Land of Cake

[charmedslayer]

BTVS - Faith Lehane - Bury A Friend

[scoobygangs]

[rebcake]

Speak your truth!

[ripleyuniverse-deactivated20230]

Favorite Spuffy moments: 2/∞

[rebcake]

Even if it’s not really Buffy talking, there's no doubt that it changed the way Spike saw things.

Spike/Faith is absolutely a thing. A smoking thing, as we saw in Dirty Girls.

[rahirah]

gallifrey-via-pylea replied to your post: Out of curiosity

I have a feeling you’re not fond of Xander, but idk if he’s your least favorite. I’ve never seen you say anything nice about Andrew and I don’t see him being a fave or even a neutral character

And thenewbuzwuzz said: Your least favorite BtVS character: hard question, I’m not sure you have one. I’d guess Andrew, because I foggily recall a tumblr post where you said something about how he’s a mushroom (in reference to what Buffy said in “Potential”) and, also, he doesn’t have a character tag in any of the Barbverse stories. :D ******************* DING DING DING DING!

Insofar as I have a most hated character, Andrew is it. And again, a lot of my dislike is more fandom-related than character-related – or at least, it was until season 9 of the Dark Horse comics. I can remember, back when S7 was airing, Andrew was far from the fan favorite he is today. People found him irritating, felt he’d been redeemed far too easily, and resented him for “stealing” screen time from Xander. (It wasn’t common knowledge yet that this was at least partially because of Nicholas Brendan’s off-screen substance abuse problems.) At that point, being the contrarian I am, I thought people were just exhibiting knee-jerk resistance to a new character, even though I felt some of the criticism (the too-easy redemption) had some substance. I found Andrew mildly amusing.

What changed my mind was AtS season 5. There was a big trend in Spuffy fandom at the time for portraying Andrew as Spike’s Only True Friend ™ which I found a little hard to swallow. It seemed to me that in S6, Andrew had just substituted Spike for Warren as the Cool Male Figure he emulated badly. At this point, you couldn’t spit without hitting a Spuffy fic which prominently featured Andrew. The fact that a character whom I still found only mildly amusing kept turning up everywhere made me less and less inclined to like him. When Andrew showed up in Damage all Watchered up, and coolly betrayed Angel and Spike, it seemed obvious to me that he’d replaced Spike with Giles. Fandom only focused on Andrew hugging Spike. Meh.

Then “The Girl In Question” aired. Now, for the most part, I really enjoy that episode, for all it fits very weirdly into the season at that point (I tend to forget the angsty Wesley/Illyria parts even exist.) It’s the scene at the end which consolidated my Andrew… well, hate’s probably too strong; my Andrew God-he’s-so-annoying! The scene was originally supposed to feature Dawn, and adapted rather badly, which accounts for many of the things about it which I found infuriating. But in the Watsonian sense, still, there it is. My reaction to that scene was who the hell is Andrew to be living in Buffy’s apartment and making sanctimonious pronouncements on Buffy’s love life to EITHER Angel and Spike? Not even getting into the Doylist aspect of it being a lecture from the writers to shippers, which is doubly infuriating. If there was any scene in the Jossverse which ought to have united Spuffy and Bangel shippers against their real foes, the writers, that scene should have been it. :D

(Now, if it had been Buffy, or even Dawn as Buffy’s designated representative, telling Angel and Spike that she wasn’t interested in either of them at the moment, and they needed to get out of her hair, that would have been a completely different thing.)

When the S8 comics came out and we found out that Andrew hadn’t even been speaking on Buffy’s behalf in that scene, that Buffy didn’t even know that Angel and Spike had ever come to see her, and Andrew apparently thought it was a great big joke that he’d pulled the wool over Buffy’s eyes, THAT solidified God-he’s-so-annoying! into UGH ANDREW. And then S9 of the comics, and the infamous Robot Abortion storyline, where Andrew takes advantage of Buffy being blackout drunk to transfer her mind into a robot body (which for some creepy reason he’s apparently designed to fake-pee, fake-eat, fake-poop, and fake-menstruate, else I cannot imagine why Robot Buffy didn’t realize much, MUCH earlier that she wasn’t human any longer) without her knowledge or consent, while installing her human body (which starts developing a new amnesiac personality of its own) in a Barbie Dream House and spying on her. And then just blithely lets this situation go on for weeks, maybe months, without telling either version of Buffy what’s going on. If Robot Buffy hadn’t found out the truth by having her arm torn off, who knows how long he’d have let things go on?

