I Suddenly Find Myself Needing to Know the Plural of Apocalypse (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Okay, but consider how Angelus shares with his ensouled self the character trait of being incredibly fucking extra. We know this. They also live in a world where magic- including various types of scrying and information revealing magic- provably exist.

Under the circumstances, I can totally suspend disbelief enough to believe that he had an incredibly obnoxious habit of, like, asking Drusilla or the nearest witch or whoever to look up all his latest victims' identities for him so he could add them to his Murder List like the smug dick he was.

 

Hm. It is true that Angel and Angelus are both extremely extra. And that he could just get someone to scry the names. But the two people we know he got up close and personal with are Buffy and Drusilla. We know that Angelus saw Buffy as a challenge, and claimed that he needed to mindfuck her so that he could "cleanse" himself of how he felt with her while he was Angel. I suspect that he also planned on turning her if he got the chance and could drive her crazy enough. We know that he deliberately drove Dru mad and thoroughly broke her before turning her. So taking all that into consideration, I suspect that he only got up close and personal with a victim if they'd really caught his interest; there were probably a lot of casual "I'm hungry" murders that he didn't bother to remember the names of.

I can, however, absolutely buy that Angel went out and got someone to give him a list of everyone he'd murdered once he was souled and sane enough to do it. He's extra enough to do it, and the man loves his hair shirts. I don't think he remembers them off the top of his head, though.

 

Yeah, that seems plausible. So he 'knows' their names in the sense that he has looked them up, not in the sense of being able to recall them immediately.

 

...Angel would totally compile a hairshirt murderlist, yeah. And if you involve magic then there's no need to wonder whether he ever murdered someone whose body was never found, or who was never reported missing, so that he was never able to find out their name.

 

So I've barely dipped a toe into fandom outside of this thread (and consuming copious amounts of fanfic) and now I guess I don't have to, thanks to this helpful recap.

Spoiler: Every Argument About Buffy On The Internet, From 1998 Until Now

Joss Whedon: Inventer Of Feminism Or Literal Hitler?

• Joss Whedon invented feminism. Before Joss Whedon, every female character on television was crushed to death under the weight of her male co-stars’ heavier paychecks in the second-season finale.
• Every female character Joss Whedon ever wrote was forcibly impregnated by a demon and brutally murdered, because Joss Whedon hates lesbians.
• But Warren And The Trio Were –
• EVERYONE GETS THAT WARREN AND THE TRIO REPRESENTED THE THREAT OF NON-SUPERNATURAL MISOGYNY, YOU DON’T GET CREDIT FOR PICKING UP ON THAT

Joss Whedon Doesn’t Understand What Bisexuality Is

• Willow Identifies As Gay And You Are Robbing Her Of Self-Determination Because She Doesn’t Have A “Gold Star”
• I’d Feel More Comfortable With Willow’s Lesbianism If It Weren’t Sometimes Equated With Drug Addiction, Literal Vampirism, And Megalomania
• But She Was Clearly In Love With Oz
• Who Are You To Say What Love Is
• Dark Willow Was Pretty Hot, Though
• Yeah, Dark Willow Was Super Hot
• I’d Watch Dark Willow And Doppelgangland-Era Willow Hook Up If It Weren’t A Patriarchal Fantasy

Spuffy Is Problematic

• Bangel Is A Child’s Delusion Of What Love Is
• Spuffy Is Literally Assault
• Okay But He Felt Really Bad About It And Didn’t Have A Soul

Waif-Fu And Thermodynamics: You Can’t Violate The Law Of Conservation Of Momentum


Season Six Felt Like Watching My Friends Get Murdered In Slow Motion Right In Front Of Me

• It Was Worth It For Once More, With Feeling, Though
• No, It Wasn’t
• Doublemeat Palace Cancels Out Once More, With Feeling
• Doublemeat Palace Cancels Out My Childhood

Xander Is The Only Character Who Retains Their Humanity On The Entire Show

• Xander Is A Greater Monster Than Angelus And Invented “Nice Guy” Syndrome

Buffy Started To Falter After Angel Premiered

• No, Buffy Started To Falter After Firefly Premiered
• No, Buffy Has Never Faltered And Is Still On The Air
• Buffy Started To Falter When Angel/Faith/Buffy Came Back
• Buffy Was Better When It Was A Movie With Kristy Swanson

What If Evil?

