there's some good left in this world worth fighting for

sideblog for fantasy fandoms of all kinds. currently into buffy the vampire slayer and the hobbit

[willowrosenboob]

3.15 // 6.13

[judasisgayriot]

And we thought just because we didn't have any money or any place to go, this would be a lacklustre evening. I know, we could go to the Bronze and sneak in our own tea bags, and ask for hot water. Hop off the outlaw train, Will, before you land us all in jail. I for one am giddy and up. There’s a kind of hush all over Sunnydale, no vampires or demons to slay, I’m here with my friends...

[buffycaps]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER - 4.21: Primeval

[coraniaid]

I don't imagine it was ever actually consciously planned out this way, but I do think the two shows end up establishing a pretty clear contrasting set of parallels between Buffy's sister Dawn and Angel's son Connor.

On the one hand, Connor's relationship to the Angel Investigations team is -- post-abduction, anyway - more or less the inverse of Dawn's relationship to the Scooby Gang. That is: Dawn isn't really Buffy's biological relative but everyone in Buffy's life vividly remembers her growing up and they all obviously like her and want to protect her and she gets to be normal in a way Buffy used to wish she was. On the other hand, Connor really is Angel's biological relative, even though that should be impossible, but none of the Angel Investigations team got to see him grow up and try as they might they just don't really like him very much; he very much does not get to have the ordinary childhood Angel wanted him to have.

Dawn doesn't have any of Buffy's supernatural strength, but she wants to be able to fight alongside her sister ("What, you think I never watched you?" in Season 6's Grave; Buffy teaching her to fight a vampire at the start of Season 7's Lessons, Dawn refusing to let Xander take her out of Sunnydale in End of Days and standing beside Buffy in the final shot of the series in Chosen).

Meanwhile Connor does have superhuman strength, but he repeatedly talks about not liking to fight ("Angel likes it so he has a reason to fight [...] Him and the others. [...] I'm not like them. I want to stop." in Season 4's Peace Out and "this whole fighting thing [...] I'm not sure it's for me" in Season 5's Origin) and unlike Dawn he does ultimately let himself be sent away somewhere safe: he is notably not present in the final alleyway showdown at the end of Not Fade Away.

Dawn is strongly linked to the godlike villain Glory: the show teases that Dawn has to die to let Glory leave our dimension, but ultimately Buffy is able to prevent this from happening. Connor is strongly linked to the godlike villain Jasmine: the show reveals after the fact that Connor was born in order to allow Jasmine to enter our dimension, something that Angel was not aware of and could not prevent.

And, of course, by the end of the show, the closest thing Connor gets to a happy ending is ... getting to become the 'Dawn' of some random ordinary family. Having most of the people who knew him before forget who he was, and suddenly appearing in the memories of a group of people for whom he didn't exist at all before.

Also Dawn is well written and likeable and her presence adds to the show she's in and in a final fun contrast none of that is true for Connor, sorry.

[coraniaid]

You wake up one morning and you find out you've been put in charge of a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Not a soft reboot or a pseudo-sequel, but a full on hard reset. Everybody gets recast and we start again at the very beginning with Buffy arriving in Sunnydale for the first time. You're only remaking Season 1 (you get to make 12 whole episodes!). The show is still set in the 1990s (but now as a deliberate period piece), and you have to follow the main story beats of the original more or less faithfully (however you choose to interpret that), but you have been given more or less complete creative freedom within those constraints. Money is no object, but whether or not you get a second season depends entirely on the whims of people you will never talk to. What changes to canon do you try to make? How many death threats does the Buffy fandom send you for your trouble?

(And no, you can't refuse: you have to help make this show, no matter how bad an idea it clearly is.)

Here are my picks:

No Jesse. The high school character who gets vamped early on is Harmony (somewhere around the mid-season mark). Vamp!Harmony doesn't die but instead becomes a recurring minor villain (similar to her role later in the actual show). Cordelia finds out about vampires after Harmony dies, and is the first person to meet Harmony as a vampire. The show actually takes this seriously.

I'm conflating Giles (Buffy's Watcher who takes a job at Buffy's school for cover) and Ms Calendar (... is a young woman called Jenny who works as a computer science teacher). As in canon, this version of Jenny is a descendant of the girl Angel was cursed with a soul for killing and this will be hinted at sometime this season (but not confirmed) in the off-chance we get a second season.

Also said murdered girl will turn out to be Drusilla, just because that makes things simpler (both Angel and Jenny can now agree on what the worst thing he ever did as a vampire actually was). We will see her in a flashback this season, but not in the present day. (The fact that Drusilla was sired, rather than simply killed, will come as a surprise to both the audience and the cast.)

In my reboot, Angel was 18 or 19 when he became a vampire: old enough that he can still be Buffy's worryingly older boyfriend (next season) but not so old that he's clearly an adult man in his twenties. Unlike in canon, Buffy's Watcher will explicitly not ever approve of her dating him.

