire, broken down towers and digging out of graves. It's like this little meditative moment of peace in between all that.

Or, it would be if it didn't include a teensy little animal sacrifice.

WILLOW: Adonai, Helomi, Pine. Adonai, Helomi, Pine. The gods do command thee from thy majesty. O Mappa Laman, Adonai, Helomi.

Willow says her words and summons forth a young fawn from the trees. The fawn is another symbol of innocence, like Willow's white dress. As she reaches out and and touches the animal gently, we're reminded of the soft innocent Willow of S1, who shied away from any conflict and seemed incapable of ever hurting a fly. She's like a disney princess, sitting in the woods singing to woodland animals. Only Snow White never stabbed Bambi in the heart.

The entire plot of the previous season revolved around the blood sacrifice of a child. This is what Glory was trying to achieve, and it's what Buffy has to stop. Buffy gives her life in order to stop it. And now, Willow recreates the same event, performing the blood sacrifice what is specifically an animal child. She steps into the role that the previous season's Big Bad performed, and so tells us that this season, she is stepping into the role of Big Bad. The fawn fills the role of Dawn - the situations rhyme as well as the names do.

Fun fact - the words that Willow uses are taken from The Book of Ceremonial Magic, a 1910 book that compiled various grimoires. In this passage, describing an invocation to request something from God, Adonai/Helomi/Pine are the names of angels - specifically the angels of the East, who appear in human form dressed in lily white according to this passage - another link to Willow's costume here. The invocation seems to involve requesting these angels to appear to the caster in an intelligible form.

ADONAI, HELOMI, PINE, Whom you obey, do invoke, conjure and entreat thee, N., that thou wilt appear forthwith. By the virtue and power of the same God I do command thee from thine order or place of abode to come unto me and skew thyself plainly here before me in thine own proper shape and glory, speaking in a voice intelligible to mine understanding.

In this case, Willow is symbolically killing an actual angel of heaven, which is probably pretty high up on the villainy scale. Just drives home the fundamental Wrongness of this scene. It's also good to remember that the idea of killing one to save other(s) is a theme returned to again and again throughout the show, and the first major example of that theme in action is a certain Angel.

(Credit to this user on BuffyBoards for finding the source of these words.)

So the fawn is Dawn, and the fawn is an angel. But most importantly of all - the fawn is Buffy. Willow, in her attempts to bring Buffy back to life, first has to kill "Buffy".

WILLOW: Come forward, Blessed one. Know your calling.

The fawn is described as having a "calling" that it must "know", just as Buffy has a calling of her own, which over the course of many seasons she learns to know and accept (and eventually revolutionise and reject). It is also described as "Blessed", which in some definitions is taken to mean "one who is with God in heaven". Buffy at this point is literally in heaven (or at least some kind of heaven dimension, the theology is gratefully vague). The structure of the phrase "Blessed one" also reminds of the more relevant phrase - "Chosen One", which again would be Buffy. The spell ingredient, which we know is the fawn's blood, is called "vino de madre" - wine of the mother, implying a feminine source of power, just like The Slayer.

WILLOW: Accept our humble gratitude for your offering. In death ... you give life. May you find wings to the kingdom. In death, you give life. You might say that death... is your gift... yeah, so this really drives it home for me. Using death to give life is literally what Buffy has just done. It was core to her arc last season. And finally the "wings to the kingdom" line again plays into that heaven imagery. S6 loves this kind of imagery for Buffy, even giving her angel wings in one of the most delightfully on-the-nose shots in the show.

Buffy gave her life to give Dawn one, and with it gave a warning about the struggles of life - "The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.". This is sad but lovely advice that Buffy herself must now spend S6 gradually learning to understand herself. She learns how to deal with the crushing despair of day-to-day existence. Willow, as the Big Bad of this season, doesn't understand this advice at all. For years now, Willow has used magic as a short-cut to avoid actually dealing with her emotions (see Lover's Walk, Something Blue, Tough Love). This goes into overdrive in S6, and it starts with her desperation to bring Buffy back to avoid really dealing with the reality of her death.

In fact it goes beyond magic - Willow is also the one who uses her tech knowledge to bring the Buffybot back online. She uses all her skills to desperately fill in the hole that Buffy has left behind. This is what Willow does, magic or no. And it's sympathetic - my heart breaks every time she talks about fearing where Buffy might have ended up - but it's not totally rational or healthy either. The main problem is that Willow, in doing this, is ignoring Buffy's final words, and misunderstanding the central theme.

As said earlier, by performing this blood sacrifice of a child, Willow is betraying the memory of Buffy, who died to stop one. (Symbolically of course. Morally there are light years between killing an animal and killing a teenager). Buffy gave her life to stop a blood sacrifice, and so Willow reverses the process - causing a blood sacrifice to give Buffy her life. And she betrays Buffy's final words with her refusal to accept the pain of life and live with it. And finally, she betrays Buffy spiritually.

Remember that Willow is Buffy's metaphorical Spirit, as shown in Primeval. It is a special kind of betrayal that Buffy's Spirit breaks her spiritually in this season. She literally rips her soul out of eternal bliss and contentment, causing an existential break within her. She beseeches the fawn/Buffy to find "wings to the kingdom", but in doing so robs Buffy of her wings.

Buffy suffers brutal depression this season, and describes it many times as feeling dead inside. This kind of emotional deadness is caused directly by her ressurection (though severely exacerbated by her unresolved trauma, grief over Joyce, and generally just living under capitalism). Willow has tried to give death to bring life, but because the action is a betrayal of Buffy on many levels, the act is tainted, and perverted, like a wish on a monkey's paw. She literally kills metaphorical Buffy, and so metaphorically kills literal Buffy. Buffy has life, but said life is causing a kind of death within her.

And what does Willow get for all this? Her pain isn't fixed by all this. She just gets blood on her hands (and later on her face). It sets off a chain of events that will end with far more blood on Willow's hands. She dips a toe into a darkness, but because she doesn't understand fully the emotions that have taken her there, she can't exert any control over it. She doesn't learn a lesson here that she shouldn't try to shape the world to deal with her emotions. Instead, she learns that she has power over life and death.

Willow is clearly deeply shaken by this, but it's not nearly enough to make her change her path. She ignores the very obvious foreshadowing here - her hands literally coated in blood - and carries on anyway. She takes the wrong lessons from this moment, which she clearly demonstrates in her argument with Giles in Flooded, where she ignores his anger over how she's warped the rules of nature, and instead focuses on how awesome she is ("The magicks I used are very powerful. I'm very powerful. And maybe it's not such a good idea for you to piss me off.")

This is a small scene, but it sets up so much for Willow. It shows how far she has come from the meek girl of S1. And it shows a glimpse of the future, how she has far to go but is now on a path to become the villain she is at the end of S6. She starts it by killing metaphorical Buffy in order to save her, and will end it by trying to kill actual Buffy in order to emotionally "save" her. At every point she can justify the blood on her hands as serving some greater purpose - but the blood is still there.

Love talking about my ships, thank you for the tag @travllingbunny !! :D

1. First Ship - Sakura/Lionel from Cardcaptor Sakura probably was the first, I loved them sooo much when I was 9 or 10 (but Buffy/Spike happened almost at the same time, so I’m not sure anymore). I remember setting up an alarm every saturday morning at 6 a.m just so I could sneak in the living room and watch my Sakura episode.

2. First OTP - Buffy/Spike. For the past 20 years, my feelings about them haven’t changed, except that Dean/Cas are now my OTP as much as Buffy/Spike are. The scene that made me go from “I like them” to “I ship them” was the one in “Though Love” (5x19), when they’re talking about Willow and her desire for revenge against Glory. When Spike said “I’d do it. Right person. Person I loved. I’d do it”, something just clicked, I loved the vulnerability, the understanding in their scenes. The previous episode (when he protects Dawn & Buffy’s secret from Glory) is what made their relationship go in a serious territory, showing that even if Spike didn’t have a soul, something unique was happening here. But at the time, this is this scene from “Though Love” that made the difference for me. I was always impatient to see their scenes together after that. I loved how real their relationship was, the level of support & understanding they reached and how true they were with each other. They fell in love with each other knowing exactly who the other person was, in the good and in the bad, they believed in each other, and it’s something that really spoke to me on another level. I don’t think any other relationship could compare.

3. Current Favorite Ship - Buffy/Spike (for the past 20 years+) & Dean/Castiel (for the past 11 years+). I guess we could say Destiel is more “current” considering that the show was still on the air until last year. I liked them from the very beginning of season 4, I found their scenes together very special (their chemistry is just crazy), but I started actively shipping them thanks to “The Man Who Would Be King” (6x20). This episode was a turning point in their relationship, we really went from a joking tone when it came to their relationship, to them being written as a tragic love story. This episode made me realize they were actually in love with each other. There was so much heartbreak from both of their perspectives. The show has been very consistent with the romantic narrative ever since. Their emotional bond was so special & beautiful, they changed each other for the best. I believe they were the love of each other’s life.