This is arguably the most loathsome and pervasive violation of a character’s consent and autonomy in an entire series’ worth of horrendous consent issues. (Two characters, if one counts Amnesiac Human Buffy as a separate person.) And when it all comes out, Buffy is… mildly peeved, and no one else seems to care that much. Which is, tbh, par for the course for the series, and the extent to which one finds it annoying is dependent upon whether or not it happens to be one’s favorite character screwing up and being forgiven too quickly, or a character one already doesn’t like.

But. I would have expected fandom, which leaps on other characters’ screw-ups and shreds them like raw meat, to get at least a little cranky about this. But nooooo. Andrew is feckless and (at that point) ambiguously gay, so Andrew can do no wrong in fandom’s mind. He meant well!

Anyway, my dislike has cooled off some since then, because the writers in season 10 actually did give Andrew some character development to get him away from doing things like that. (Even though I have a different set of issues with the “the mechanical recording of Jonathan isn’t a real person, but the biological recording of Fred is, never mind why, it’s because we say so!” stuff.) But he still ticks me off.

[rebcake]

I think that Andrew, like Vi, became a Fan Favorite™ because of the awesome of the actors that portray them. Tom and Felicia always bring the fun! That said, you are right about the nigh-on-unforgivable behavior of Andrew in the comics, particularly S9. Unfortunately, he’s not the only character that did terrible things in the comics and had their crimes handwaved away. By the time Andrew was unmasked as the idiot/mastermind, I think most of us were just exhausted by it all and couldn’t be bothered to work up the good froth that it deserved. I was still revolted by the Twangel business, the Thricewise who felt entitled to torture Dawn until she apologized for her sex life, and even Giles who left his entire fortune to Faith ensuring that Buffy would be back to waiting tables. He couldn’t leave one of his two houses to the Summers girls? Not to mention the bank robbing slayers headed up by Buffy right there in the first issue. The whole thing is an ethical mess, and by the time Andrew did his boneheaded thing, who even cared about the comics anymore? I admit I got more interested when Gage came on, and the damned things started to make some kinds of sense in terms of both story and emotion. But there are plenty of us who prefer not to think of such ugly business at all. Heh.

[omgjay1988]

Help the spuffy realm and sinister attraction every writer starts somewhere even fanfiction

[likeabidetofevil]

List of times the Scoobies ganged up on Buffy from most to least brutal:

“Empty Places”: they threw her out of her own goddamn house and her own goddamn little sister was the one to get the final proverbial lick in

“Dead Man’s Party”: they cornered and humiliated her in front of a room full of people and Xander was pretty freaking malicious about Angel when Buffy was still grieving

“The Yoko Factor”: at least after this one everyone had the decency to apologize

[rebcake]

You left out “Revelations” where they had a pretty good point even if not everybody expressed it well. In “Ted” and “Living Conditions” they band together to dismiss her superior intuition to the point of trying to restrain her. In “Reptile Boy” Willow was on her side, and in “Intervention” they were actually ganging up on her because of the Buffybot though they didn’t know that. They didn’t back her play in “Homecoming” either so I imagine she felt abandoned if not ganged up on. Pulling her out of heaven in “Bargaining” was the worst imposition of their will though.

[headlineawards]

Headline needs some help!

We have lost our award banner artist to the problems of real life.

If you have some competence with banner making and would like to be a hero to everyone involved in Headline, please contact us.  We only had 10 days until the winners are announced.

If you think you can help, email us at [email protected]!

[gilescandy]

I’m only freaking out a little, I swear…  help me…

[funforahermit]

Holy….. What???

Can anyone help?

[feliciacraft]

The air quality in San Francisco is now worse than Beijing’s. SF’s PM2.5 index: 157, Beijing’s: 129.

For reference, air quality index (AQI) for PM2.5 has the following ranges:

0-50: Good

51-100: Moderate

101-150: Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups

151-200: Unhealthy

Basically, we’re having the kind of post-apocalyptic, “Whatever you do, don’t go outside” kind of air quality.