I'm broadly following the first three episodes of the show, plus Never Kill A Boy On The First Date and Angel and Nightmares and Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight and Prophecy Girl (but maybe in a different order than the original show: in particular I think my version of Out of Mind, Out of Sight comes a bit earlier so that Cordelia can have more to do in the middle of the season).

Actually on that note I'll call the Marcie Ross episode Invisible Girl the way many early fans of the show did. In fact maybe every episode will be called "[something] Girl"? Witch Girl makes the intended which/witch pun a bit more noticeable, I think. Uh. New Girl for the opening two parter. Dead Girl for the episode where we find out about Angel being a vampire (this is also the episode in which we find out about Drusilla's links to Jenny and the episode in which Harmony gets sired as a vampire).

The other four episodes get replaced entirely, but something will still eat Principal Flutie and at least one other teacher will play a Dr Gregory style role before dying. Maybe throw in an early reference or two to the Mayor, as well, while we're at it. We'll still get a school talent show (as in The Puppet Show), but not the weird puppet or the organ-stealing demon of that episode. Maybe we can sneak in version of Phases (a werewolf episode featuring Larry and Oz) or School Hard (Buffy is forced to work with Sheila to prepare for the school's PTA night).

Amy Madison does join the gang after getting her own body back in Episode 3 and near the end of the season we learn she's secretly been teaching herself magic.

May as well throw in background characters like Jonathan and Larry and Sheila (Martini, not Willow's mom) and Joy (who appears in Witch and in the reboot will also appear again when we need to have other mean girls accompany Cordelia and ostracize Buffy) and Oz (probably only a background character in Season 1) too. Basically try to have a fixed cast of mostly background student characters who all appear in two or three episodes, instead of only have people appear in one episode as needed.

Darla is played as the Master's second in command right from the start, and appears in more episodes before she dies (which means maybe we push the Angel rewrite back a few episodes). Luke is still around in the first couple of episodes, but he's more clearly just the muscle.

The Anointed One still exists and is still a little kid, but (again, for reasons of narrative parsimony), I'll also conflate him with Billy, this season's other mysteriously spooky kid. All the nightmares people start experiencing are because of something the Anointed One is consciously doing, not just a random boy manifesting random psychic powers. (Also Willow and Xander get some better nightmares, I think. And maybe Joyce and Angel get to have nightmares of their own.)

We will get at least one scene in Joyce's art gallery at some point this season. That might be as simple as having her be working late in the gallery when Darla attacks her to frame Angel, or we might get a whole new episode out of it; I haven't decided.

[becauseitswrong]

and sure it could be interesting to consider the African origins of the slayer but the show was too busy actively perpetrating orientalism and anti-Blackness with that reveal to give the colonial implications of the present day watchers council being a staunchly british institution any credit

[pomegranateteeth]

sure fucking whatever man

[dragon-in-a-fez]

isn't that that Tolkien book

[whatisyourchildhoodtrauma]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER | 3.12 "Helpless"

BONUS:

[dyk-this-musical-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you know this Musical Song? #217

I know the song and the musical

I know the song but not the musical

I know the musical but not the song

I may know this

I have never heard this

Voting ended onMay 16

[moistvonlipwig]

also speaking of AUs and since you were curious about it earlier when i didn't have my computadora @all-seeing-ifer here's a basic outline of how my ats s4 cordelia-is-the-beast idea would go. there's more stuff with the other characters but this writeup is focused on the main beats of the cordelia & jasmine plot. amazingly enough this is indeed the short version!

a key aspect of this concept, and imo of any good ats s4 rewrite, is giving cordelia a voice. in this rewrite we are alerted to cordelia's possession at the end of "apocalypse nowish" (more on that in next bullet point). from then on we get to see scenes inside cordelia's head where she is interacting with jasmine (who isn't named jasmine yet obviously but for efficiency's sake let us call her that) and commenting on the goings-on around her.

one element that isn't strictly necessary for this idea to work is that connor is not romantically in love with either real cordelia or jasmine-possessed "cordelia"; instead, jasmine positions herself as a mother figure to connor & tells him how cordelia took care of him as a baby. i admit to finding the pseudo-incest aspect of s4 kind of utterly fascinating but while it's interesting to explore in fanfic i ultimately don't really think ats had anything especially interesting to say on the subject & frankly i think the story kind of coheres better if jasmine is a maternal figure instead. you can still have angel be jealous of their bond -- they were supposed to be a family together & now they're excluding him?? :[ < angel's sad face (w/ fangs because he is a vampire) -- and you can also deal more directly with connor's parental issues. plus it makes the jasmine/darla scene in "inside out" even more poignant.

so with this in mind, the cliffhanger at the end of "apocalypse nowish" is that "cordelia" is watching the rain of fire while connor sleeps and we see her slowly smile and then we zoom into her mind and see jasmine, still wearing cordelia's face, gloating to the real cordelia (who is like. tied up or something. in her mind. idk.) that none of her friends suspect a thing.