Special mention : Arthur/Guenièvre (Kaamelott). Their relationship was already special in the TV show, they met a few hours before their wedding for political reasons, and got to really know each other during their marriage. I think there was a lot of love between them, that we really saw blossom in the first movie last july. Can’t wait to see what’s coming next :)

4. Your ship since the first minute - Hmm, the first one that comes to my mind is John/Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles. A friend ( @frimoussette88 you probably remember) had posted a clip from the first episode of season 2 and I immediately fell in love with them. I then watched the show and yep, it confirmed my feelings about them. I’ll always regret that the show got cancelled. 

Dean/Cas also intrigued me from the very beginning though, but I wouldn’t say I actively shipped them until season 6 (like I said earlier, “The Man Who Would Be King” won me over). 

5. Ship(s) You Wish Had Been Endgame

Dean/Cas for sure. We were so close to getting it... I’m still not over how awful the finale was. I still feel so angry and heartbroken over the treatment they got in the last couple of episodes (the characters as much as their relationship). A real shame, at so many levels.

Angel/Cordelia should definitely have been endgame too... The way the potential of their relationship has been wasted makes me so sad... The way they knew and relied on each other was beautiful. I believe Cordy was everything Angel needed, and Angel brought out real good things in Cordy. They inspired each other to be better persons. The best kind of love.

Rory/Jess (Gilmore Girls) will always be one of my biggest regrets too. I think their relationship wasn’t meant to work out when they were together in high school, because Jess wasn’t in a right place. But later in their lives? They’d be perfect together. Amazing chemistry, beautiful bond. They had the same sensitivity when it came to life, books, ways of seeing the world.

I won’t mention Buffy/Spike because, if I take the comics in count, it kinda is what happened (season 12 didn’t convince me that they were separated for good). They were written to be endgame and season 12 didn’t leave me with the impression that that’s not what happened. If I only count the TV show, they’re definitely worth mentioning in that category.

6. Ship You Wish Was Canon - Harry/Hermione (Harry Potter). May it be the books or the movies, I never got on board with Hermione/Ron or Harry/Ginny. I always was very much fond of the Harry & Hermione relationship, they understood and supported each other like no other. Their friendship is probably one of my favorite things from the HP universe, but I always saw a potential for more that I wish had been explored.

7. Ship that Most of the Fandom Hates, but You Love - I feel like Angel/Cordelia was not very popular? If they weren’t, they’re definitely worth to be mentioned then. They’re my favorite after Spuffy & Destiel. I love them so much.

8. You Don’t Even Watch the Show, but You Ship It - “Ship it” is a strong word, but I’m very intrigued by Bellamy/Clarke from The 100.

9. Ship That You Wish Had A Different Storyline 

Dean/Cas. I love what we got in the show, they were best friends and it was already something very beautiful in itself, but I would have hoped for the pining and romantic love they have for each other to be explored textually in the show... I wanted to witness the beauty of their relationship as a domestic thing. Like, especially in the later seasons, it wouldn’t have taken much to get them there.

Angel/Cordy. I wish they hadn’t screw up their relationship after season 3. I would have done everything differently (except “You’re welcome”, this episode was perfect).

Rory/Jess. I wish the revival had given them a chance to at least be friends again, and leave things more open for the future (even though we got a glimpse of that with Jess’ last scene).

10. Favorite Ship(s) That’s Endgame : 

Lorelai/Luke (Gilmore Girls) : I mean, duh. It took them a long time, but they were meant for each other. A love story born from deep friendship (my favorite kind of love story).

Katniss/Peeta (The Hunger Games) : their emotional bond is so strong. Despite the horribleness of the world they were thrown in, I always admired and loved the comfort and love they brought to each other. Nobody will ever understand, the way they both understand each other.

Tagging @frimoussette88 @assbuttboyfriends @leavingubehind @amwritingmeta @inacatastrophicmind @darthmarion @tinkdw @spikeisawesome456 @fantasticmojo47​ @gryfndorgodess​ and anyone who wants to do it, feel free! (I’m bad at tagging) :)

coming back to that little stray thought of mine re: giles and photographs! i always stumble a little when i see a fic that depicts giles as being willing or able to talk about jenny outside of her being legitimately relevant to a conversation with one of the kids -- like, he’s willing to use her as a Teachable Moment, or to help guide other people, but he is not willing to entertain her as anything other than a theoretical concept. i know i have written before about how giles in season three doubles down into his identity as a watcher, and this ties into that in a huge way -- the fact that he loved jenny is relevant to a watcher only because jenny stands as an example of why he is never going to fall in love again. the way that giles frames it in his own head is that jenny is the theoretical example of why he cannot risk ever getting emotionally attached to anyone ever again.

but the reality of it is that i do not think giles EVER processes jenny’s death or lets himself let go of her, simply because he basically goes from this boundless ocean of grief in season two to NEVER letting the mask drop in season three. the last time he ever says jenny’s name in canon is when he is trying to help buffy figure out her own dreams and her own grief over angel. this is not a man who has the capability to actually unpack the profound loneliness that he is now being forced to face -- the fact that this was someone he connected with on a level that i think he recognizes is so fucking rare and impossible.

because jenny was SO SPECIAL! jenny was someone who was intelligent enough to keep up with giles, mean enough to enjoy the side of him that’s an asshole academic, and compassionate enough to enjoy the side of him that’s a gentle and conscientious lover. jenny was just as guarded and frightened by the prospect of real love as giles was, and just as dedicated to forging ahead and holding his hand. jenny’s family situation enabled her to FULLY understand the complex ties that kept giles shackled to a destiny he didn’t believe in, all without trying to change him or trying to push him further towards being a Better Watcher. jenny, despite being smart, gorgeous, adventurous, and refreshingly normal in a way that i think giles really wanted, understood on a critical level that she would never fully come first in giles’s life, and was completely okay with that, because he would never fully come first in hers. 

so there is also this component of -- giles found his person. this was a once in a lifetime connection with someone who made him feel seen and loved as his whole self -- not ripper, not rupert, but him -- and she is dead. remembering her means facing the fact that in his mind, he is never going to feel that kind of love from another person again, let alone a person who he loves just as much.

which is to say: there are no pictures of jenny in giles’s house. he keeps them locked away and never looks at them. they are there, just like her memory is there -- there for historical reasons, academic reasons, pieces of information to be catalogued so that they can be used to help other people. there can never be an emotional component to jenny’s death again, because those emotions will make him a useless watcher. because there is no version of giles that wouldn’t sell out the world in a heartbeat to get jenny back, and the only way to stop himself from destroying the world he’s pledged to protect is to burn out every last little piece of love he feels for her.

*Unpopular opinion: i think Faith is a good character but at the same time she is not. The writers didn't use her character to the fullest like they did with Spike

Spike has what people want for Faith/ want her to be

So, I think it might be more accurate to say that Faith was a good idea, with poor execution.

This might not be 100% coherent, but let's run with it. The concept of the "dark" side of slaying, and thus the "dark" side of Buffy, is a potentially fun concept. In season 4 there's the concept of the "Id" and the 'ego' and that's when Buffy turns into a cave woman. It would've been interesting to see that level of commitment to her descent to the "dark side" by the time we hit Bad Girls. Most of Faith and Buffy's interactions are Faith trying to connect with Buffy, and Buffy pushing her away, and Buffy only ever really engaging with Faith when someone else (Willow, Giles, Joyce) push her to actually try to connect or reach out. Even when Buffy expresses concern about Faith not really spending time with them, she doesn't do anything about it. So if Faith is supposed to be the Iago to Buffy's Othello, then we should see Buffy becoming less and less stringent and rigid and by the time we hit Bad Girls, we see Buffy *completely* give in so this point, is believable and makes sense:

And Faith as a character is basically just a foil for Buffy. The bones are there, she's the opposite of Buffy; wild, out of control, emotional, impulsive and hypersexual. Cool. Then they give her a backstory with losing her Watcher, that's great. But, things don't really hold up later. When she and Angel are preparing to torture Buffy, she's going off abut how Sunnydale was supposed to be her town. Why would she think that? She came to Sunnydale *knowing* another Slayer was already there.

So why was she upset? After killing the Mayor's aid we spend a lot of time with Buffy and how she feels about it, she has nightmares and is quiet and withdrawn. But we spend 0 time on faith after she tells Buffy she doesn't feel anything. We see her go back to the body, but because we don't get into her psychology, everything she does from that moment seems to be solely in service of the plot. She and Angel have had 0 scenes alone until she's already working for the Mayor, and while in *theory* I could understand Faith leaning into actually single white femaling Buffy, which is great foreshadowing from earlier. But because her interest in Angel prior to this moment had wholly been theoretical. Faith flirted with Scott Hope but after he dumps Buffy, Faith deliberately embarrasses him FOR Buffy. This interaction is right before Faith tries to seduce him.

And then suddenly she's COMPLETELY into Angel and the fact that he's with her and not Buffy? Why? It'd be different if it was just a task she was accomplishing for the Mayor, but taking Angel's soul and then getting with him is supposed to indicate "how far gone" she is, except there's no real reason for Faith to be doing any of this.

After she kills the Mayor's aid. Why does she think her only option is going to the Mayor? I can understand her being angry at Buffy for trying to "save" her by potentially getting her in trouble. But The Mayor is so left and really shouldn't have being her SECOND step after accidental homicide. And then, she's SO angry at Buffy. For what? Resenting her for having the perfect life and the friends and the boyfriend...sure, but again, after their first rocky intro, we never see any inkling Faith still cares about those things. Just that she's insecure about *her* situation. Until this:

And now I guess she's just a full blown killer now.