[rebcake]

Yeah. All kinds of fun. According to the Chronicle, it was 271 today:

/california-wildfires/article/how-bad-is-air-in-sf-bay-area-smoke-breathe-record-13400047.php

I’m heading to Southern California tomorrow, in part to get some freaking fresh air. The irony. 

[matchingvnecks]

[teachingwithcoffee]

It’s time to bring an end to the Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol

[bigbutterandeggman-deactivated2]

Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s. 

So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem. 

BUT! Let’s look closer! 

“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.

See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.

Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.

So it’s not actually a song about rape - in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.

[aphnxrising]

[xtrapockets-deactivated20171024]

remember loves: context is everything. and personal opinion matters. If you still find this song to be a problem, that’s fine. But please don’t make it into something it’s not because it’s been stripped of cultural context.

[vorked]

This is actually really interesting. I’ve never known a lot of the background to this song.

[unquietgravekeeper]

Making its annual rounds

[torrilin]

It’s a fun song to sing. That tends to be a big factor in covers. Also, if you go through the lyrics it’s pretty short on pronouns. Gendered pronouns tend to kill the chances of a song being covered, because no matter how fun it is to sing, for a lot of singers the pronouns make it unmarketable. Doesn’t fit their image, audience won’t like it, there’s an endless list of reasons.

I don’t have any favorite covers of this one gender swapped. But I’m betting most of us who sing have heard fun yet very unmarketable lesbian versions, going back years. (For me back to the mid 90s, and I know there’s older singers than me on Tumblr) I don’t think guys tend to be as flexible about doing the gay version, so I haven’t heard many of those. Sadness, you don’t have to be gay or lesbian to have fun with being subversive. And knowing at least a few gay men who sing, I know damn well versions exist, tho I’m pretty sure it can be played straight too.

It’s also fairly fun to stage. Most duets are stupid romantic bullshit with very little intrinsic setting. This one relies on having a setting, to the point where it’s almost a character.

If something has a bazillion covers, there’s usually reasons.

[rebcake]

I’m sure this has been mentioned somewhere in the notes, but the song first appeared in “Neptune’s Daughter” — it won the best song Oscar for 1949 — where it was performed with the genders switched: Red Skelton sang the “I should say no” part, while Betty Garrett sang the “here are a number of excuses you could use to stay” part. All in good fun, as they say. 

[rahirah]

feliciacraft replied to your post: Once again Phoenix grinds to a halt as water falls…

Stay safe! Incidentally, I didn’t know that pelicans flock. I’ve only seen them solitary?

I have no idea if it’s an official flock or not. They may just be huddling together in a fit of “Uh… guys? Where the fuck are we?” We very, VERY occasionally get seagulls blown down from Salt Lake, but this is the first time I’ve heard of pelicans getting blown here all the way from Baja. I’m not sure if Fish and Wildlife is gonna try to capture them, or if they can get back to the ocean on their own. I don’t think they can survive here long; there’s not enough open water with fish in it.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156735942732375&set=p.10156735942732375&type=3&theater

[rebcake]

FWIW, I always see pelicans flocking. Or, more accurately, flying in formation like prehistoric geese. They are amazing birds that make me believe in pterodactyls.

[feliciacraft]

Huh. Maybe I’m not hanging out in pelican-friendly places? I usually see them singularly in Golden Gate Park, standing out among a bunch of ducks, looking sheepish (and outsized).

Canada geese I do see in gaggles, loud and messy. Nothing cuter than goslings all huddled together, though!

Also always alone whenever I see them: egrets.

@rebcake Where do you pelicans flying in formation? I want to see! :)

[rebcake]

Most recently — last month — I saw tons of them flocking in and around Bolinas. You’d probably see them if you went down to Fishermans Wharf, but why would you want to do that? Ocean Beach/Sutro Baths might be good sighting areas nearby.

[rahirah]

feliciacraft replied to your post: Once again Phoenix grinds to a halt as water falls…

Stay safe! Incidentally, I didn’t know that pelicans flock. I’ve only seen them solitary?