so basically: we know cordelia learned how to do basic astral projection in "birthday". we also are never shown what her demon half looks like. the idea is that, while cordelia herself is trapped in her own mind, she is able to astral-project her demon half to carry out various attempted interventions in jasmine's plans.

due to reasons [i can explain the reasons but it requires a lot of context lol], the beast cannot communicate using language, speech, writing, anything like that. it can gesture and give Significant Looks and that's it. so cordelia cannot convey to angel investigations anything that's going on, even though she sometimes tries.

prior to "calvary", it would seem to both the audience and the fang gang that the beast is evil and working for jasmine, as it always shows up at scenes of massacres (the eye of fire, wolfram & hart, the svear house). at these massacres, it often kneels by the dying people and appears to drain some kind of energy from them; in actuality this is cordelia taking the pain of the dying person which we know she can do qv "benediction". the beast also performs the ritual to blot out the sun which we later learn is because jasmine needs the sun to be shining in order to be born.

neither jasmine nor the beast manipulate the fang gang into removing angel's soul, they misinterpret things and do that all on their own. in this version though angel does not remember the beast at all. however, jasmine needs angel souled for her plan to work [again, due to reasons lol], so after the svear massacre, which cordelia begged jasmine not to go through with, cordelia in her beast form steals angel's soul. jasmine does not know it is cordelia controlling the beast but she knows the beast is trying to stop her, so she lets angel out of his cage so as to try to force the beast's hand to return angel's soul. she still kills lilah and this is how the audience learns the beast does not work for her -- the beast arrives at the hotel just a little too late to save lilah and the cliffhanger of "calvary" is jasmine taunting it that at this rate it'll never stop her.

jasmine maybe also absorbs lilah into the mindspace with her and cordelia as well? so as to prevent her from showing up as a wolfram & hart ghost and spilling the beans.

jasmine's pregnancy is just a virgin birth situation which impresses connor and he plans to be the best big brother ever. maybe it's even a metaphorical pregnancy?

previous 2 bullet points i still need to work on. anyway, wesley gets faith etc., they're not able to defeat angel or find his soul though.

angel lures cordelia's parents to her old apartment and kills them. then he calls up spike and inquires after xander. at this point, feeling both grief and guilt as well as hopelessness from jasmine insisting that her plan will be able to move forward with a soulless angel, just at a delayed pace, cordelia gives in and the beast shows up and returns angel's soul to him.

the beast takes angel on a little excursion to various places in their history which angel does not understand and at first he thinks the purpose is to make him feel bad because well it's angel what do you expect him to think. then the beast takes him to point dume and leads him into the water and has a little splash fight with him and angel relaxes and realizes the beast wanted to communicate that he was being forgiven for something. But What? he wonders.

at this point harmony shows up to talk to cordelia [she's also in the earlier part of the season but that's a story for the long version...] and she notices something is amiss. also around this time the fang gang have uncovered information that leads jasmine to realize that cordelia is the beast although she does not vocalize this. harmony realizes cordelia is possessed because her outfit is ugly, and when jasmine tries to stake her, the beast bursts in and spirits harmony away. jasmine gives a dramatic speech to the air where she reveals she knows the beast is cordelia. this is the cliffhanger ending of "orpheus" and also the point where the audience is let in on the truth about the beast as well.

jasmine leads the fang gang through a ritual to force the beast permanently back to its source body which would trap cordelia entirely under her control. the ritual works and jasmine leaves only for harmony to show up [after a battle with jasmine's servants] and be like hey guys cordelia is possessed.

after this s4 plays out more or less like the show does except that the demon species that the beast is part of is the same species that jasmine once ruled over and can pronounce her true name. so in order to defeat jasmine cordelia has to wake up and say her name out loud. darla comes to visit her in her sleep and tells her this. but if she does so then it would drain the rest of her energy and leave her in a coma potentially forever. she's like so wake me up already. she shows up at the hotel and says jasmine's name and falls back into a coma but this time it was on her own terms.

again this is the short version ._. if you can believe it...

[spuffygifs]

script to screen: s7e14 | first date written by: jane espenson

[crowdemon-boyo]

He was so funny for saying this a whole season before Spike was introduced

[buffycaps]

The first day of kindergarten, you cried because you broke the yellow crayon, and you were too afraid to tell anyone. You've come pretty far. Ending the world, not a terrific notion. But the thing is, yeah, I love you. I love crayon-breaky Willow and I love scary, veiny Willow. So if I'm going out, it's here.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER - 5.16: The Body // 6.22 Grave

[ardagifs]

THE TWIN JADES OF LAN THE UNTAMED 陈情令 | EP 05

[daisychase]

ANGEL THE SERIES // 1.22 "To Shanshu in L.A."

[klimtsonian]

“And what kind of king would Camelot want?” 🏰⚔️🐉

[claudiablacks]

buffy rewatch ❉ first date