And so much of Faith's interiority is narrated through Angel especially and sometimes Buffy and it would've been a lot better character development if they SHOWED us her descent rather than narrating it. Angel saying. "she's taken a life, she's got a taste for it now." Should be confirmation, not an explanation. We should be seeing Faith spiral, and not feeling supported before she even gets to the Mayor. But we don't.

So yeah, Faith was a cool idea, and had some interesting story moments but not enough for me to feel like she was really a part of the main storyline, and getting any of the real development she needed for me to really believe her choices post mayor's aid.

Slayer of Slayers

Warnings:I do not own, nor do I claim to own any of the copyright or characters within the Buffyverse which includes but not limited to the television shows Buffy and Angel, as well as the Darkhorse comics series’ continuation.

15+ Strong to moderate violence, Graphic to mild descriptions of gore, and torture, sexually charged scenes, sexual innuendos, mild to strong language, and practices of witchcraft.

M/M, F/F, M/F, GEN, OTHER +

PART SIX LINK HERE

Part Seven - Rogues

1928

Spike found himself running through woods in the middle of the night in search of his beloved Drusilla only to find his sire dancing on a field, which had been scorched by fire, as the raven-haired vampire continued swaying from side to side, laughing away at herself in the process making Spike curious to what she was up to now. “Dru, what are you doing out here?” Spike asked the woman he loved as he walked towards her, pulled her body into his arms, and began dancing with Drusilla. “Here on these very grounds lies a future of torment, torture, and agonizing pain…it’s so delicious it makes me giddy!” Drusilla replied as she continued to slow dance with her immortal lover. “One day I’m going to raise a family right here, and will almost be worth all that I’ll have to lose before then…” “I was worried you got yourself killed babe; you know you’re not at your full strength,” Spike confessed admitting his fears for her. “Oh, my dear William, I will be the only one who will not die, not once, even at times when I’m so lonely I wish I would die…” Drusilla sighed with a profound sense of sadness, wanting to stay in that moment but knowing the future was coming. “You’ll always have me!” Spike protested, meaning what he said with all his heart but not knowing what the future would hold for him and the woman he loved more than he could ever imagine loving someone…at the time.

1977

Following Angelus leaving her after regaining his soul and Darla returning to The Master, Drusilla knew her time with Spike was nearing an end, that the quest for her to become strong again would be the beginning of the end for them both and despite how much sadness the thought of losing her beloved Spike one day, she knew her and Spike’s trip to New York would bring some happiness to them both as Spike set out to kill his second vampire slayer, Nikki Wood, while Drusilla set her sights on siring a new vampire, the first child of her new family. Drusilla had spent most of the night watching Tobias from a distance, she followed him as he walked home from his work at a diner nearby to his rundown studio apartment, watched him as he got strung up on drugs, and noticed that this man was far from the one she had seen in her visions. At first glance, this man was no more than a depressed junkie who without her input would die a nobody within a matter of years, but as she watched him further, she began to see the potential hidden deep within him and decided to make her move. “How sad a life you must live to need to block it out with every toxin available to you.” Drusilla greeted Tobias after he opened his apartment door to her, the vampire waiting in the hallway, ready to claim him as her own. “I can feel your pain as if it was my own and I know you are so lost you think you cannot find a way out of your despair, but mummy can make everything all better.” “Did Mick send you? He always did like his girls crazy as hell, just hand me the drugs already and tell Mick I’ll pay him when I get my wages from the diner.” Tobias replied to her, having no clue who she really was nor what she had planned for him. “I do not know this Mick, but I do know you, Tobias, I know who you are now, but I also know who you can be. I can give you meaning in this world, a purpose, and a love that will consume you…you will never be alone!” Drusilla said in a rather convincing tone, acting if she was the answer to his many troubles. “Whatever you are on lady…I want some.” Tobias responded in a mocking tone, confused by who this woman was and what she wanted from him. “I can you make you stronger than you ever imagined, give to you a family you have always longed for, make you part of something truly incredible and even lead you to the love of your life…once I make you worthy of him of course,” Drusilla promised the young man, knowing this time that her words were somewhat resonating with him, tempting him to give her a chance to prove she was telling him the truth, a chance which she would use to turn him into a vampire-like her…

The 2000s

Drusilla stood in the same field she had once stood in the late 20s, but what was now standing there was the abandoned building of an insane asylum, a building which had been built, used, and abandoned within the years since she had last visited this field. and the vampire could not prepare her eyes, for the place was even more beautiful, to her at least, than she found it in her many visions, and now that she had lost her beloved Spike, she could at least find some salvage in claiming the home she had dreamed off for many decades now. “It’s been a long time my darling boy, mummy would be so mad at you if you were not the only family, I had left…for now,” Drusilla told Tobias as he began walking up towards his sire until he was stood next to her. “I really did love that man just like I loved Angelus and grandmother, but they are all gone now…” “I still do not understand why you wasted so much time on that peroxide prick but then I’ve never been in love, if it were not for you, I’d have found it impossible for any vampire,” Tobias replied to the vampire who had created him. “You’ve certainly had your fair share of conquests though; you’ve been a very naughty boy but the time for you to settle down with your forever love is coming soon and mummy could not be more excited,” Drusilla revealed to him, knowing she was going closer to forming a new family, one she believed would be even better than the ones that came before.

Modern Day…

Buffy and Spike’s on/off relationship had reached its inevitable end almost two years ago, when their last split led to Buffy’s one night stand with Angel resulting in a baby which led to Buffy going M.I.A. after losing that baby, and in her absence, Spike had taken over the duties of protecting the city of San Francisco, a city which included Buffy’s sister Dawn Summers, Dawn’s daughter Joyce Harris, and Spike’s on/off roommate Xander Harris in its population. And it was during his patrolling duties within a local cemetery in the city of San Francisco that he was reunited with an old friend, one who would lead him into joining a mission to kill the first woman he ever loved… “Sneaking up on a vampire is a rather foolish move considering the heightened bloody hearing and everything,” Spike shouted into the dark night as he turned around looking for a face to come out of the shadows. “Calm down Spike I was merely trying to surprise an old friend.” Ruby Moon stated as she appeared from out of the shadows. “Someone who I owe my life to and yet have the audacity to ask another favor of.” “Well, if it isn’t the little witch, I helped break free from my ex-Dru’s crazy cult,” Spike said with a smile on his face, happy to see the witch in question. “I heard you were all suburban wife again living the normal life or as close to it as one can get married to one of Riley Finn’s G.I. blows.” “It’s good to see you again too!” Ruby responded with a chuckle as she walked towards the vampire, whom she considered being a good friend, one who she knew she could rely on. “So, go on and tell me what you need saving from this time? Please do not tell me your back being the ex’s magical minion again because you only get one save from that, the second time is on you!” Spike told her with a level of sarcasm, knowing he was about to help her again no matter what situation she had now found herself in. “Remember the friend we left behind? The one crazy enough to consider Drusilla as family. Well, he’s forming a team to kill that ex of yours, and something tells me you will want to be part of that team.” Ruby revealed to the vampire. “I’ve put Dru in my past and if you are smart you would too, let this friend of yours go it alone if he’s so determined serves him right for not getting out when you gave him the option anyway.” Spike rejected her offer, not loving Drusilla anymore but not wanting to be part of her death either. “This friend of mine is Theo Frey, and it just so turns out his mother happens to be your latest ex Buffy Summers’ son, I figured telling you that would help change your mind and everything considering you do not want to be the one telling the slayer that you had a chance to save her son and said no.” Ruby continued with her revelations, shocking Spike by the latest, knowing with certainty he would not reject her offer a second time.

Elsewhere, back in the city of Los Angeles, Theo Frey was once again stood behind his now run-down dive bar, the one he shared with his now-dead again lover Tobias, frozen in thought, with tears in his eyes, as he began to wonder whether Tobias was as guilty as Drusilla for killing his parents, wondering if his entire relationship with Tobias was just a lie and he had been nothing more than a fool to both him and his sire Drusilla. Suddenly, the very place he returned to for comfort, the place he lived with Tobias, and the place they have both called home, had become nothing more than a place of ruins holding memories of a past that the vampire/slayer hybrid could no longer believe to be true after Ruby’s recent revelations. “I did not think I would be seeing you again especially in the place you almost burned to the ground.” Theo declared after drying his eyes, as Faith Lehane, the vampire slayer determined on pestering him forever, walked into what remained of his demonic little dive bar. “Well, it’s not like you can be picky with your customers considering you only have half a bar these days.” Faith joked with the vampire as she walked over to the counter cautiously. “Your little friend Ruby left me this really sketchy video about you and her going to take out Drusilla and now Spike seems to be in on this little mission so I threw my hat in the ring considering you could do with another super strength in the ring, and something tells me you’re not exactly going to be hitting up B or Angel anytime soon…” “Ruby said something of getting some vamp help, but she never said anything about Spike and as for you no thanks, the last time I played with you, you turned my lover into ashes, well your blue-haired pet did anyway.” Theo snapped at the slayer, refusing to team up with her after their complicated history. “I get that you do not trust me, and I do not trust you but here’s the thing Dru’s a big player and she’s made an enemy of everyone not just you so, swallow your pride dude, and take the help I mean it’s better taking too much firepower to the vengeance party than winding up losing her…she’s survived this long for a reason kiddo.” Faith advised the slayer of slayers, trying to convince him to accept her help. “If B hears I’m not going you know she’s going to get herself involved, I mean it was hard enough telling her to sit this one out like it and I will not even get you started on Angel…” “Killing Drusilla…it does not mean I’m suddenly team slayer or anything, it just means, for now, she’s number one on my hitlist…” Theo explained to her. “I will not protect you; I will not save you, and I most certainly will not thank you.” “Well, that sure as hell seems like a yes to me.” Faith smirked, knowing Theo would rather chance to trust her, than giving Drusilla too much of an opportunity to escape his vengeance. Once Theo reluctantly agreed to work alongside Faith, and Ruby returned to Los Angeles with Spike in tow, the team consisting of a vampire slayer turned vampire, a rogue slayer turned good, a vampire with a soul, and a powerful witch began planning to strike Drusilla where she’s least expected to be attacked, at the one place she called home…

