erin

I lost a friend tonight, and I may lose more. The whole earth may be sucked into hell, and you want my help ‘cause your girlfriend’s a big ho? Well let me take this opportunity to not care.

Out for a walk, bitch

Tara: “I think it’s strange. I mean, I think I should worry that we haven’t found her name.”

Willow: “Who, Miss Kitty?”

*shot of their kitten, playing with a ball of red yarn in slow-motion*

Tara: “You’d think she’d let us know her name by now.”

Willow: “She will.

*looking down at Tara*

She’s not all grown yet.”

Tara: “You’re not worried?”

Willow: “I never worry here. I’m safe here.”

Tara: “You don’t know everything about me.”

Willow: “Have you told me your real name?”

Tara: “Oh, you know that.

*Willow smiles, reaches for something. Shot of a paintbrush dipping into ink jars*

They will find out, you know. About you.”

Willow: “Don’t have time to think about that. You know I have all this homework to finish.”

*the camera pulls back so we can see Tara is lying face-down on her bed, naked, and Willow is painting on her back*

Tara: “Are you gonna finish in time for class?”

Willow: “I can be late.”

Tara: “But you’ve never taken drama before.

*shot of Willow dipping the paintbrush again, moving it across to Tara’s back, which is covered with Greek symbols*

Might miss something important.”

Willow: “I don’t wanna leave here.”

*Tara twists back to look at her*

Tara: “Why not?”

*Willow stands up, looking down at Tara. She turns away toward a dark red curtain. Walks over to it*

Willow: “It’s so bright.

*pulls back the curtain to reveal a brightly sunlit desert. The light falls on Tara, who looks over. Looking back at Tara, still holding the curtain open*

And there’s something out there.”

*shot of the desert, straggly plants, rocks. We briefly see something (someone?) moving, then it’s gone. Shot of the kitten stalking forward toward the camera, in slow-motion*

I have been so anxious to get to this episode and write my meta. For all the time I’ve brought up Willow’s insecurities, this is the one and only episode that lays them all bare for everybody to see, if - and this is important -, you are clever enough to decipher the code of visual symbolism and possess the ability of interpretation. Pretty much all of the episode ‘Restless’ requires you to interpret what you see. You’re not told straight-forwardly what the dreams, each of the core 4 Scooby members have, are about and that’s precisely what I love about it and why it is probably my most favourite episode of the whole show.

Now, obviously, I’m only going to be talking about Willow’s dream in the episode because if I were to do an analysis of every character’s dream, I’d be here all day and this recap would be incredibly long. I would suggest watching YouTuber Passion Of The Nerd’s analysis for it to get the whole picture. Much of what I will write here will draw from that as I agree with quite a lot of it and think it makes a lot of sense in understanding each character. Every character has fears, worries and insecurities, and that’s what these dreams are specifically about, but Willow’s go much deeper than can be witnessed in all of the show due to her “hiding” them under a “thinly-veiled” persona of who she wants to be. For the most part, you only get to see who she wants you to see. It is not until this episode that all of Willow’s real thoughts and feelings take center-stage - quite literally. There’s a reason why both her dreams in ‘Nightmares’ and ‘Restless’ have her performing on stage. The former, being more about stage fright and about wanting to go unnoticed. The latter, about acting like something she’s not and “putting on a show” of confidence and security to the other characters, who she fears knows about “the real her”, and the audience watching her. Now, “the real her” is as ambiguous as this entire dream sequence is - meaning: it depends on your point of view who Willow is. And this is why I clash with @confusedguytoo about Willow often regarding my views and opinions on Willow. They see something different to me. However, I’ll let them better explain that if they so wish to. I’ll only explain what I see - in Willow - and in this episode.