I have no idea if it’s an official flock or not. They may just be huddling together in a fit of “Uh… guys? Where the fuck are we?” We very, VERY occasionally get seagulls blown down from Salt Lake, but this is the first time I’ve heard of pelicans getting blown here all the way from Baja. I’m not sure if Fish and Wildlife is gonna try to capture them, or if they can get back to the ocean on their own. I don’t think they can survive here long; there’s not enough open water with fish in it.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156735942732375&set=p.10156735942732375&type=3&theater

[rebcake]

FWIW, I always see pelicans flocking. Or, more accurately, flying in formation like prehistoric geese. They are amazing birds that make me believe in pterodactyls.

[seasonal-spuffy]

The Fall 2018 round of @seasonal-spuffy​, a hootenanny online festival for Spike/Buffy fanworks, will start on Friday, November 16, and run until Sunday, December 2.

Our theme this round will be Road Trip! Everyone’s invited!

Plan to create an original, never-before-posted Spuffy fanwork to share with the community! :) The sky’s your limit as far as the medium goes: fic, drabble, poetry, drawing, manip, mood board, wallpaper, icon, fanvid, playlist, comics, meta, puzzle game, sculpture… stained glass… interpretive dance… Other Art, beginning of a beautiful WIP, and practically anything else is great! Just check the rules before you begin.

To sign up for a posting day of your own, go to the signup post on LiveJournal! Days are available on a first-come, first-served basis. We’re also offering some FREE-FOR-ALL dates on which anybody may post without signup.

Posting for this round will be open on LiveJournal only. We see that most people who took the planning poll don’t mind the site, and we’re taking the opportunity to bring everyone together for the event.

THAT BEING SAID, we have given rather a lot of thought to people who aren’t best friends with LiveJournal and how they may join in the fun:

Keep reading

[deactivated-blog]

Changes to Buffyverse Top 5 This Year!

As we discussed in January’s closing post, Top 5 is going through some changes this year. We have expanded our Halloween session to a 10 day period which will run from October 24 to November 2.

As in the past, this Halloween session will be open for Classic Recs. So we hope you’ll share your favorite fics, vids, graphics, anything and everything fandom has produced in all the Whedon fandoms. Content from all time periods before 2018 are eligible for posting and, as always, crossover content is A-OK.

But there’s more! As this is the last year in which we’ll run a separate (and abbreviated) 2018 session in January, we’re going to have a new event – FlashForward Weekend. On October 27 and 28, we’d like to encourage you to post your 2018 recs. We realize that the year won’t be quite over yet but we think there should be plenty of fan creations to choose from in the first 10 months, and you can always add additional recs later in January or during 2019’s session.

Do start preparing some separate lists as we’d like to see how much interest there continues to be for sharing current recs.

Spreading Out

As with last year, Classic Recs is running on both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth. Post at whichever you wish, although there’s no need to duplicate your posts on both sites since they’ll be joined together once our session closes.

Here on Tumblr we will be having a special recs-related activity unique to the site, so let your followers know about us!

Lastly for those who are trying out Pillowfort, we have opened a Top 5 community there to see how much interest there is in a recs event. If you’re looking for communities to join, add us – we’d love to see how many Buffy fans are around!

Your mods are petzipellepingo and yourlibrarian. Send us an ask if you have any questions about the community or the Halloween event.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

I WILL BE THERE WITH BELLS ON

[rheaitis]

So, can someone please explain to me the Western love for leaving the parental home regardless of cost, hardship, or location?

Cause I moved out for grad school, but I’m fully planning on moving back after my doctorate. That way my parents get someone chipping in on household costs now they’re on their pension, I get to not pay rent, and we get to spend time together, which they’ve missed. And this is only socially odd because I’m a daughter and if straight would probably be living with my SO’s family instead. Even then, my mother’s parents live/d with us, so not that odd.

If work takes you to a different city, I get that. But living in the same city or even neighbourhood, without it being a case of lack of space? Why please?

OBVS THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO CASES WHERE YOU CAN’T STAND YOUR PARENTS OR THEY REFUSE TO TALK TO YOU.

[hone-onna-no-botan]

In America, anyway, the cultural importance of “making it on your own” and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is wildly ingrained and stressed. There’s the sense, societally, that once you’re of age, you’re expected to “go out there and make your own life,” and living with your parents, or moving back in with them, is seen in terms of failure, rather than practicality.