Faith, Theo, Ruby, and Spike found themselves deep within the woods, the same woods that Spike had once visited many years ago, and the same woods Theo and Ruby knew all too well thanks to their time with Drusilla, and before long the group of rogues had found themselves standing outside of the abandoned insane asylum, boarded up with planks of wood that themselves had been broken, with smashed windows, and a general sense of abandonment, abandoned in the middle of nowhere, the road to it long gone, hidden in shame of its own secrets A truly horrifying, and haunted place filled with misery from its past, and the perfect home for an insane vampire-like Drusilla. “I get you’re on mission vengeance and everything here Theo but what are the chances you are going to turn us all and lead us into some kind of slaughter?” Faith asked Theo, as the four remained hidden within the trees, beginning to question Theo’s loyalty towards this team of rogues. “The only person I hate more than you and the blue haired bitch is Drusilla so as long as she is alive you are safe but the minute, she’s dead we’re back to being enemies,” Theo answered honestly, making it clear he had no intention of seeking redemption. “He looks like Angel speaks like Angelus and smells like Buffy,” Spike stated, referring to Theo’s similarities with his biological parents. “Got to say it’s as hot as it is annoying!” “Listen up do not let your past get in the way of dusting Drusilla once and for all or else you’ll be joining your ex in the afterlife!” Theo quickly threatened Spike, proving he distrusted them as much as they distrusted him. “You were her minion just days ago I was her equal, if we have to worry about anyone getting second thoughts then it's you, not me!” Spike responded, making it clear he was down to do what needed to be done. “She killed my parents, there’s no going back for me even if it kills me, you better know it's going to kill her too!” Theo declared defiantly as he prepared for the fight of his undead life.

Instead of just charging into the abandoned asylum, Theo decided to get his poker face on, going in first and playing nice with his former mentor Drusilla, as he got a layout of where her minions had placed themselves, knowing the vampire was always ready for an attack, ready to strike before anyone else, as her asylum had become her armed kingdom. Despite the disgust over having to pretend not to entirely loathe the woman that had killed the parents who had raised him since birth, Theo knew it would be worth the cost once he ended the night plunging a wooden stake into Drusilla’s chest if he could convince her that he was still an ally of hers, the problem, of course, being Drusilla was always one step ahead. “My first family was taken by Angelus before he decided to take me too…” Drusilla told Theo as they walked down one of the many hallways found within the abandoned asylum that Drusilla used as her headquarters. “But then I found a new one with him and Darla, then my Spike but your mother took that all from me which is why I found it so fitting that I was the one to take you from her…but you were never really mine were you?” “What are you talking about? I believed your every word, did every demand and loved you like a son, I have been loyal to you since the first time I met you and I continue to be.” Theo argued with her, fearing she already knew of his intentions to kill her. “I took you into my home and loved you like a son, I even loved you when you took Tobias from me because I knew that was the way things had to be but now you’re too far gone for me to save…” Drusilla said with a great sense of sadness as the two stopped walking, and Theo noticed vampires appearing from both ends of the hallway, as he realized she was the one ambushing him. “The only thing I can do for you now is killing you and hope you are reunited with Tobias in whatever hellish dimension you are sent to.” “You really do see everything coming, don’t you?” Theo asked as he pulled out a wooden stake from his jacket pocket. “You killed my parents, pretended to save me, and had me fooled to think you as my savior all this time! I trusted you…I fought for you…I loved you!” “Everything I did I did to make you who you are today, the slayer of slayers, the world’s first self-sired vampire and you repay me with siding with the very same people who abandoned you without a second thought,” Drusilla replied, as she pulled out a wooden stake of her own from out of the side of her dress, as her minions cautiously walked closer to them both, ready to help their master if Theo got the upper hand. “I don’t give a shit about them! I gave a shit about my parents, the ones who raised me, who loved me, and you took them from me!” Theo shouted at her furiously. “My whole life has been one big lie and you’re the one telling the twisted tale.” “I loved you as much as someone like me could ever love anybody…you were more my son than perhaps even Tobias, I had such high hopes for you and now you’re letting something as mortal as dead humans affect your emotions making you dumb, dumb, dumb,” Drusilla responded before going on to reveal. “My vision had two endings you know…one where you were her ending and another where she was yours, I guess we both know now what ending you have chosen.” Suddenly, the two vampires who had once considered themselves to be like mother and son were now ready to fight to the death against each other, both feeling equal as betrayed as the other, Theo having perfectly reasonable reasons to feel betrayed by her, and Drusilla in her mind only having reasons of her own.

Meanwhile, just outside of the abandoned insane asylum, where Drusilla and Theo were beginning to battle each other, Faith, Spike, and Ruby remained to hide behind the same trees where Theo had left the three of them as they awaited a signal from the vampire slayer/vampire hybrid to know when to come into the fight, not realizing that Drusilla already had the upper hand on them all. “I know he’s Buffy’s kid, Angel’s too, but at what point do we just bail on this and let the two vamps fight it out between themselves?” Spike asked the vampire slayer, and witch, who he was stood next to. “I mean this guy is just as evil as everything else we tend to kill so why don’t we leave it to Drusilla to kill him instead of one of us killing the kid?” “I am not going anywhere!” Ruby said defiantly, refusing to give up on her former best friend. “I have known Theo my whole life, you two only know the evil side to him but I’ve seen the best and worst of him and I was there when he lost everything…despite that there’s still good in him.” “Well, I do not bloody see it,” Spike replied to the brown-haired witch. “But I am not leaving you to die out here!” “I saw it…in the way he loved that vamp Toby or whatever, they loved each other as I’ve never seen anyone love each other, except maybe Buffy and Angel.” Faith confessed, once again standing up for the slayer of slayers, feeling now more than ever before that his redemption was drawing nearer. Suddenly, the sound of a window-smashing grabbed their attention, as they turned to see a vampire falling from the top floor window before hitting the ground with force, before getting back onto his feet and running back into the asylum via a side door, and although this was not the signal they agreed on, it was clear to Faith, Spike, and Ruby that Theo was in trouble and now was the time to act.

Theo’s fight against Drusilla was unfair in every way as each time he gained the upper hand against his former undead mentor, her vampire army would attack him, and before long he was down on the floor, bloody, bruised, and beaten, while being pinned down by several vampires as Drusilla stood above him, ready to plunge the wooden stake she held into his chest and end him once and for all. “You have been such a naughty boy Theodore,” Drusilla stated with a look of struggle in her eyes as she kneeled over Theo’s body, clearly finding great difficulty with the fact she was about to kill someone she once loved like a son. “All I ever wanted was to be your mother…but she gets her claws into everyone I love.” “Get it over with already!” Theo shouted at her, ready to admit his defeat, accept his fate, and let his miserable life come to an end. And Drusilla did just what she was told, as tears formed in her eyes, she plunged the stake into Theo’s death while letting out a frantic scream at the same time, before falling backward and beginning to sob manically for a moment, only to be left just as stunned as Theo himself as he did not turn to dust, but instead, pulled the stake out of his chest, and rose back onto his feet. Before Theo or Drusilla could even usher a single word to display their joined shock at the fact that Theo was somehow still alive, the surrounding vampires, very recently loyal to Drusilla, began to kneel for Theo, displaying the change in loyalty, now towards the slayer of slayers, as Drusilla quickly rose to her feet and made her way out of the exit located nearest to her, as a shocked Theo continued to look at the vampires kneeling before him, still in shock, as the stake he was holding, which was just plunged into his chest, fell to the ground. “You are our new master now!” One of the vampires declared as Theo continued to just stand there in shock. “A vampire that cannot die, the true immortal, the true heir to the undead kingdom!” Another declared, followed by cheers from fellow vampires, just as Faith, Spike, and Ruby rushed into the hallway from the exit farthest away from them all, only to stop in their tracks by the shocking sight in front of them. “Theo…” Ruby shouted towards her former friend, having no idea what all this meant, or what would follow, as the slayer of slayers was declared king among the vampires…

TV Show Soundtracks, and Why Buffy’s is So Great

There are a lot of ways in which Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an incredibly intelligent and well-crafted show, so much so that there are tiny details in the costumes, the acting, the set, etc. that you only notice after your fourth or fifth rewatch. One of the places where you can see how much care went into the production is the soundtrack. Buffy had a lot of different composers, some of which would compose the soundtrack for a few of the episodes and some of which were the primary composer for entire seasons. Some of the most prominent composers include Christophe Beck, who was one of the main composers for season 2, the sole composer for seasons 3 and 4, and composer for one episode in season 5 and one in season 6; Thomas Wanker, who was the main composer for seasons 5 and 6; and Robert Duncan, who was one of the main composers for season 7 (a complete list of Buffy composers can be found here). I’m mostly interested in these three composers because they wrote a great deal of the music overall, and their music tracks are most important in terms of what I hope to convey here, which is that one of the best things about the Buffy orchestral score is how beautiful it sounds and how smartly it is utilized. To convey my point, I will explore the use of music in the show, especially in the season 5 finale, ‘The Gift.’

