Give me Something to Sing About - Rant
Sorry to be the person to rant about five-year old YT comments, but people are out there being way too hard on my woman Buffy. She was in a severe depression and understandably so honestly. Imagine doing it all right, sacrificing your life putting others first over and over for five years. Then getting your ultimate reward. Only to be ripped from it only to be expected to continue this hard life of world-saving and sacrifice AGAIN - talk about torture. And the cherry on top?? They expect her to be grateful, or at least the same docile slayer doing her duties.
And make no mistake, Willow was the villain from episode 1 of this season. When she is doing good magic, she glows (restoring angels soul and empowering the other potentials). When she’s doing bad magic, bad shxt happens. Like snakes coming out of mouth or slashes in her skin or demon motorcycle gangs interrupting the party, etc. The truth also is - it wasn’t really reasonable to assume she was in a hell dimension. Everyone else who’s gone to a different hell dimension has taken their body. Buffy’s body was dead on the concrete. She was just dead, a young dead slayer, kind of how they were built, they were built to burn bright and die, to be honest.
All that being said, I was and am obviously glad I got two more seasons. But I will forever empathize with Buffy over her friends in this season. Dawn and Spike were the only ones in this scene who seemed to recognize/understand her pain when Buffy reveals what has been tormenting her, and I’ll always love them for that. They are the two who love her most and are most grateful to have her back for who she is, rather than for what they need from her. They tell her life is hard but you’ve just gotta keep going on, whereas the others just expected her to be like she was before.
Obviously she has a martyr complex, that’s like part of the job of being the slayer? idk it was an odd thing to say as if it somehow negates her pain, she even notes she’s “self-righteous” in the Going through the Motions, but then points out is she’s “wavering” - meaning she’s struggling to stay the good guy she knows she is (I’m looking at You, WIllow, who never once worried about whether she was going too far or straying too far from who she was). A good slayer needs to be the hero who’s willing to die for the cause, or the Earth is Doomed. “how her actions are affecting....” yeah I think we see in “Wish” that without her and her “actions” everyone would be “affected” by being ~dead~. I don’t really see how Buffy’s romance issues play into how much sympathy she deserves for DYING and dealing with the severe emotional distress that results, but eh.
So, she’s supposed to be grateful she’s a human zombie, be completely attuned to her friend’s pain despite her own (despite them not sensing HERS), “suck it up” about her own pain, AND to top it off, not come off as a martyr like.....whut? Okay, this rant was good for the soul.