• Dark Willow Straight-Up Flayed a Dude!
• Extremism In the Pursuit of Love Is No Vice
• If a Dude Had Flayed Willow, Would We Be Cheering?

Everyone Was Too Hard On Dawn For Being A Regular Human Being

• Don’t You Dare Try To Retroactively Justify Dawn

Oz vs. Tara

• Oz Was Boring; Tara Was Too Good For This Sinful Earth
• Tara Was Boring; Oz Was The Greatest Love Interest In Television History; Remember That Animal Crackers Monologue
• What About Kenned–
• SHUT UP ABOUT KENNEDY

Jenny Calendar And Race-Bending


Is It Important That Buffy Is Decidedly Not Book Smart?

• Not Everyone Is Book Smart, That Is Elitist
• Buffy is the Lady Channing Tatum of being Body Smart and That Is Sufficient
• It Is a Tremendous Problem and Girls Should Not Watch This Show Or They Will Not Take College Seriously

I Shouldn’t Have To Watch Angel In Order To Appreciate Cordelia’s Growth As A Character


Shaming: Everyone Is Shamed

• “Beer Bad” Is Slut-Shaming
• “Beer Bad” Is Substance-Shaming and Preachy
• “Beer Bad” Is Just a Terrible Episode
• Angel Losing His Soul After He Has Sex With Buffy is Slut-Shaming
• THE EPISODE WHERE WILLOW ATTENDS THE WICCAN MEETING IS WICCAN-SHAMING WICCANS ARE REAL WE ARE NOT YOUR PUNCHLINE

KENDRA’S ACCENT THOUGH

• Was It Irish Sometimes, Or Was That Just Me?
• Her Accent is Perfect, and Not To Be Questioned

Activating All Potential Slayers Was An Act Of Patriarchal Violence

• Slaying Is Empowering
• No, Slayers Were Literally Created When A Woman Of Color Was Forcibly Invaded By A Demonic Essence
• Oh, Right
• But Then They Get To Beat Up Everybody
• Dark Willow Straight-Up Flayed a Dude

 

This show is taking over my life.



Egregious Comic Erasure is going to be a full pseudo-season-eight, the Smashed humour AU went from "what if Willow caught Spike and Buffy fighting and decided to chain Spike up in Buffy's bathtub until they figured out what to do with him, haha, wouldn't that be funny, also I wonder if I can still send Spike running off to Africa after I surgically extract his affair with Buffy from the narrative" (it turns out I can) to "what if slow-burn evil Willow, that would be really fun to write", the OMWF AU has ten pages of deleted/offscreen scenes because characterisation is hard, man, and that's not even all of them, I have at least two more on the app where I was originally writing down ideas. I would say "save me" except I don't want saving, this is the most writing I've done in actual years and I'm having way too much fun playing in the Buffyverse sandbox.

 

So I've caught up with the comics and ... I still don't like them very much (although I do like the later seasons much more than season eight). Some of it is the fact that by ... season nine, I think? magic and vampires and everything have been revealed to the entire world, and that gives the whole story a different feeling. I mean, they're using that to make commentary on real-world issues, which is interesting, but I still don't like it. Also the current storyline is making me really nervous.

In other news, I have read a great deal more fanfiction since whenever I last posted about reading fanfiction and have new discoveries to report:

• I hate claims and sire bonds, even more than vampires purring, I cannot stand them, I have not found a common fandom universe-expansion this rage-inducing since I was reading tons of Star Wars fanfic and there were all these ~Force bonds~ that allowed people to sense the most minute emotional and/or physical changes in the person they're bonded with, hold lengthy conversations telepathically, and locate each other across the galaxy. That's not how the Force works. I'm pretty sure that's not how vampires work either.
• Not a big fan of this "master vampire" thing, where master vampires are a type of vampire that is better than normal vampires. There's not much ground for it in canon and so far its only purpose seems to be to make Spike cooler and give him a reason to boss other vampires around and like, come on, the guy is plenty cool already, and also I don't think he cares much about bossing other vampires around. Leave him alone.
• Also, vampire saliva having healing properties/vampire tongues being able to close wounds is a thing ... why? I mean I know why, it's so the writer can induce the characters to lick each other when normally they wouldn't, but it seems like if vampire saliva was going to have anything funny in it it would be an anticoagulant. There are multiple instances in canon of vampires preserving humans to snack on periodically, but that seems to be the exception, not the rule, so I wouldn't expect their physiology to be optimised for it.
  