[rheaitis]

so it was doable when the Boomers were growing up and nobody’s been able to snap out of it since, huh?

[torrilin]

Heh.

It WASN’T doable when the Boomers were growing up is the thing. It worked for some guys, if they had parents well off enough to backstop them. It ONLY worked for girls if they got married right away or had roommates. And only with the parental backstop. No parents to back you up, it became a matter of pure luck. And if you’ve got boomers telling stories they really like to leave out the hard parts. It’s sorta… they’re telling their superhero origin story.

[rheaitis]

In India (in families where you get on with your parents/children) moving away is a thing you do if you find a better job somewhere far enough that commuting is impossible, and people will even settle for lesser-paying jobs if they can stay at home (in part cause no rent); with the other big exception being married women moving in with their husbands and in-laws (but even then trying to be around their parents if possible). 

So, uh, colour me confused all over again, if it never really worked ever.

[torrilin]

It worked for some people. Sort of. In a way they could tell themselves it worked.

Basically, it’s a really interesting example of how primary sources don’t all tell the same stories, and how the narrative around a story has a lot of power. And it’s an example that is helped along by explicit US educational policy.

If you ask my parents now, they would say it worked for them. Both of them. I’m not sure dad’s really capable of telling his story properly anymore. But he would say it definitely worked for him. He would leave out that he got free ride to an expensive boarding school. He would leave out that he lived at home rent free for college. He would leave out that he had a lot of help from his mom setting up their first house. I’m pretty sure their first car or two came from Dad’s mom upgrading early. Mom was thrown out of her house at 18. Her family is the only one I’ve ever met where that really happened. You’ll run into some men who claim it, but *shrugs* mostly the times ive heard men claim it it was for the story. For mom, she was expected to be paying for her entire keep starting from age 18 even though she was still in high school. Mom’s stories are always very careful dodging around the time between when she hit 18 and when she married my dad. She does her best to avoid saying anything about it at all.

Their sisters and brothers all have similar stories. Dad wasn’t eligible for the Vietnam draft on legitimate medical grounds (asthma, flat feet, blind as bat). I’m not sure how his brother got out of it, but he did. Mom’s brother went (which means he had the GI bill). I don’t know why he’s been divorced multiple times, but he had a habit of marrying Thai women and being divorced by them. Hopefully he’s just a creepy racist. And dad’s brother in law went to Vietnam, ditto on the GI bill. Mom’s sister was thrown out too, and made an early, hasty marriage that ended in divorce basically as soon as she could sue for divorce. For someone her age, it suggests domestic violence. Dunno for sure. Dad’s sister in law married dad’s brother ASAP, and didn’t go back to work until her kids were in their teens. She’s a bit older than her husband, so she probably was only on her own a year or two before they married. Like my mom, she refuses to talk about it.

So basically all the adults where I have details, the men can say it worked. But they can only say it worked by leaving out stuff where they had help. Which is a LOT. There’s only 2 women who can maybe say it worked, and it’s very telling that they’ve been rabid Democrats my entire life.

And the way Americans tell the story nowadays is radically different from the way my parents would tell it when I was 10 or 15. It’s shifted a lot to minimize stuff like grant money for college and to make it seem like of course every person in college back then had a car. In reality lol no, nobody had cars unless they lived at home. And even then they probably took the bus or streetcar. And my parents were deeply enraged by losing streetcars to buses and the way it shifted from every 10m service to every 30m.

And well, my family is basically all white except for my various Thai aunts. Families that are Black or Chinese or Mexican tell very different stories for the same time period.

[rebcake]

There was a time, not that long ago, when it did work for a lot of people. My parents were out of their parents’ houses by around 18, and not in the military. They married young, had kids young, but went back to college when we were little. They were pre-war babies, but went to school with boomers. 

I, too, was out of the house early. A big part of it was that many things were less expensive. College, most importantly. With various grants and fellowships, it was virtually free for both my parents to get graduate degrees while living in married student housing. I went to a University of California and lived in the dorms straight out of high school. I saved enough money from my $2/hr. job in high school to pay for the first year without any aid. When the costs went up (still much less than nowadays) I got an on-campus job. Food stamps. Even a stint at Section 8 housing when the apartments I was living in converted — a lucky break for me. All of this was subsidized by tax dollars, and I never forget that.