I relate Willow’s insecurities to her accumulation of power and need for control. For me, much of what I interpret in ‘Restless’ ties in and very much foreshadows Willow’s magic addiction and ‘Dark Willow’ storyline in Season 6 because, to me, Dark Willow is less about the Magicks and more about power and rage, (Anya interjects here: “and vengeance, don’t forget vengeance”). So I will go through the meaning of Willow’s dream in ‘Restless’ from the way I interpret it and in my own words:

Starting off, we have Willow sat on Tara’s bed with Tara (well, actually Tara is laying down on it and Willow is sat on it.) Tara is turned away from Willow as Willow paints some writing on her bare back (see Passion Of The Nerd’s analysis to know what is being written because it’s very significant to the scene.) This part of Willow’s dream has more to do with Tara than Willow, but it’s important to remember that it’s all from Willow’s perspective. Willow worries that there’s something about Tara that Tara isn’t telling her. Something she’s not “facing her” with and letting her know bothers her. But other than that - she has no worries. She feels safest with Tara and, as I’ve previously mentioned in another recap, is much more invested in the relationship they share than Tara is at this point in it. And the scales don’t actually equal in that because Willow becomes uncomfortably and unhealthily invested in that she starts to abuse Tara in such a way where she wants to make sure Tara pays the most attention to her. And magic has always been the best way for Willow to have “her will be done” well before Tara entered the picture of her life. And so, she knows it’s her bread and butter to getting her way.

Moving on, we now see Willow walking the halls of Sunnydale high school and Xander and Oz are in the dream. No Tara. Meaning this part of the dream is something passed in her life but still very present in her mind. Although this is of the past, the dialogue between all 3 characters is about Willow’s then-future. There is mention of Tara and of the drama class they will take in college. I interpret this to mean that Willow can’t entirely let go of what was to focus on what is or what will be. Hence why Oz is in the scene and why he says “Oh, I’ve been here forever” when Willow asks him if he’s ever took the drama course - at which point we see Willow trying to take something out of her locker but can’t seem to get it open. I interpret this to mean she’s locked out and cannot access that part of her life anymore despite still thinking about it, and specifically Oz, in it. You see, Oz may have followed Willow to college, but he never stayed. Their relationship was only one that existed in high school and Willow has regretfully moved on from Oz and entered a new relationship that exists in college and will last beyond that. She cannot access her high school life anymore. She cannot access Oz anymore. Thus, their love affair was tied to their high school life and Willow no longer goes there.

At this point we see Willow walk out of the frame, leaving Xander and Oz behind, to stand backstage of a production in their drama class - of which Willow has never even rehearsed for and hasn’t even had her first drama class yet. And the characters of Harmony, Riley and Buffy are dressed up in costume ready to perform the play and tell Willow that she’s late but she’s “already” dressed in “costume” and “already” in “character”. Giles then enters the scene as the stage director and his dialogue in rallying his actors to get ready to perform reveals that this play is all about Willow. In fact - she’s the main character in it (go figure) and everybody in the audience, including the cast, is there to watch her perform.

“Acting is not about behaving, it’s about hiding. The audience wants to find you, strip you naked, and eat you alive, so hide.” - Giles.

Next Willow goes behind the stage curtains (which are red to represent a vagina, apparently, according to Whedon in the commentary track for ‘Restless’) and finds Tara among them with her who tells her that things aren’t going very well. Willow says that drama class is not being done in the “proper” way, she doesn’t know what to do, and the play’s starting soon. Tara then tells her that the play’s already started and that’s not the point anyway. Willow doesn’t understand. As the play happens without Willow, Tara disappears, and what was following Willow attacks her.

Buffy saves her and we go back to Sunnydale high school. This time we’re in a classroom. It isn’t clear which class but it’s presumably English as Willow reads out a book report on ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. Before she does that though, Buffy tells Willow that the play is long over and asks her why she’s still in “costume”. Willow responds that it’s not a costume, she’s just in her outfit of the day. Buffy tells her that everybody already knows about her and to take her “costume” off, to which Willow panics and refuses. Buffy rips her “costume” off of her to reveal her wearing the clothes she was wearing on the very first episode of the show. Now, Willow stands in front of a full classroom of her peers (both from high school, college, and the Scooby Gang) mocking her for her appearance and her reaction to being totally exposed to what she believes everybody perceives of her as the truth of who she really is. Still a shy loser. The dream sequence ends with what was following Willow and attacked her throughout; the first Slayer sucking out her soul and leaving the real Willow paralyzed in her sleeping state. Unable to escape from her personal Hell.