• Something that does make sense (sorta, considering you see at least a few victims struggling unhappily while being drained) and is present is lots of fic is vampire biting/saliva as a euphoriant.
  
• Spike's soul is not super popular with the Spike/Buffy-writing crowd, which is baffling to me because writing pants-on-head crazy Spike is basically the funnest thing ever.
  
• If I read one more fic where Buffy finds herself helpless against the big scary monsters only to be rescued by her brave vampire boyfriend I'm gonna lose it.

Roughly once a week I throw my electronic reading device down in despair and swear to never read another BtVS fic so long as I shall live, amen. And then an hour later I've got ten tabs of recs I found on Tumblr open. (I don't have a problem, I can quit anytime I want to!)

On the less rant-y side of things, I've been watching Torchwood Boy's reaction videos to select episodes from each season (he's posted up to near the end of season three) and they're a delight. It's great fun watching someone else go through all that for the first time.

 

Time for a little *checks upthread* quintuple-posting! Who wants to talk about Willow characterisation?

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Willow is extremely empathetic, especially when it comes to her friends. Like, their pain is her pain levels of empathy.
• She really doesn't like being in pain.
• Combining the points above makes her action-oriented when dealing with her friends' problems as well as her own; she goes into make-it-stop mode really fast because she can't handle the pain. (Side note: I wonder if this might be part of why she she was so eager to encourage Buffy to date in season four, first with Parker and then with Riley? Because she figured Buffy was hurting post-Angel and would feel better if she had a new boyfriend? But IIRC she was pretty pushy about Buffy dating even before then, so maybe not.)
  
• She has a hard time telling the difference between "can" and "should", starting at least from season two when she pursued re-ensouling Angel despite being warned against it.
• When she's decided on a course of action, she gets very focused and doesn't want input from other people, starting at least from season three (I'm thinking Lovers Walk, when she was going to perform that de-lusting spell on herself and Xander while lying to him about what they were doing).
• Approval from other people is important to her.
• Succeeding at things she sets out to do is important to her.
  
• She doesn't resent it when her friends surpass her.
• She does resent it when she feels shut out or ignored or passed over.

Since I'm working on a story from Willow's POV (third person limited, but still...) I need to get her character exactly right, so if anyone wants to tell me about Willow, please do! I'm finding her pretty easy to write so far, but that just kind of makes me uneasy because I have trouble articulating why I think she would do this or that, so....

@turtleDove I'm pinging you particularly because you said Willow was one of your favourites and her characterisation went sideways in later seasons - I'd love to hear your thoughts on her!

 

shit all i did was read two or three novels in middle school

did anyone else? thoughts on them?

 

I ... have not read the novels. I saw one in a second-hand bookstore before my BtVS obsession had really kicked in, so I just kind of flipped through it and then left it. Kinda regretting that now. Are they good?

 

i can't remember. it was so long ago and i don't trust my twelve year old book standards XD i don't remember being that enthralled though, mainly because so much was going over my head. i can't do convoluted plots unless its written very well.

and. i don't think it was XD

 

So! I definitely agree with all your points. I'm not particularly equipped to gauge how empathetic Willow is or isn't, but: she definitely does not like being in pain, doesn't like Her People being in pain, and I'm pretty sure that her childhood has geared her towards looking for solutions to problems she encounters and not being particularly inclined to expect (or desire) assistance in fixing these problems. She definitely has stopped expecting her mom to be at all helpful in any sense, and I think envies Buffy a little in that Joyce is there for Buffy as much as possible and Joyce actually makes an effort to understand Buffy. (But also understands that she can't have Buffy's mom.) I think she latches on to the authority figures she feels she can trust and who're going to get her hard, as a result. (See: Giles, Ms Calendar. Possibly a few other people who I can't remember right now? But those are the two that stand out the most for me.)