WARNING: gonna be lots of Buffy spoilers. Mostly just up to the season 5 finale, but possibly smaller spoilers for seasons 6 and 7 as well.

A TV show doesn’t need a fantastic soundtrack to be good — many shows have a more minimalistic, atmospheric score which serves its purpose. A lot of shows also use contemporary pop songs instead of an orchestral soundtrack (which Buffy also does). However, I think having a good orchestral soundtrack elevates a show to an even higher level, and can add layers of emotional complexity that would otherwise have been absent. To achieve this greater emotional depth, I argue that there are two main criteria a score must have: music that is enjoyable to listen to, and music that is intelligently employed.

It’s difficult to define what ‘enjoyable’ music is. Any song is going to reach some people and not others. However, some are definitely more likely to create a response in people. It is important for composers to make soundtracks that create an emotional reaction in the viewer. Some composers do this very subtly, and others more saliently. There is no definitive way to determine if music is good or not — that is completely up to the individual. However, I’d argue that there are some composers who are better at creating a consistent emotional reaction in viewers. (If you’re interested, a few composers I love include Ludovico Einaudi, Murray Gold, my man Christophe Beck, Rachel Portman, Thomas Newman, and Joe Hisaishi. I would definitely recommend checking their stuff out if you’re into soundtracks.)

The second criterion for a good TV score, which I will be discussing in more detail, is that it is intelligently employed. What I mean by intelligently employed is that the music is thoughtfully applied to the story. This ultimately ties back to emotional reaction as well -- if the people behind the scenes are smart in where they put the tracks, they’ll create a stronger reaction in the viewer. Soundtrack is best employed when certain tracks, or leitmotifs, are used for specific characters, ideas, or plot threads, without being over- or underapplied. If you just slap the same track over every single emotional scene in a show, or add a random new track when you could have reused one that relates back to the character/theme in the scene, you’ll be missing out on a chance to create a response in the viewers.

Before I continue, I just want to quickly clarify that a leitmotif is essentially a small chunk of music that is associated with a specific character, relationship, setting, or idea. Basically, it’s a theme, and is tied exclusively to a certain element in the story. For this essay, I will be using leitmotif sometimes to refer to an entire track that is tied to a story element, and sometimes to refer to a shorter phrase of music, which may sometimes be contained in larger tracks. That’s not super important, though. Basically, leitmotif = theme for a specific thing.

When a leitmotif is given to a specific story element, such as a character, then using the leitmotif in scenes that are significant to that character gives the viewer a sense of familiarity and nostalgia. This is especially great if the character has been gone for a while and has just returned, or if they have died and the leitmotif is used while other characters are remembering them. Leitmotifs can be used to draw subtle parallels to earlier episodes or certain story arcs, and if the viewer is paying attention then they will be able to understand the show in a deeper way.

Some shows have great music but a poor application of it. One example of this is BBC’s Merlin. For the record, I am not dragging the composers here, because they did a beautiful job and created some great music for the show (if you want to check out the soundtrack, a few tracks I love are ‘The Burial’/’Merlin Buries Lancelot’ by Michal Pavlíček, ‘Merlin Lost’ by Rob Lane, ‘Farewell to Gwen’ by Rohan Stevenson, and any of the suites from the finales). I don’t know who actually makes the decisions about which tracks to put where in a show. It probably differs from show to show, depending on how involved the composers are. Budget probably also plays a role, with some shows being forced to reuse music if they can’t afford a full score for every single season. With all this in mind, Merlin has a lovely soundtrack, but hardly any thought went into its application. Songs are reused constantly, to the point where they have no special attachment to specific story elements, and therefore carry no emotional meaning. You won’t gain very much insight into the text when you hear them, and they appear so often that you lose the emotional reaction you once had to them. Simply put, the Merlin soundtrack is not intelligently employed.

There are a lot of shows with great soundtracks that follow these criteria of emotional reaction and intelligent employment. A few that I know of include Once Upon a Time (composer Mark Isham), Sherlock (composers David Arnold and Michael Price), and Doctor Who (composer Murray Gold from s1-10, and Segun Akinola from s11-present). I especially love Murray Gold’s work in Doctor Who — he created a leitmotif for every single Doctor, practically every companion, and even for some of the major villains, and the music would sometimes even be used to foreshadow the return of a character. I could write several dozen essays about the thought that went into Murray Gold’s composition, though that obviously isn’t the point of this particular piece.

Now onto Buffy. Buffy has such a wonderful soundtrack because the music is enjoyable and emotionally evocative (in my opinion), and it is very smartly employed. The show has certain tracks it reuses which hold significant meaning, and that are used throughout an entire season, or several seasons. Some of these include the Angel/Buffy theme (plus an Angel/Buffy breakup theme used towards the end of season 3), the Buffy/Riley theme, the Spike/Buffy theme, the Giles/Ms Calendar theme, the Tara/Willow theme, and doubtless many others that I haven’t noticed yet. As you can see, the Buffy composers are big on relationship leitmotifs which often span multiple seasons. There are leitmotifs for recurring ideas as well, like Joyce’s illness in season 5. All of these are used over many episodes. They create an emotional reaction in the viewer because they carry a sense of familiarity, tie plot arcs together, and give you nostalgic feelings towards character relationships.

Other tracks in Buffy are limited to a single episode or a single scene, instead of being reused frequently. Because of this, they pack a lot of emotion and make the scene or episode even more memorable. Think the score for ‘Hush’; ‘Restless’; the track ‘Slayer’s Elegy,’ which plays during the big final fight scene in ‘The Wish’; or the track ‘Spellbound,’ which plays during the Faith/Riley-Willow/Tara sex/magic parallel scene in ‘Who Are You’ (by the way, all of these episode scores were composed by Christophe Beck). The track ‘Spellbound’ is actually sort of an extended version of the Willow/Tara leitmotif. 'Spellbound' only plays in one scene, and it’s my favourite track in the entire show. By using certain tracks sparingly, instead of overapplying them, the composers can create a memorable musical experience out of a single scene or episode.

Some tracks get reused across episodes, but only once or twice, instead of many times. They may be attached to a very particular setting or idea. Reusing this kind of track in a later episode draws you directly back to the previous time it was used, creating a sense of familiarity and reminding you that you have encountered this sort of thing before. For example, there is a track called ‘Little Miss Muffet’ by Christophe Beck, which appears in the dream sequence shared by Faith and Buffy in the season 3 finale, ‘Graduation Day Part 2.’ This track does not appear again until part way through season 4, when a version of it plays in the episode ‘This Year’s Girl.’ It appears during the opening scene of the episode when Faith and Buffy are sharing another dream together, establishing it as the leitmotif for Faith/Buffy dream sequences.

Even when you aren’t consciously aware of the significance of every leitmotif in Buffy, they still create subtle emotional reactions in you which help you engage with the story better.

To wrap up my point, I want to offer an example of a fantastic track in Buffy and how it is used to draw viewers to a specific moment and create an intense emotional reaction. One of the absolute best episodes of Buffy is the season 5 finale, ‘The Gift.’ One of the many great things about it is the soundtrack, done by composer Christophe Beck (who also composes the orchestral score for Frozen, Frozen 2, Bring It On, WandaVision, and Ant-Man). Christophe Beck came back to the show to compose for this episode, and the most important track he created was ‘Sacrifice.’ From what I’ve observed, there are only three instances in which this leitmotif is used: twice in ‘The Gift,’ including Buffy’s pivotal final scene, and once in ‘Bargaining Part 2’ from season 6. The most important time that ‘Sacrifice’ is used is obviously when Buffy is sacrificing her life for Dawn’s at the end of ‘The Gift’; that’s why the track is called what it is. The track is used earlier on in ‘The Gift’ when Buffy and Giles are talking as they prepare for the final battle, and Buffy expresses her exhaustion with life and her vow that if Dawn dies she will stop being the Slayer. The use of ‘Sacrifice’ here is to foreshadow what’s to come. The longing for rest Buffy feels, and her wish to stop being the Slayer, will both be fulfilled when she dies at the end of the episode. The track is used in this scene to hint at what’s to come for viewers. The track is repeated in the second part of the season 6 opener, ‘Bargaining Part 2,’ when Buffy is standing at the top of the tower shortly after being brought back to life. This entire scene is a very deliberate callback for viewers as well as for Buffy: she is standing right where she was when she died, flashback clips play of her final moments, and Buffy repeats her own words to Dawn from ‘The Gift.’ Using the track ‘Sacrifice’ in this scene helps make the callback even more obvious. The song is able to elicit an extreme emotional memory for the audience, which the familiar setting and flashback clips may not have been able to create on their own. It reminds you not just of what happened in the season 5 finale, but of how you felt.

