[depsidase]

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

whenever one of my buddies gets some new garb we stand around chanting "don it. don it. don it" until he dons the garb

[itwashotwestayedinthewater]

check out Warren Peace. by Told Stoy.

[qqchurch]

i found the perfect bingo card for whenever the topic of fandom misogyny blows up over on the birdsite and just pop open the thread and see how much of this i can fill up

[jennycalendar]

ANYWAY in the process of looking for something in the iryj script (and then looking for the iryj script) i came across an early draft of revelations and am now chewing drywall

[jennycalendar]

SO LET'S . DISSECT THIS

the fact that xander has and does regularly weaponize jenny's name in canon in order to justify his desire to kill angel. he does this multiple times, always to twist the knife with buffy, and whenever he does it in front of giles, giles has very regularly flipped his shit. the notion of this being a continuation of their confrontation in becoming pt 1 is absolutely insane and i am losing my mind

the phrase "don't you evoke the name jenny calendar to suit your ends of vengeance" is LOADED in MULTIPLE DIFFERENT WAYS. because

jenny calendar WAS a literal AGENT of vengeance who was forced into a job she lost faith in and defected from -- she was literally used as a tool by larger patriarchal/family forces to suit THEIR ENDS OF VENGEANCE which ended up killing her.

and the fact that it is GILES who refuses to let even jenny's memory be used like that is so genuinely heartbreaking. he knows her and he knows her heart and he knows that she is made of love. he refuses to let her be weaponized to hurt people in the way that she was weaponized when she was alive. and he REFUSES to tarnish the incredible compassion she showed angel by going against her wishes and using her death to justify more violence and brutality.

[jennycalendar]

(tags from @petpluto)

this is GORGEOUS and i completely agree!!! my focus is obvs more on the way that this impacts giles but there was another part of this scene that really got me thinking about xander. specifically, its continuation:

i think that this absolutely supports the point you're making. suggests, even, that this runs deeper than petty vengeance, and that xander may have actually cared a lot about jenny. makes me wish we had actually seen them interact, but that's more a jenny-specific minor character issue than it is an indictment of xander.

here's the link to the draft btw! i left it out last time, rip

[mimicmiki]

most of the stories that i like are very similar. sprawling epics with huge setpieces and characters developed organically over long periods of time. but buffy didn’t really set the stage for my enjoyment of the modern odyssey really. it was mostly homestuck that did that.

stories distinctly concerned with narrative structure and the trappings of it. in homestuck, the author makes himself textual - swollen with narrative importance that becomes impotence when he’s gunned down by a malicious anti-author avatar of his own creation, caliborn. our characters are distinctly genre-savvy, they understand instinctively that the hero’s journey is what they’re “supposed” to undergo. but for rose, this journey feels paternalistic and cloying, for dave, actively traumatic. the point, thus, is the rejection of “adulthood” as presented through a literary format. at the beginning of the story, vriska is the 8 ball and english is the cueball (cannot be killed without dooming things, must be killed to “win” the game) but the end of homestuck is concerned with reversal of myth. vriska becomes the cueball - her death must occur in a specific manner in a specific place to “win,” and english becomes the 8 ball, knocked into oblivion and thus “ending” the story. reversal of expectation = where narrative irrelevance led itself to stagnancy and ego death “before” (ie the dancestors, the perpetual “irrelevant” dead such as feferi/nepeta) by the end the tables turn so that narrative irrelevancy necessitates growth. the characters must be unobserved, unchronicled, to live healthy lives. being in a story is trauma made manifest.

buffy isn’t quite as, like, intentful or metatextual, but it’s supplanted with much more consistent pacing and forethought, and so certain themes do resonate. when buffy smiles out into the void, the suggestion that the freedom from title of “vampire slayer” - now evenly distributed, power 2 the people - means freedom from the constraint of the story itself. she does not speak. she is not the protagonist anymore - that was buffy, the vampire slayer, and she was not that.