So what does it all mean? Well, it really all depends on the way you interpret her dream. Some things about Willow and what she thinks and feels are clear, some are not. But how I’ve interpreted her dream in ‘Restless’ is that Willow, despite appearing a much more confident, secure and assertive person, doesn’t have any belief in herself when it comes to her value and requirement of her from her peers, friends and lovers… Or everyone that’s not her. Her need for validation in who she is and what she can do from everyone. Her worthiness in her work. Her ability and capacity to love. Her appearance to whoever perceives her. Especially the ones she loves. And her insecurities run so deep in this that even she doesn’t recognize them. She’s not aware to how much she’s acting like someone she’s not in order to please, in order to have attention, in order to feel of use to people. Now, it is not that she is still the loser. She’s definetly evolved into a much more worldly and well-rounded person since her high school days. Stronger, smarter, wiser, and more confident. It’s just she doesn’t believe in it and she absolutely fears no one else does either. In her mind she’s still the lonely nerd and she’s doing the most to make sure people don’t see that. Even though she has the belief that they do and always will. So her need for power and control all stems from these deep unconscious insecurities. Magic just happens to be the most effective tool for her to accumulate this. And she only becomes addicted to it in Season 6 because she relies on it to make her special. Even though she’s special as she is - with or without magic - to which Tara does her damnedest to make her aware of and believe. And she’s about the only person in the show that achieves it - until, of course, her death… Which, of course, triggers Dark Willow.

Willow's need for power and control as Dark Willow is channelled through rage and pain and so no amount of it is enough. Willow isn’t enough without Tara. None of these fears, worries and insecurities are the truth of Willow. But getting her to believe in and trust in that is next to impossible. Tara is only capable of it because she’s the one thing in the show that Willow truly loves. Is truly committed to. Is truly invested in. And she feels like she means and is nothing without her, without her love, without her attention, without her validation, without her light. She abuses her the most because she’s the one person in all of the show that she covets the most. That she doesn’t want to be without, that she feels the safest and is the happiest with. That she won’t let leave her life. Yes, it’s unhealthy. But true love can be when there’s so much inner turmoil. When there’s such a storm inside threatening to be unleashed with every bad day. Every screw up. Every "spaz" feeling. That's what it stems from. A loser mentality.

That is Willow’s entire predicament throughout the whole show and why her character representation, development and evolution is the greatest, the most profound, the most detailed, the most poignant. This is a character that you absolutely fall in love with very early on. To see them go from that gentle-natured, quirky, inspiring and endearing person to one of the most abusive, frustrating, corruptive and destructive people is hard. Fortunately, they’re given the endgame they deserve and become the hero. They learn to balance both sides to who they are - the dark and the light - and they become exactly who they want to be. Someone of great power and control. Someone that is valued and loved. Someone that matters. Whether she believes it or not is up to you. 😉

As a way to round up what has been almost four fucking years of rewatching, recapping and giffing seven seasons and a movie of BTVS and three seasons and a movie of VM and as a celebration of what has probably been my biggest - if not my best - contribution to these fandoms on this Hellmouth of a website, I thought it might be a good idea to share with all of you who’ve shown me your support by reading, liking, commenting, or reblogging any of my posts some of the highlights of the past 4 FUCKING YEARS. In all seriousness, if it hadn’t been for all of you liking, reblogging, or replying to my posts, or sending me messages of support and encouragement, I probably would have quit a long time ago. Like three years ago, give or take. So, before we get to the good stuff, I just wanted to say…

Without further ado…

The Best of MTVS Epic Rewatch*

*totally subjective - based merely on the number of notes of each post and/or my own personal preference.

Recappy Goodness (or Badness, as the case may be)

BTVS TOP 15 RECAPS 

4x19 New Moon Rising

4x22 Restless (probably my favorite BTVS recap)

3x22 Graduation Day Part 2

6x07 Once More With Feeling

1x01 Welcome to the Hellmouth

3x12 Helpless

3x15 Consequences

4x16 Who Are You?

