[fancyhalloran]

I feel like I should have a pinned post so here’s some facts about me:

Favorite plant: Poison Oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum)

Favorite insect: Katydids (I don’t have a favorite species and I found out about their existence from The Haunting of Hill House)

Favorite bird: Gulls (I can’t tell them apart but I grew up on the coast and I like their calls and think it’s funny when they steal people’s food)

I don’t have a favorite mammal but I think grizzly bears should be reintroduced in California.

I think that’s all you really need to know about me idk what else would be important.

[tomboytranny]

girl so soft she might actually be a plushie

[tragicwaif]

when a cloth mutual sees your wire post it’s not that bad but when a wire mutual sees you clothposting……😓

[grubloved]

lately im doing something where ive deleted all browsers socials and other internet-accessing apps off of my phone so its just messages/maps/music library/phone stuff/inaturalist and have been carrying around a little pocket notebook to write down the questions i want to look up later when i get home. the internet is a place that i go to and sit down with my computer and isnt real outside of my house. its really nice and its interesting bc when i get home at the end of the day i dont even really want to do the little compulsive scroll-several-hours thing i have been doing for years now bc im tired and the main thing i missed when i was away from the internet wasnt scrolling it was checking on my friends and answering "what happens to egg proteins when you temper them". so overall its really nice

[fancyhalloran]

[fancyhalloran]

i can not overstate the degree to which i am basically the monkey “neuron activation” meme every time tara is onscreen. there are entire episodes where, on rewatching, I realize that the only scene i remembered from previous watches was the one with tara in it.

[fancyhalloran]

I think for me the main problem with season 4 and the thing that keeps it from being one of my favorite seasons is the decision to kill off professor walsh (an interesting villain) in favor of adam (a really boring one)

[fancyhalloran]

it’s kind of funny when i get to my favorite buffy episode, hush, and tara (<3) gets introduced, i have nothing to talk about. like it’s just really good idk.

[rockabillywife]

This is how it feels when you have two interests

[fancyhalloran]

re the verucaposting: oz is actually an interesting character to me but exclusively in relation to willow. i think there’s several ways he kind of prefigures tara. you kind of get willow’s interest in being with someone kind of uncomplicated (or at least seeming that way) who seems like kind of more emotionally mature. all of which makes oz into a really compelling antagonist when he starts reflecting her own behavior back at her in season 4, first cheating on her and then being violently possessive after having cheated on her.

all of this is also part of a broader sting of disappointments with people she loves. buffy is susceptible to being stolen by faith and, even though buffy pulls the breaks, it still shows a side of buffy willow doesn’t like. willow’s affair with xander is even worse, disillusioning her not only about xander (who keeps pressing after she breaks it off) but herself as well.

[fancyhalloran]

still thinking about how willow sees faith and veruca as rivals. they’re both characters that aren’t obviously similar to her but i think they both actually have personality traits and behaviors she can relate to (and doesn’t want to relate to). veruca is happy to sleep with someone in a relationship she doesn’t respect with someone she doesn’t think belongs with them (which is what willow did with xander); faith reacts really badly to feeling unwanted and feels that her abilities give her rights beyond that of a normal person (both of which are true of willow). they’re both characters she would feel ashamed of relating to. she hates them both as a protective mechanism (because it creates a separation between her and them) and because she’s afraid they’ll take her place in the lives of the people she loves.

(you can see a similar thing with vampire willow. she isn’t a rival to willow for anything because her interest is in willow specifically, which is why willow has trouble outright hating her, but she is also relatable in a bad way and willow responds to that with disgust and fear)

buffy and tara by contrast aren’t seen as rivals. this is partly because of when and how she meets them (they both take an interest in willow specifically) and partly because (i think) she admires them for being different from her. buffy is confident and cool (without being cruel like cordelia) and tara is uncomplicatedly good (she would presumably never cheat on someone or try to destroy someone’s life with a hex out of revenge).

all of which is a very longwinded way of saying i think wiffy is real at least in like a one sided way

[fancyhalloran]

ok maybe i do want to write a willow/veruca fic where oz dies instead of veruca during wild at heart

[fancyhalloran]

the claim that veruca rapes oz feels like motivated reasoning to me. oz regrets having sex with her but if he’s not in control of himself then neither is she. sure, she says she remembers what happens when she’s a wolf but that doesn’t mean that her version of wolfing out is fundamentally different than oz’s. just because oz wouldn’t do this normally (as a human) doesn’t mean that he isn’t a consenting participant (as a wolf). essentially, the claim that she rapes him applies different standards to her than it does to him. and i think that this is motivated reasoning specifically because it seems to come from the premise that veruca is evil and bad and solely responsible for what happens unlike the kind and good oz who would never cheat on his girlfriend willow.

and I think the problem with that straightforward narrative is that things between them don’t solely happen when they’re wolves. they’re captivated with each other as people first and, while oz tries to preserve his relationship and include willow when he’s with veruca, he is still more interested in veruca when she’s there than he is in willow. as a person, he’s able to prioritize his relationship, but becoming a wolf takes away his inhibitions entirely. but, and I think this is important, becoming a wolf also takes away veruca’s inhibitions. veruca acts as if she’s always a wolf, as if she never has those inhibitions, but she doesn’t make a move on oz until she’s a wolf. if we’re going to compare this to a real world thing, it’s far closer to two people getting very drunk and hooking up than it is to rape.

the claim is even more egregious for the time willow discovers them together. the second time they have sex (and the time they get caught), it happens because oz, as a person, chooses to lock veruca in his cage with him. oz clearly knows what will happen and, in fact, starts making out with veruca before they turn.

this is, i think, where the motivation becomes most obvious. the claim that veruca rapes oz tends to be paired with the claim that he doesn’t really cheat on willow. that is obviously false because, regardless of his motivations, he traps veruca in a cage with him knowing that the last time they wolfed out together they had sex. defending oz requires taking away his culpability and assigning all of it to veruca; it’s not his fault he cheated, it’s her fault for making him. astute viewers might recognize this as a common excuse for men who do untoward things with women. it’s this sort of misogynist attitude (excuses for men & condemnation for women over the same act) that, even setting aside its broader implications, strips away the complexity of BTVS and its characters. willow is a hypocrite here and oz lies to her and the relationship falls apart because of choices that both of them make and resentments that both of them hold.

[fancyhalloran]

I feel like i should be clear that any time i say something critical about willow there’s like an 80% chance i relate to her deeply because of it.

[gotinterest]

Gonna be honest a lot of people deep down view cheating as worse than abuse which is why so many people view downright controlling and manipulative behavior in a relationship as 100% permissible so long as that behavior is centered around either preventing or discovering cheating.

[fancyhalloran]

it’s interesting too that oz tries to include willow in his interactions with veruca. he invites her to the second shy show, even telling her that it would mean a lot to him if she was there. but willow has a tendency to isolate herself when she feels hurt or left out so she doesn’t accept his attempt to repair the relationship.

[fancyhalloran]

the thing about women being cuckolded in fiction is that I usually start shipping the two women. this is part of why i go so nuts over willow and veruca.