I lived with my mom the summer after freshman year, but not since. (We’ve not lived in the same city since I was 16.) Housing was cheap, especially if you were willing to live with roommates, probably in a not-great neighborhood. I moved to San Francisco in 1985, and your own room in a shared house was $200 then, as a starting point. My brother lived with either my mom or my dad during a few stretches in early adulthood, but my sisters never did. 

I’m not implying that it was easy peasy for everyone, or that there weren’t hardships. There were plenty. But it was possible. Possible to the point of probable for lots of people.

My daughter doesn’t have the options I did. She would have liked to get a place with all her girlfriends after high school, but that kind of arrangement is way too expensive anymore. There are more young American women living at home now than at any time since before WWII. I like having her around, but I know she feels constrained in a way I wasn’t. At her age I was having adventures, doing art, starting a career, playing in a band, taking my fair share of lovers. That wide world of possibilities just isn’t there for her.

I don’t think the “love of leaving the parental home” is always a rejection of parental values, which I suspect underlies the OP’s original question. But yes, being able to arrange your life in your own way, and to (eventually) support yourself is seen as desirable, even now. I didn’t move out because my parents would object to my adventures, my artist’s life, my lovers. They wouldn’t, but it’s  difficult for parents and children in the U.S. to make the transition from child/teen to adult gracefully. I know my dad was imposing all kinds of curfews and “where are you goings?” on my sisters, and he’s a pretty open-minded guy. It’s hard to go from “keep your children safe” to “let your children make their own choices”. It is for me. 

I get along great with my family, and I’m trying to arrange things so that we have a family “compound” in the near future so that my daughter and my mother can have their own places while still living with/near me. My daughter needs more space though she craves nurturing care. My mother needs more care, though she craves her own space. Even in the U.S., we’re starting to realize that multigenerational living is more sustainable in the long run.

[godslittlesister]

BtVS: Joyce sounding like a parent who found out their kid is lgbt

“Honey, are you sure you’re a Slayer?”

“I mean have you tried not being a Slayer?”

“It’s because you didn’t have a strong father figure. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

“You can’t just drop something on me like this and pretend it’s nothing!”

“I’m tired of ‘I don’t have time’ or 'you wouldn’t understand’. I am your mother and you will make time to explain yourself.”

“Well, I don’t accept that!”

“Well, it stops now!”

“This is insane. You need help.”

“You walk out that door, don’t even think about coming back!”

“You didn’t give me any time. You just dumped this….this thing on me and expected me to get it. Well, guess what? Mom’s not perfect. I handled it badly. But that doesn’t give you the right to punish me by running away.”

(to Buffy’s new friend) “So, you’re a Slayer too. Isn’t that interesting. Do you like it?”

“I hate this. I hate your life.”

“I know you didn’t choose this, I know it chose you. I’ve tried marching in the Slayer Pride parade but I don’t want you to die.”

“I thought it was about time for me to come out and watch. You know, the slaying.”

“But it’s such a big part of your life and I’d like to understand it.”

(to Buffy’s friend) “Buffy told me you dabble.”

“This isn’t our town anymore. It belongs to the monsters and the witches and the Slayers.”

“Sweetie, those books have no place in a public school library. Any student can just waltz in there and get all sorts of ideas. Do you understand how that terrifies me?”

“Since when does it matter what I want? I wanted a happy, NORMAL daughter. Instead I got a Slayer.”

“You earned this. You toyed with unnatural forces. What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t punish you?”

[rebcake]

Very true. It’s not a subtle metaphor. 

But in fairness to Joyce, she was under an evil demonic influence for the last 4-5 of the quotes you use. The 3 before that are from the same episode and indicate an openness to Buffy’s POV, which is then ruthlessly quashed by the Hansel & Gretel demon. The point works better without including those quotes, IMO.

[kyliafanfiction]

So, genuine question here, but apart from when Buffy has sex with Angel and he turns into Angelus (which was supposed to represent the way boyfriends can turn into very different people when they get what they want (sex), in the thematic narratives undergirding Buffy, as I gather it)

When was Buffy punished for having sex? Like, narratively punished? Because I see people talking about it, a lot, as this running theme that’s one more proof Joss is a horrible sexist*… and I can’t really think of it being a running theme for her?