Of course, this foreshadowing and flashback use of ‘Sacrifice’ would not be as emotionally effective if Buffy’s last scene from ‘The Gift’ wasn’t such a fantastic scene, the song so skillfully employed, and the song itself so beautiful. ‘Sacrifice’ is one of my favourite tracks in Buffy. I love playing it on the piano. I love listening to it. When it plays at the end of ‘The Gift,’ it makes me almost cry. It’s saved for one of the most significant scenes in the entire series. The emotions are so elevated because soon after ‘Sacrifice’ starts playing, the rest of the audio is stripped away. All you can hear is Christophe Beck’s music and Buffy’s voice as she says her final words to Dawn, overlaid with silent shots of Buffy’s body, her heartbroken friends, and finally her gravestone.

In summary, I think the Buffy soundtrack is especially strong for a TV show, since it not only features breathtaking music but carefully applies that music to create the best emotional response from the viewers. TV shows don’t require a fantastic soundtrack to be successful, but I definitely think that the strength of the soundtrack makes Buffy infinitely better than what it would have been without it. The orchestral soundtrack for Buffy sadly isn’t available on Spotify or Apple Music at this time (though the soundtrack for the musical episode is). However, if you like instrumental scores, the official Buffy soundtrack can be found in various places on YouTube, and there are also many people who upload unofficial tracks (including here and here). Either way, I would definitely recommend checking out the music, or at least paying closer attention to it next time you watch Buffy. The creators clearly put a great deal of thought into it, and once you start recognizing the leitmotifs of the show, it reveals a whole hidden layer of storytelling.

what played differently positively and negatively on your buffy rewatch?

putting under a cut because this got long! disclaimer: this is all just my personal opinions and reactions, nothing objective or definitive. also when i talk about how i reacted “as a teenager” i mean from ages 13-16 rather than more mature teenage years. i did revisit the show briefly around 18, but don’t remember what i thought. so i’m comparing how i watched it at ~15 to how i watched it at 27, basically.

negative:

- a lot of trouble connecting to the more high school elements of the show. i just grew out of caring about teenagers, unfortunately. so i got impatient with a lot of seasons one and three, and some parts of two. which was really a shame, since i used to pretty unreservedly adore those seasons.

- in that vein, a lot of trouble connecting to buffy/angel. partly because adult men are no longer as opaque to me as they are to buffy, and so although i respect what the writing was going for by objectifying angel, it was still frustrating to feel like i wasn’t given much to go on as far as understanding his character motivation or why he and buffy were drawn to each other. boreanaz’s acting also got in the way of my enjoyment, unfortunately. i have nothing against the pairing, as a pairing, and i like a lot of the writing around it, but it lost the ability to give me any of the feelings it gave me as a teenager. i was sad about this!

- having seen a lot more movies and tv shows by now, buffy’s often ungainly execution was difficult to ignore. there are a lot of jokes that just strike me as clunky and unfunny, pacing i thought was slow, character writing i thought was dumb, etc.

- all the parts that haven’t aged well from a political perspective (some of which people complained about at the time too, of course). the weird attention given to xander’s self-deprecating possessiveness, terrible jokes like the one about the first slayer’s hair in restless, baffling moments of sexism, an often facile approach to gender politics, etc.

positive:

- i wasn’t a dumb teenager, but i wasn’t sophisticated either. i didn’t have the analytical toolkit that i have now. so the biggest positive change was being hit over the head with the realization of how intricately and elegantly thematic the show could really be. the feeling of “oh shit, they were doing things.” when i got to the end of season six and saw buffy crawling out of that grave a second time i was just on the floor like “fuck you buffy the vampire slayer and the symbolism you rode in on.” overall i gained a lot of respect for it as tv with literary tendencies. as messy as the show could be, and as superficially “pop” as it was (as in, it wasn’t a prestige-y hbo show), it’s one of the few tv shows i’ve seen that is clearly and consistently “about” something, both from season to season and over the course of the whole show. one of the few good comparisons i have is the wire, which is consistently about institutional decay and how systems fail people, and then explores that idea from season to season by looking at different failing systems (crime, labor, reform, education, media, etc). similarly, buffy is (among other things) about the trials of growing up, and growing into a person that has agency and ownership of themselves. and each season explores that subject in new ways by putting buffy into new situations that challenge her to be mature in a way she hasn’t been before. the wire achieves literary coherence in a much more controlled, focused, and overall skillful way. but people know that the wire is Serious Art. buffy fascinates me in that it has similar aspirations while also being goofy, stupid, messy, unabashed genre entertainment. unabashed television, at that.

- in general, i also felt like i had a deeper understanding of a lot of the storylines. i’d always liked seasons six and seven, even when i felt like i wasn’t “supposed” to (and hey that was another nice thing about watching it as an adult. i no longer had a need to care about whether i was supposed to like something or not, because i felt confident in my own ability to assess that.), but i didn’t quite get them on that emotional level. this time though, i felt like i completely understood the experience that the writers were trying to convey. buffy’s struggle with mortality in season five, depression in season six, and isolation in season seven, all hit me unbelievably hard. even the college experience stuff in season four had new, added layers.

- in a weirdly equivalent-but-also-opposite situation to buffy/angel, my life experience colored how i received the whole buffy/spike storyline. on the one hand, i was newly able to properly appreciate that their season six story was a story about a toxic and self-destructive relationship. as a teenager i found it hot and engaging, but also sort of baffling; i couldn’t tell what the writers were going for. because i was so used to a sex = romance paradigm in tv, instead of the sex-as-character-writing that you see in more sophisticated media. similarly, i was finally able to understand the more disturbing sides of spike’s character, instead of just finding him funny and entertaining. yet instead of that understanding making the dynamic, or spike as a character, less interesting to me, it actually finally gave me an emotional “in” with it. it made things compellingly complicated instead of just confusing. i couldn’t be moved by it before, because i didn’t understand the emotional conflicts at play. whereas watching it with life experience that echoed it, a lot of it felt like being suckerpunched, in a good way.

- for whatever reason, i also found myself really enjoying the willow/tara dynamic. i was pretty dismissive of it as a teenager. i thought tara was dull, and resented the feeling from friends that i was supposed to like it just because it was gay. but i found them (and tara) very sweet this time around, in a pleasantly subtle way, and with more understanding of my own queerness, i appreciated things like how implicit their courtship in season four had to be, or their easy domesticity. and it meant that when their relationship fell apart in season six it genuinely made me sad instead of just “well alright.” and i really like it when stories affect me, whether or not the way it’s affecting me is a happy emotion.

- my love for buffy as a character like...quintupled. i’d always loved her but, as i’ve said, my enjoyment of the show was on the superficial side. i think i used to basically take her at face value, and accept everything she goes through as “well, that’s just what happens to protagonists of tv shows.” also, since i’d never related to the sorts of coming of age narratives typical of high school shows (popularity! boyfriends! virginity! cheerleaders! prom!), and i hadn’t experienced any of the things the show explores past season three, it was difficult to feel like buffy as a character was speaking to my own struggles in growing up. but now that i wasn’t expecting to relate to her, it was easier to see her face everything and go “man, you brave, amazing girl.” i felt like i could finally really appreciate her as a character, which made all the times that i did end up relating to her feel richer too.

- all the parts that have aged well. there have been great female protagonists since buffy (and great female protagonists before her), but few great female heroes. and buffy is kind of incredible for being both. i’ve said this before, but one of the great things about her as a character is that on the one hand, she’s able to participate in a hero narrative that is normally only the province of male characters, and be a source of admiration or inspiration that isn’t about gender. but on the other hand, she’s also allowed to be human...sometimes to people’s dismay, especially in the later seasons. and that duality, particularly in a female character, is deeply, deeply rare. buffy summers is just an utterly remarkable character, and consuming more media only made that more obvious to me. aside from buffy, i think many of the show’s more experimental choices have aged quite well, whether the format breaking episodes in season four, or the postmodernism of season six, or buffy’s mourning and depression in seasons five and six. i also really appreciated the show’s themes around forgiveness, atonement, responsibility, and agency, and found myself wishing that more contemporary things had them.

Having let the 15 x 18 percolate I started to watch again s23 and ep 1-6 of 15. Basically everything available. I'd gotten tired of feeling toyed with and feeling gaslit when trying to get confirmation from reviews for what I felt I was seeing. Ita very rarely in the dialogue but just in the eye lines and symbolically sometimes in the parallel plots.

Anyway: season 14 is a joy really. The beothere have grown up. I had been dishing the endless desperate loop of I d die for you wearing thin. Sam is basically cooked. A leader in the best sense (using his intelligence and his empathy). Dean accepts it even tho it's a bit new to him not being the boss. (The dialogue on chief)

We get that recognition more explicitly here that I found in my reviews of the early seasons that these are 2 very different men but now they have a degree of comfort and space in that that eluded them. They allow each other to be.

Which brings me to my predictions. Sam may be cooked but Dean isnt. Hes still not worked out who he is and how to have what he wants (cas basically).