while also less genre-aware than hs, the characters in buffy do have a basic understanding of how stories work. the trio and willow are the best examples of this. everyone desires narrative coherency (”it’s like she’s completely without focus”) (”you used to create fantastic monsters and now what? just three little boys playing with toys”) everyone desires structure and stability and to uphold the same little rituals - those dalliances of metaphor and allegory. in season six it dies. sex isn’t magic, sex is just sex. the textual becomes literal. and as such season seven’s finale can be seen as that literal deconstructive nature being taken to its logical extent - the story has violated so many of its own rules that the primary one (there is a vampire slayer, and she is buffy) becomes void. null. the “rules” of the story are what separate our beloved characters from emotional growth & freedom from trauma, and so to ascend from the constraints of Text is to be happy. 

this, in my mind, is the logical conclusion to any coming of age story. the story most die when you do..

[pantsu-ripper-deactivated202208]

Commission for someone on twitter…

[owochimuwu]

Every fortune cookie I’ve ever opened had nuclear launch codes inside. But thats just the kind of luck being beautiful gets you

[invisible-pink-toast]

I saw a post about how when Spike wears traditionally “masculine” clothes he looks like he’s in drag and on a rewatch I realised he’s not the only one so I present Spike, Buffy and Faith:

Their I’m-not-in-disguise outfits

Their I’m-totally-normal-in-a-socially-acceptable-cishet-way outfits

And their Please-like-me outfits* 

(*although Spike and Buffy’s are romantic/sexual and Faith’s is familial) 

[mimicmiki]

i forgot i was going to post this! quick thing on the usage of basements/the underneath in buffy, and my speculation on the thematic significance of it..

https://onniepng.medium.com/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-the-art-of-bad-things-happening-in-basements-653fa8bf181b

[mimicmiki]

every time i return to this blog i get so annoyed reading my old meta sgdfshf.... i don’t disagree with my past self but i think i’ve developed more nuance & understanding of things that previously just irritated me........ so my past abrasiveness is a point of contention 4 me -_-

[mimicmiki]

thgis is literally andrew and spike

[mimicmiki]

spike/xander/riley is the holy trinity of boys buffy neuters

[mimicmiki]

what’s up

[mimicmiki]

not to revive this blog but i’m still so wild for the way season six rides off the coattails of season five in a way no other season of buffy ever does, an active and deeply satisfying deflation of tension.

you can’t go bigger than the ending of season five. you can’t go bigger than glory and all her magnificent godliness, her posturing and presence. you can’t go bigger than the thematic lines drawn in the sand from blood of blood concerning blood, the family and hope and great passionate scenes of death and despair. of shots like xander with the sword, of dawn in an ancient dress tied to a telephone tower barefoot and dripping with tears and her own life leaking out of her in an image evocative of a priestess of cassieopea tied to the rocks waiting for her death. you can’t top this intimate dance of mythology and pride and worlds.

but rather than even bothering to try as is expected season six fucking turns around. it backpedals. it flings glory down from her pedestal and on it it places.. three repressed, lonely, misogynistic nerds drowning in the trappings of geek culture and their own ingrained issues towards woman, autonomy, and surveillance. it doesn’t hand buffy a giant monster to fight, nor does it have her grow and motivate herself through undying love for the family she’s made. rather it rips her out of her earned spot in heaven and she suffers in a world that seems so suddenly cruel and bright and lacking in magic.

the tragedy of the mundane. it’s so good, guys

[mimicmiki]

idk why i just realized this but.... giles’ fury at buffy for hiding angel’s resurrection from him, specifically concerning the line “he tortured me for hours, for pleasure” is a dynamic angel himself replicates when he harbors faith after she tortures wesley... both people seeking redemption and not to forget their sins but to work always in remembrance of them and the watchers they leave in their wake still suffering from the pain they inflicted . interesting parallel that i don’t know why it took me so long to notice.

[praguegirl]

let’s settle this shit but do NOT reblog if you’re gonna be modest about it like a little BITCH. anyway privilege check tell me which ones apply to you: hot, funny, can dance, can do math, can spell, can drive, can cook