She does have a hard time telling the difference between "can" and "should", although I'm not sure this is significantly greater than it would be for anyone else her age as of season two and three. As of season....ffffive? Whichever season it is where Oz absconds off to Tibet without actually telling her. As of that point, it definitely seems like she's having a bit more difficulty understanding that just because she can reach for magic and it might fix things, that doesn't necessarily mean she should, and this is compounded by the fact that about 75% of the time, reaching for magic to fix things works really well for her as a solution. By season six (which is, I think, when she uses the memory spell as a means of 'fixing' having had a fight with Tara), she's definitely lost her grip of understanding the difference between 'can' and 'should' and it's compounded by the fact that she's starting to feel like her power entitles her to a certain level of respect that most of the authority figures in her life aren't giving her.

Pushing Buffy to go date is, I think, definitely more complicated than just "you're hurting after Angel left, moving on and getting a new boytoy will help". Because remember, she was cheering on the Buffy/Angel romance once she found out about it, and she was encouraging Buffy to get out there and date guys before Buffy started having a serious relationship with Angel. Buffy wants to feel like she's got some degree of normalcy to her life - and Willow does everything she can to make that so. Which includes pushing Buffy to get out there and date guys, because that's part of the normal high school life for teenage girls; I suspect it's also because she has a strong gut feel that Angel isn't a healthy relationship for Buffy, but she can't find a way to put it into words that won't result in Buffy kneejerking harder into the relationship. So encouraging Buffy to go for guys who won't turn murderous if they ever get too cuddly is the next-best alternative.

When she's working on putting her problem-solving into action, she definitely stops accepting input unless someone's pointing out serious logistical issues in the plan. And even then, she's going to try and justify and shut them down. She has a point where she'll accept input and advice, but it's well before when she starts moving on a plan. She gets a bit better about this after Lovers Walk, and the various other times when it becomes a serious problem, but she keeps regressing; I don't think she sees it as an actual problem, so much as each instance where it caused a problem was something where people interfered and things went awry as a result. She's very much someone who hates group work, shall we say?

Approval from other people is important, but not people in general, I think? As of even mid-way through season one, she doesn't really care what Cordelia and crew think of her - she just wants them to stop being assholes to her and let her live her life. She's got at least a vague awareness that optics are important, and I'm pretty sure she wishes she were better at being social than she is. But she's also starting to hit a point where she's going "okay, no, I'm not going to try and shove myself into the square hole when all I get in return for it is pain, I'm going to do my own thing which makes me happy".
People she cares about, however, are intensely important for her to get approval from. She's falling over herself trying to make sure that Buffy understands that it's okay if there needs to be a degree of open shunning in order to get in good with Cordelia, and she routinely panics if she thinks Giles is disappointed in her. The whole reason for the de-lusting spell is because she wants to prove to Oz that she's trying really hard to make up for what she did and that she really doesn't want to lapse again. She memory wipes Tara because the idea of having even a tiny fight is so abhorrent to her.

Succeeding at things she sets out to do is important to her, but I think we might disagree on when she starts to feel resentment. She doesn't mind it if, say, Xander becomes a successful carpenter. She'd be delighted if Buffy became a successful, well-paid demon hunter, and she's thrilled for Giles when he opens the Magic Box. She doesn't like being shown up, however - she'd get prickly about it if Buffy started becoming good at research, and she'd have serious trouble not being openly pissed about it if any of the Scoobies started being good at magic; she gets very, very grumpy when someone else is being good at computers around her (unless they're being good because she taught them how). She's territorial and possessive of what she regards as "her thing" - academics, magic, technology. If it takes brains to do it, it's her wheelhouse and none of the other Scoobies are supposed to be even equal to her in terms of competency, much less surpassing her.