So is Dean in love with Cas. Absolutely, i think this has been shown in subtext much more clearly than is Cas in love with Dean (I mean romantically/sexually). With Cas we see loyalty, devotion and affection. For an angel what does love mean? I was never quite sure. Does he want an actual relationship with Dean?

Dean's easier hes clearly incredibly attracted excited fascinated by cas in the initial phase. Then you get the affection, the liking, protectiveness. High point purgatory. Also devotedness.

In later seasons we get heartbroken widower and the co-parents/husbands. Plus their fights start to look more like a bickering couple that anything else.

So I am absolutely convinced that Dean is in love with cas.

But how aware is Dean of how he feels? I think hes so scared if being rejected by cas he can barely admit this to himself. Its telling Michael doesnt know how Dean feels about Cas. Theres lots of gay couples in the background by s23 early e15. I'd say it's an indicator Dean knows hed like to be with cas. Theres been no on screen hook ups for Dean (although there are references). But what we get now is acknowledging that a large part of Dean's flirting is social behaviour rather than sexual intent. It's nice, its charming but he doesnt mean it. (Pamela). So at some level Dean knows he wants to be together with Cas. He knows what he has with Cas. (Telling John he has a family - ok that goes wider than Cas but in my view early spn is Dean trying to grown beyond his father having the white picket fence and the girl always felt like something Dean felt he should want rather than something he really did want. The relationship with lisa is framed with lots of doing the chores and proper manly chores at that)

But I do think Dean knows how he feels. We are back to him having dialogue with Sam (Jess even comes up) with that typical early destiel trope of shots of Dean where I think the implication is that Dean is thinking about the same subject matter in relation to cas.

Sam knows but I think the malak box incident re Dean shows us that Sam knows when not to push Dean. He offers opportunities to open up but he doesnt push his brother. Like I said they get each other better now. It's not like when john dies and sam is pushing and pushing for a conversation. Now as cas and Dean's relationship falls apart we get a lot of pained reaction shots from sam. Just like we sometimes get the oh just kiss already smirk in earlier seasons. Sam doesn't understand why this relationship doesnt progress but he respects both cas and dean and doesnt meddle. I think when dean comes our Sam will be pivotal support.

What's interesting is that e15 as far as I have seen it seems to mirror early spn. Dean is mirroring his father. Obsessed with revenge at all costs. Neglecting love and relationships. The brothers are regressing into their old.relationship patterns under stress of mary dying with Dean taking up his rage filled leadership.role again. But the wierd thing is the endless we dont have a choice. Its tfw they have choice, they are all about choice. In fact Cas is choice embodied. He shouldn't have choice but he does. And over the seasons since the soul consumption he has grown remarkably in handling choices. To the extent that at the end of s14 he no longer refers to Dean's choice making on Jack. That's happened before with Kelly but then it was more ambiguous cos it got Cas dead. Then it was faith, he believes I Jack. With the malak box and Jack its ethics. Cas has grown up. Right through s14 its striking how wise he is, how he draws on experience and knowledge to counsel those around him.

I think there is a sharing of power, of burden, to come. The narrative of we shoulder all this so everyone.else can live the cute life we cant will be transformed. Basically buffy final season.

Cas professing his love for Dean. And by preparing what he wants is something he cant have I think is a totally non ambiguous profession of romantic and sexual love. He has friendship with Dean, he has family. What cas thinks he cant have is more that that. So without the fear of rejection Dean's wall can come down. I'm not sure how aware he is of what he feels because Dean can ne a dumbass, but he definitely feels it. Sam knows and will help once Dean opens up. That will take a while because Dean doesnt open up easily.

And finally a comment on the crying which oddly isnt in many of the fan vids. I think jensen is a great actor when it comes to emotional crying scenes. But we should appreciate that so far we have had weeping - tear tracks slowly with big exposition or dealing with grief wiping at his eyes. Or the meltdown, high octane crying very distressed generally life or death shit with Sam and a lot of emotion. We have never seen Dean crying into his hands like that. Curled up, despairing. I think that's another indicator that Dean absolutely knows how he feels about cas.

One final thing. Cas will be back, we wont have Dean at the end of spn with6the person he loves. Either in this world.or another its gonna happen.

Another thing I suspect is that we see with jack that while cas is the great reliable advice parent he cant bond as quickly emotionally as Dean. Its Dean who, when hes minded has the talent of emotional connection in a way cas and sam dont. The fishing expedition shows us that. Dean has the most trou ped connection to Jack, hes hated him wanted him dead. But hes also the one who gets the sunlit upland of fishing. Same as cas is the one who loves unconditionally when Mary is killed. He hugs jack. So when dean is ready to love cas publicly i think it wont be a huge thing of awkward shuffling feet. It'll be Dean doing what hes good at, loving people, but doing it with cas.

Ok I've only watched til episode 6. Gonna avoid spoilers from noe on and cross my fingers. Cant wait to watch it all.

#spn #supernatural #destiel #deancas

WicDiv

For three days that it took me to read The Wicked + The Divine, I’ve been calling it my rebound book. After a Buffy month it was something new and fun, and like it always is with rebounds, your ex was mentioned in the first issue.

So yeah, a classic rebound it was, an easy to get into universe with a familiar writer and artist, basically a sure thing. Now that I’ve finished it, I can’t say it’s left a deep cut or multiple debate points in my mind, because I loved almost everything about this book.

The good

At this point I know very well that when it’s a Kieron Gillen/Jamie McKelvie (possibly Matt Wilson) book, I would at least want to look at it (a lot).

I have said it before, and I will repeat it — I absolutely love McKelvie’s illustrations. I don’t know how it works for everyone else, but in my case when the art is good, I feel like the voices get more vivid, the images move, all comes together to drive the story forward. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that McKelvie rarely has any lazy panels (or even lazy elements). Everything is on the same high quality level. So even before reading WicDiv, regardless of the story, I knew that I’ll be hunting for trades or a hardcover, because of this art.

Jamie McKelvie is one of a few artists who can ask which character you would want to do, and get a reasonable answer.

Not to diminish the writing, and really that would be impossible. Kieron Gillen has proved his skill time and time again. The dialogue, and the wiseass speeches. Everything flows really well, and the duo gives you the feeling of stepping from a street filled with smells of puke and piss into a suit with cocaine and sex on the menu. And yeah, there is a lot of sex in this book, so much that I think I forgot half of the canon ships.

The world itself is built with care and attention, I can’t ignore that mostly because often writers would just throw in fun stuff without doing proper research. This isn’t the case here, you can see how much work has been put into it, and if nothing else, the creators’ comments give you a glimpse. Which also shows how much they really care about the story.

The bad

This will be a short one. My only problem with WicDiv was chaotic pacing, which is understandable, and could be a personal issue. I prefer a more careful, slow and thorough process of character development, so I wouldn’t mind some more of the “before” stories. Like who were these characters, how did they come to their divinity, how they dealt with it, what parts of themselves they had to give up. These are answered for some of them, but others were left a mystery.

At the same time there is a definitive ending, something that while makes sense to the story, doesn’t leave much to the interpretation. But again, might be just me, I’m a sucker for a finale that poses a question (yes, the alley scene in Angel was brutally perfect).

The story

After reading the first few issues, I felt like the story took a while to get moving. I got hooked because of the premise, but the events were merely short pieces, that took a while to come together. It felt like a bunch of sketches and maybe was too jumpy for my taste. But issue after issue, as you get used to the style, you start getting it, and somewhere at 2/5 you can’t stop reading. It’s a mystery, that plays around with the concept of superpowers and fame. It’s a simple plot, if you strip away all the bells and whistles, but well, those bells and whistles are really what makes it unique. And in many ways, the characters play an important part.

Characters

A few I liked, a few I didn’t (within the story, not the fact of their existence). They knew they’d be loved and hated, so what else is new. Ultimately, they are the most important part of the story. And the exciting thing is that you can and can’t relate to them. Kinda like the idols that they represent.

It would make sense to go through the pantheon one by one and see what emotions the leave.

Laura

The protagonist, that’s easy to relate to. By the end of the series we know a lot, if not everything about her. But I like how she starts out: starstruck, and mesmerized. Trying to stand out, and to make sense of her life. Well, the latter doesn’t ever work, but stand out, that she did.

Lucifer

She’s one of the characters I know people adore, but I don’t exactly get why. Aside from a pretty obvious chaotic behavior and zero-fucks attitude, there wasn’t much more to her. No conflict I could get behind. I find her previous iterations more interesting.

Amaterasu

Just like Lucifer is more evil because evil, Amaterasu is good because good. She reminded me a lot of early Karolina Dean (Runaways). But I get the feeling she exists for balance, and with other characters it plays really well.

Baal

If I had to pick my favorites, he would be one of them. He is the one who gets a more definitive arc, and enough conflict to support my need for drama. He’s also a show off, and loves playing god.

Inanna

Again, a character I don’t quite get. Good and loves everyone, fast friends with everyone. That wasn’t enough for me to like him. So Inanna kinda stays in the background.

The Morrigan

Also one of my favorites, not just because of underground gothic chic. Just something about all three of her sides that makes sense, even if it’s not supposed to. There wasn’t a lot of Morrigan in the book, but what was there spoke loudly.