5x01 Buffy vs Dracula

5x10 Into the Woods

6x03 After Life

6x08 Tabula Rasa // 6x19 Seeing Red

4x20 The Yoko Factor // 5x22 The Gift

4x07 The Initiative // 5x18 Intervention

3x08 Lovers Walk

VM TOP 10 RECAPS

2x20 Look Who’s Stalking (definitely my favorite VM recap…)

2x07 Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner 

1x18 Weapons of Class Destruction

2x22 Not Pictured

Veronica Mars Movie

2x17 Plan B

2x06 Rat Saw God

2x08 Ahoy Mateys! // 2x09 My Mother the Fiend

3x04 Charlie Don’t Surf

1x22 Leave it to Beaver

Gifs Galore

BTVS TOP 15 GIF-SETS

My friends don’t have a rock this big.

#IDGAF

Do you like my mask?

Tell no one.

Class Protector

Just ascend already!

I just wanna feel…

How to ask a girl out

TAKE THAT BACK!

Myth-taken

Every slayer has a death wish.

Kill for him!

Ben is Glory

Be free, kittens!

A little courage

VM TOP 10 GIF-SETS

Look tough.

Daily goals 

Well, there’s the Klan 

Do I get a phone call?

I will not go to prom with him 

That’s mine all right.

I thought our story was epic.

Chicks can’t resist argyle 

Rode Hard meet Put Away Wet

Lurking around

Bonus tracks:

Oranges

Angel fangirling

Hidden blooper in OMWF

Pu$$y Burgers

Smashed final scene “uncensored”

Working in Retail

#adulting

VM recaps in chronological order

BTVS recaps in chronological order

BTVS Polls

Season 7 Best Lines - Best Episodes

Season 6 Best Lines - Best Episodes

Season 5 Best Lines - Best Episodes - Worst Episodes

Season 4 Best Lines - Best Episodes - Worst Episodes

Season 3 Best Lines -  Best Episodes -  Worst Episodes

Season 2 Best Lines - Best Episodes - Worst Episodes

Season 1 Best Lines - Best Episodes

VM Polls

Season 1 Best Lines - Best Episodes - Worst Episodes

Season 2 Best Lines - Best Episodes - Worst Episodes

Season 3 Best Lines - Best Episodes

Finally, if you’ve enjoyed reading my recaps and would like to continue reading my reactions and analysis of other shows, please make sure to click that pesky follow button on my side blog, @mtvswatches

A pretty constant question throughout Buffy's arc - arguably the central question of the entire show, that Buffy must answer, is "what is a slayer? What does being The Vampire Slayer mean?". And a major part of that is the question of whether a slayer is just a killer. It's a question central to S5, but ripples throughout the rest of the show too, with some of the most iconic scenes in the show in converstion with each other around it. Inspired by an ask I received about this from @potterkid, I took a look at how this idea develops and resolves itself over the course of the show.

For Willow: a guide for moving forward.

For Xander: a sexual fantasy along with Willow.

For Buffy: a means of identifying and communicating with the deepest parts of herself.

Tara’s significance to Willow would obviously be the most overt as her girlfriend and her soulmate. For Willow, Tara represents a new way forward in life. There’s not really much to explain here as watching the show will reveal to you how significant she is.

Tara’s significance to Xander is controversial and nauseating for the audience watching. He can only think of her in regards to her sexual relationship with Willow, making him address his own sexuality in how he perceives women loving women. There’s not much to think about. It doesn’t go any deeper than that.

Tara’s significance to Buffy. Well, since ‘Restless’ is full of foreshadowing, it’s easy to see why she is represented as a communication conduit for Buffy in understanding the First Slayer. It parallels with ‘Who Are You’ where she was also the method of exposing the Buffy/Faith body swap. Effectively conveying Buffy’s subtextual relationship to the Dark Slayer too. But it’s more so than that. Tara becomes a confidant to Buffy when she has to address her emotions going through the most tumultuous, scariest and darkest times of her life. Tara’s significance to Buffy is by far the most interesting. And as such - so is her use in Buffy’s dream. It deserves endless discussions because it really isn’t spelled (ha) out for the audience like it is with her significance to Willow and Xander.