And one thing you didn't mention is Willow's control issues. Specifically, she is an utter control freak starting from about season one, and it gets progressively worse and more obvious as she gets more ability to actually exert real control over her environment. I think the cause is twofold: first, her mom is...well, we never really see much of her mom and we only get told snippets that I recall. The bits we're told, though, suggest that Willow's mom is inattentive, overbearing when she is paying attention, and prone to performative social justice stuff - Willow's mom, after all, is the co-leader and co-founder of Moms Opposed to the Occult and Paranormal and seems to have been very vocally feminist while Willow was growing up. And I think one of the ways Willow coped is by exerting as much control over her own life as possible - which may be why we never see Willow in anything that would show up in Buffy's closet, despite how she could probably figure out how to get Buffy to come clothes shopping with her without her mom along; she certainly aimed herself hard at her studies, probably seeing it as a means of getting away from her mom (a lot of good colleges offered her acceptance letters, after all - most of the Ivies, I think). There's probably some latent anxiety there, in that if Willow couldn't demonstrate that she had a handle on things herself, Supermom would come sweeping in and handle it...whether or not doing so was actually helpful to Willow.

Second is that Willow grew up in Sunnydale. Which has been a Hellmouth since at least a couple years before the Master showed up, since the whole reason he got trapped underground was that he was trying to mess around with it. All of Willow's life, people have been disappearing or having mysterious accidents, and there's been a lot of stuff that people just don't talk about - don't mention that the old lady down the block has been there for longer than anyone can remember, and the last time someone threw a ball into her yard and broke a window, the kid who threw it started having the worst luck until he offered to fix it; just don't play near her yard ever. Don't mention that the neighbours' son hasn't come out of the house in weeks (but there was never a funeral, was there?) but you can see him shuffling around inside through the blinds, and he looks like he's got surgical stitches. Don't talk about how you never just invite someone into your house, or why some houses have a lot of mirrors hung up in them, or why most of the town is really into Italian food. Don't talk about any of the missing stairs.
It'd be an anxiety-inducing environment for most people, probably. And Willow can't guarantee that she won't get jumped by a vampire, or accidentally go into the wrong place, or just vanish one day. So she focuses on the things she can control.

Which actually makes her competency and power at magic a real problem for her, because she never unlearns the coping mechanisms she used before she could actually start doing things like "mess with people's minds" and "set things on fire with her mind". If anything, over the series, she doubles down on those coping mechanisms - she shies away from pain if she doesn't feel like she has to endure it, she tries to avoid conflict she isn't prepared for and expecting (and she hates conflict at all), and she hates Her People being miserable or in pain where she can see it. And she craves, like air, being respected by people in authority that she acknowledges should have authority; she's started getting pickier about her authority figures, but she inherently respects academia. (And it really bothers her when Buffy starts getting special attention from Professor Walsh, until Willow figures out that it's because this is a Slayer thing and not because Buffy has somehow gotten really smart.)

 

Oh, those are good thoughts! I need a way to rate a post both "Agree" and "Informative".

Yes, good point. I haven't extensively re-watched the early seasons where much of the Angel stuff would have been going on, so I'd pretty much forgotten about her attitude towards Angel-dating.

You may be right - to be honest I was basing my idea that she wouldn't resent being outdone by a friend in one of her areas of expertise on my memory of a single scene from Wild At Heart. (Buffy does better than Willow on a paper for Professor Walsh's class, Willow is jealous and admits to it, but her overall attitude was one of pride and congratulation.) So I figured, she may feel jealousy, but she's not going to hold onto it. But that was early in season four, before they discovered what the Initiative was and that Walsh was involved with it. I'm thinking I should re-watch some episodes from that general time period again and pay more attention to Willow's reactions to the whole Buffy-Walsh-academia thing.

That's very interesting! I hadn't thought much about how much Willow tries to exert control over the areas in her life that are within her control. I hadn't thought much about her mom, either, because of how absent she is from the show (present more via Willow's occasional references to her than in person, I think). But given the information we have, that sounds like a very plausible take on what her parenting was like and how it affected Willow.

That makes me wonder - IIRC when Giles left in season six, the writing focused mainly on how Buffy felt about it and didn't really touch on the effect it had on Willow - maybe I missed it, or maybe it was just because her storyline was too crowded with Tara and Buffy and magic/Amy problems to add in that angle. But with her desire for approval from Her People and authority figures in particular, shouldn't it have hit her pretty hard? Or is it more likely that she felt that his departure was a sign of approval, since he framed it as a "you're all adults now and you don't need me" thing?