Baphomet

Again, one of the most likable ones. And I think his arc is very deep. We get to see him before godhood, and I feel like we got to see a few things from his point of view.

Woden

Cornered myself with this one. There’s such a complicated story with Woden, that I can’t even say whether I liked it or just accepted it.

Tara

Tara’s a big secret throughout most of the beginning, and then she’s in many ways such a regular person. I like her story, but I probably wouldn’t like her poetry.

Sakhmet

That’s a crazy that I like. Yeah she’s an if Rihanna was a cat, but her actions make her unpredictable, and I always like a wild card.

Norns

But mostly their leader. All I can say is so so so pretentious. I know that’s the idea, but I also view it from inside the story, so I get to be mad.

Dionysus

Another one with a little less screen time, and another likable one. Seriously, that’s almost all I can say about Dio. I’m also too old for his parties.

Minerva

A kid of wisdom. We don’t talk about kids.

Ananke

An old lady in charge. Also not much to say here if I don’t want to spoil thing. And I don’t.

So The Wicked + The Divine. Not exactly a new comic book, so it’s likely that many of you have already read it. But if you haven’t, you have to.

An Episode Within an Episode: An Analysis of ‘The Zeppo’

The Zeppo is one of those episodes that so consistently shows up on fan lists of “underrated” episodes, that I don’t know if it can really be considered “underrated” anymore, but I think it deserves a little extra appreciation. It’s definitely an episode that takes a second viewing to appreciate, thanks to how oddly it is constructed, in a way that isn’t immediately advertised to the viewer. Other episodes with unusual styles such as Once More With Feeling or Hush very much wear their concepts on their sleeve; you can’t watch them and not immediately realise what they are doing. That’s not a knock against those episodes - part of what makes them so great and iconic is that they get right to the point and so can do interesting things with the concept. The Zeppo is just a quieter kind of unique. It uses the limited perspective of both the characters and the audience themselves to show a cracked-mirror version of the world. It’s an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer told from the perspective of somebody looking in on another episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s fun and weird and I want to dig into it a little bit.

We start off with a very typical Buffy scene. In its third season now, the show is pretty aware of and confident in its own tropes, and trusts the audience to be too. We don’t need any build-up explaining exactly what Giles has found out and what spell Willow is performing and what these monsters are doing and exactly how Buffy and Faith know how to kill them. We’ve all seen an episode of Buffy before, and we can fill in the blanks pretty easily. This confidence in the show’s own tropes and what the audience expects of it is key to what makes this episode work. We know exactly how a typical episode of Buffy goes, so we can receive this barely-cliff-notes version of one and understand it perfectly. It’s an episode that can only be done in a show’s third year, when viewers have become fluent in the show’s language.

After the fight and exposition is over, Xander stands up from the garbage, as out of context as we are as viewers. As this is a Xander-centric episode, he becomes the audience identification figure. As the one character not supernaturally gifted or linked in any way (as the episode points out several times), Xander makes sense as the viewer stand-in. Xander comments on how he wants to be more involved in the fights but is firmly rebuffed - and it’s clear he wouldn’t be able to impact them anyway. All he can do is watch the fights and plots happen from a distance. In this sense, Xander is no different to the viewer, watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, unable to affect it in any way.

This is where the structure of the episode comes into play. The A plot is a fairly meaningless runaround with zombies, while the B-plot is a finale-worthy epic apocalyptic showdown. We only catch glimpses of it, but it seems to contain all the standard hallmarks of a Buffy apocalypse - an evil cult, opening the hellmouth, tearful Buffy/Angel melodrama. Specifically, it echoes the previous two season finales, with the final showdown apparently featuring both the literal monster from the S1 finale, and some kind of sacrifice that involved Angel (evoking the S2 finale). The very last bit of dialogue we hear during this plot is “Faith, go for the heart!” from Buffy, encouraging her to kill the demon in the library, which you could argue foreshadows the S3 finale, where Buffy will use the Mayor’s love for Faith to kill him in the library. This plot is a facsimile of a Buffy season finale, giving us everything we expect and have seen before, stripped of all context, the very bare bones of a story. 

What this achieves is that it alienates the viewer from this story-within-a story, forcing us into an intentionally uncomfortable position, where it feels like we’re watching an episode through a keyhole. It intentionally exacerbates the divide between viewer and show, to highlight our inability to fully perceive or at all impact this world we tune into each week.

Xander is very purposefully chosen as the POV character for this experience. He is feeling very insecure and ineffectual - unable to help with either brains or brawn, and not having a whole lot of impact on the story. He feels alienated from his friends, fearful that they will leave him behind. The structure of this episode highlights this feeling of ineffectualness. Xander feels so alienated from the events and people around him that he, like the audience, becomes separated from them. A character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer becomes an outsider to the story, watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We are encouraged to empathise with Xander because we are in the same position. We too have been robbed of our usual intimacy with this group of people, forced to perceive the shadows of an episode. This meta-emotion dovetails with the character’s internal mental state nicely.

I think my favourite instance of this meta-perception being played with is in the scene between Buffy and Angel, where we are dropped without context into a tearful, dramatic argument where apparently Angel’s life is in the balance, filled with declarations of love and poetic exaltations, backed by this sweeping orchestral score - and then Xander pops his head in. The music immediately stops, he exchanges a few awkward lines with them before realising they have bigger things to worry about. As he leaves, Buffy turns back to the melodrama and the sweeping music surges back in. It’s brilliantly funny - it feels like Xander put an episode on pause for a quick interjection, then re-started it where we left off. It’s a joke relying entirely on the audience’s expectations of the kind of epic melodrama we might get from Buffy and Angel, and it works really well. In this moment, Xander completely becomes the viewer, peeking in on these two actors, observing through glass.

The Zeppo is very concerned with meta references, TV, and the act of watching. Obviously the title is a reference to Zeppo Marx, and there is also a running gag likening Xander to Jimmy Olsen. We are encouraged to think of Xander in relation to his narrative function as a fictional character, and so to watch this episode through this meta lens. One key shot just after Faith and Xander sleep together shows the two of them literally reflected in a TV screen. We are literally seeing a distorted reflection of reality in a TV screen, which on one level is essentially all we do whenever we watch any television show, but is also what we are seeing within this episode - a fuzzy reflection of a Buffy episode within a Buffy episode.

There’s another shot later that I like, of one of the zombies pausing during the final chase scene to look through the library window at the demon emerging from the hellmouth. We see him looking through the glass at this apocalypse monster for a couple of seconds before continuing on with his chase, like a channel-hopping viewer taking a brief glimpse of Buffy, momentarily enraptured, before switching back to what they were watching before.

One thing that stood out to me on this rewatch was how the villains are described. We purposefully get very little on the group, but what we do get is telling. “’Sisterhood of Jhe. Race of female demons, fierce warriors...' Eww. '...celebrate victory in battle by eating their foes.’”

A race of all-female warriors sounds very much like Slayers. They apparently eat after battles too, which according to Faith is also a feature of Slayers. The villain in this story is kind of a representation of the central concept of the show, which makes sense since it deals with Xander navigating around a typical episode of the show. You could also read it as representative of Xander’s pathologies when it comes to women and specifically women who are stronger than him.

What I like about this episode is that it doesn’t conclude by giving Xander a big important role in stopping the apocalypse, proving his worth to the group. That’s what a lesser show might have done. I like that here, Xander never gets involved with the epic finale-esque plot. He carries on existing in the spaces around it, becoming instead the hero of the monster-of-the-week runaround episode he has found himself in. Xander cannot be the hero of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because he’s not Buffy. But he is still a human being, and all of us as human beings are the protagonists and heroes of our own stories. He can be the hero of his own life. 

S3 is largely about identity and forging one’s own path in life - obviously Buffy starts by having given up her name, then has to deal with facing off against her dark equivalent and making major decisions about her future. This season’s focus-episodes for the other characters reflect that: Giles is stripped of his role in Helpless, Willow rails against hers in Doppelgangland. This episode is all about Xander coming to terms with his narrative role within Buffy - as the non-powered comedic relief and occasional pep-talker. He could become frustrated with that, throw up his hands and let himself be at the mercy of his narrative function. But this episode allows him to find his own space, his own story. He accepts that he can’t colonise Buffy’s story, but he is still in control of his own decisions, and he can still have his own story. He can create a little one-off episode of Xander the Zombie Fighter that can co-exist peacefully with the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer happening at the same time. It’s a smaller, quieter story without the same world-shaking melodrama - but that’s OK. As Xander says himself, he likes the quiet.

As viewers, we can never shape the course of the media we watch. That’s part of the appeal - we don’t always know what we want or need - a problem Xander faces himself when he clutches at things like “being cool” or “a car” for things that might make him happy - but a good show gives us what we didn’t realise we needed. But it remains an eternal frustration, that we can connect on a deep emotional level with these characters, but can never help them or solve their problems. A good set of characters can feel like family, but a character can never love you back. When Xander faces up against this same uselessness as he observes an episode of Buffy from afar, it is the same uselessness the viewer feels. When he accepts this and inhabits his own story, it reminds us that we can do the same thing. Television can be a great comfort, but it is not our lives. Because we can affect our own lives. We aren’t in control of them, but we can guide and impact them, and we can each be the hero of our own individual existences.