But I could be remembering wrong or looking at things differently, so..

When else?

Keep reading

[rebcake]

The Angel/Angelus transformation was definitely the most punishing emotionally for Buffy. But Parker doing essentially the same thing — minus the mass murder — was an echo of that experience. It solidified for Buffy that she wasn’t able to make good romantic choices — that her usually stellar instincts were rubbish when it came to romance.

Then came Riley, and the sex didn’t immediately lead to rejection and horror! Hooray! Except that after Maggie Walsh watches their funtimes, she orders a hit on Buffy. Which then leads to a whole Buffy vs. U.S. military thing. Punishment for having sex? IMHO, it was more like she was being punished for being the Slayer and having an opinion, which is another running theme. If she’d been all chaste, she still would have ended up in that fight. She just wouldn’t have had her inside man. (See what I did there?)

Side note: Where the Wild Things Are is a commentary on how denying sexuality is harmful. Was Buffy punished by the energizer bunny sex with Riley? Consent was questionable, on both sides, but neither seemed too upset afterward.

The only punishment visited on Buffy for having sex with Season 5 Riley is that he leaves her flat after cheating on her. I mean, he wouldn’t have left her if they’d never gotten together, I suppose. But it’s is not an experience unique to Buffy, or to Buffy’s gender. Millions have gone through that particular painful growing up experience, and most have gone on to have sex again. And again. My conclusion is that sex with Riley didn’t lead to a cosmic punishment for Buffy, even if it wasn’t all roses. (Insert little pricks joke here.)

Then there’s the sexual relationship with Spike.

A lot of this is debated in fandom to this day, but I think it’s safe to say that Buffy was trying to punish herself by having sex with Spike. As just one among myriad other motivations. In some ways, it was a successful self-punishment. She ended up feeling terrible about herself for the way she was treating him. One reading is that his assault on her was ultimately because she’d engaged in dirtybadwrong KINKY sex without safeguards, and that assault was her punishment, narratively speaking. Even if the writers didn’t mean it to be a punishment to Buffy, but rather an indictment of Spike, it still plays that way. At the very least, she comes away from the experience convinced that her romantic choices are terrible.

She doesn’t have sex again for the rest of the show. Bad things still happen. Draw you own conclusion.

Do you want to bring in the comics? Because that’s a mixed bag, as well, the highlights being that 1) sex with a fellow Slayer doesn’t have too many terrible consequences for Buffy or the world, and 2) sex with Twilight/Angel leads to epic badness. Epic. The absolute worst. Consensual? Who knows? World-ending? Oh, yeah. Sex with Spike in the comics seems, um, healing. 

Buffy gets punished for having sex often, but not always. I prefer a narrative in which Buffy is empowered by sex, which also sometimes happens. I don’t think Joss is a horrible sexist/misogynist for using her sex life as a device to move the story along. Denying that sex has a wide range of outcomes doesn’t strike me as a feminist or realistic, either. At its heart, BtVS is a horror story, and Buffy makes out much better than the standard issue horror story girls. That’s the whole point. 

[seasonal-spuffy]

September 22: Fall Equinox Free-for-All!

We’re back!

Or we will be, as soon as Willow finds an Urn of Osiris and figures out a good ritual sacrifice and all that. While we sort out these details, we’d like to remind you we’ve got a free-for-all day coming up on the Fall Equinox, September 22!

On September 22 (your local time), you’re cordially invited to post any newly made Spuffy fanworks on our LiveJournal community or our Dreamwidth community, or, if you’re not a LJ/DW person, here on tumblr.

We welcome fic, art, and most other things you could dream of making, as long as it’s Spuffy, it was made by you, and it’s not been posted anywhere else yet. (And isn’t an all-human AU. Fans of the genre, sorry.)

No signup is needed to participate: anyone’s free to show up and post. Just remember to take a look at the posting guidelines linked above. :)

This free-for-all day doesn’t have an official theme. Anything Spuffy goes! That being said, if you’re in need of inspiration, consider:

Keep reading