 

I'd forgotten about that bit! Hm. In that case, it's possible that (at least around that time), she'd be making an effort to be encouraging to her friends if they're starting to branch out into being good in areas she considers her territory; she wouldn't actually want to discourage Buffy from being good at college, for example. I remember her as getting much more touchy about what she regards as 'her' territory around the time of the whole Adam thing and that it didn't really get better, but honestly, that could have been encouraged a bit by Spike; I'd need to go rewatch that season myself to be sure.

Hm - you're right, it definitely should have hit her pretty hard. But I think she probably drew from her experience with stepping into Ms Calendar's shoes, as the substitute computer science teacher (which - can I just mention how wtf that was to me even at the time? Heck was going on there, that they were letting even the brightest student in the class step up to teach it just because the teacher died?). So, responding in a way that went "okay, I'm going to look at this as a sign of trust that I don't need constant adult supervision, heck I am an adult now, I'm a powerful, badass witch who can make the world bend to her whims". Which would've worked better if she had healthier coping mechanisms, I think; once she didn't have to worry about Giles looking over her shoulder, she ramped up on the magic use.

(Also, in hindsight, I wonder how good a fit Tara and Willow were for a long-term relationship? They've both got issues around magic, and I don't think those issues are terribly compatible in the long-term; Tara really didn't get why Willow kept relying so heavily on magic, and Willow has never responded well to what she perceives as someone trying to stop her from being able to control her life. I think that'd probably be a shatter point for the relationship no matter what, unless they both got some serious therapy from someone who understands the supernatural world and can be trusted.)

 

Thing I will never stop loving: the fact that, when Buffy is presented with the moral dilemma of damning the world to save her sister vs. sacrificing an innocent to save the world, her response is to pick a third option that doesn't involve her doing something she thinks is wrong. There's something very admirable, to me anyway, about her determination to do the right thing and save everyone.

...Plus it makes her loss of moral certainty in season six a lot sadder, I think, when it comes on the heels of her going out in a flame of righteous determination. Even after that she didn't get to escape the reality that sometimes you don't know what the right thing is.

Also, now that I think about it, it makes her attempt to sacrifice Faith to save Angel in season three ... interesting. Because I don't think she was ever really convinced that it was the right thing to do, even though Faith was technically a bad guy and therefore fair game if you're the Slayer. The way she steeled herself when she went after Faith makes me think she thought it was wrong but was doing it anyway because she was so desperate to cure Angel. So back then, at least, she was willing to do for Angel what she wouldn't do, two years later, for the entire world. (Actually, come to think of it, the Angel poisoning deal foreshadowed the season five finale, didn't it? She made the same choice in the end, both times.)

 

Hello everyone, I'm coming back to this thread because I've been flooding my poor abused group chat with excessive MSTing of my rewatch. I'm currently on S5 and having trouble getting past Fool for Love.

Because, apparently, things that it is physically impossible for me to not repeatedly rewind and watch again include:

Spoiler: if you weren't aware of spike's rampant humiliation kink, you will be at the end of this episode

• Spike on the ground with Buffy standing over him, cruelly rejecting him with a deliberate reference to the humiliating heartbreak of his final mortal love
• then her throwing a fistful of dollars dispassionately over his chest and striding off
• and he picks them up while crying

 

Spike has Issues. (Understatement of the century.)

 

You know, also, what the hell - this, if anywhere, is the thread to admit that I have been looking for good spuffy femdom fic since I was a tiny nerdy teenager who blushed at even the though of the three-letter s-word and had no idea how to put into words what I was looking for.

Has anyone else ever had any luck in this area? (pls note that I don't do dubcon/noncon of any kind, and I'm well aware of the potential hypocrisy in saying that.)

 

I have one which can be summarised as "Buffy beats up Spike until she has an orgasm", if that helps? Can't have a line like "I'm done being your whipping boy" and expect people not to be inspired, after all...

On the more G-rated side of things, I've also written a what-if one-shot about that time Willow and Cordy were stuck in a closet.

 

If anyone read those, did you like them? I am hungry for the verse, as Vince Noir would say - the verse of comments.