But that’s another thing I love about the episode ‘Restless’. Tara’s use and representation in it. I have heard from some fans that the character really isn’t all that interesting away from her relationship with Willow. And as such gets neglected quite a lot. And while I do agree that she was abused and neglected... I don’t agree that she’s uninteresting as a stand-alone character. Tara has such a calming and comforting presence and that’s best depicted in the episode ‘The Body’ where she does act as a source of comfort to Willow, Buffy and Xander. This behaviour or quality about Tara is not uninteresting or boring…

It’s underappreciated. What ‘Restless’ does is foreshadows the true nature of Tara Maclay. And all it really shows when people refer to her as boring or uninteresting is that they can’t appreciate her.

This is the long-delayed continuation of my analysis of the intratextual parallels in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Dead Things.” I made some edits and added a section to that first part, so you might want to revisit it before reading the rest. In this half I’ll be discussing: (1) the issues of personhood and self-possession that the parallels to Faith bring up during the alley beating scene, (2) the context being used to frame Buffy turning herself in as a pseudo-suicidal act, (3) how the episode’s takes on identity and romantic love expand on the takes in the earlier seasons, and (4) why this sort of parallelism is interesting and valuable. More discussion of the episode’s themes around moral responsibility, agency, and identity is threaded throughout.

[Warnings: (1) This post assumes knowledge of the episode and show. (2) I discuss pretty much everything that happens in season six, which means there will be references to rape/assault. In addition to all the other unpleasant things that happen that season that one might not want to read about. (3) It’s about 11,000 words long.]

Not long after I posted my essay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sixth season, I realized it made barely any mention of Dead Things. Which was a bit of a surprise, given that it’s not just one of my favorite episodes of Buffy, it’s one of my favorite episodes of TV, period.

There are lots of ways for something to be a good episode of TV. It can be good on its own terms, and be successful as a discrete 15-45-minute bit of comedy, drama, storytelling, experimentation, whatever. It can also be good as, essentially, somewhat longer-form cinema, which is how I think of TV that’s been made to be viewed all at once. Things like Ken Burns documentaries, BBC miniseries or many of those 6-12 episode Netflix seasons. The narrative and stylistic conventions aren’t always “cinematic”, but the built-in completeness of the work is. An episode can also be good as something that plays with or maximizes the conventions of TV specifically. 

Then there are episodes that are good because of how they slot into a larger work, and bring things out in it. In true longform, often open-ended storytelling, the difficulty lies in (a) creating a basic, artistically compelling premise that can be riffed on, and (b) riffing on it in a coherent and complicated way. One of the reasons that Buffy is a show I’ve returned to a lot is that it succeeds very well on both fronts. Its basic premise is “what if we updated the mythic hero narrative to be more human and modern, and centered a character type that would normally be a victim in someone else’s hero story.” It’s a premise that combines the broadness of myth with the specificity of wanting to comment on myth, and so is a fertile ground for thematic exploration. And then of course, the show takes full advantage of that fertile premise. Each season complicates the idea of what it means to be heroic or mature, and challenges Buffy to grow up in increasingly subtle ways.

People talk about “liking continuity” in longform works, but rarely articulate why continuity is something likeable or artistically desirable. At its best, what continuity means is that a story remembers what has happened in the story so far, and creates meaning from it. Which really, is just a matter of being a good work of art. It’s a matter of being coherent, intentful, and not wasting the audience’s attention. It’s a matter of taking full advantage of all the tools one has to be artistic.

So what I like about Dead Things is that it’s not just a complicated story in its own right, but is intensely referential in a way that adds depth to that story, as well as to previous episodes, and Buffy’s arc as a whole. It features a truly outrageous number of parallels, both within the episode and to episodes from every single other season. Even more outrageously, every one of those parallels is rich with meaning and intent. I’ve seen many of them pointed out elsewhere, but not all in one place. So in the interest of exploring how to make truly intratextual TV, this post is an attempt to document them, and explain what they might be doing.

Dead Things is, broadly, about moral agency and culpability. Much of season six depicts characters failing to take responsibility for their own problems. Characters making use of other people because they refuse to do things themselves. If each season of Buffy has to do with a different aspect of growing up, then season six has to do with not wanting or not being able to grow up. Sometimes understandably, when “growing up” means having to deal with things like finances or pushing through a debilitating depression. Sometimes less understandably, if “not growing up” means you wipe your girlfriend’s memory or think turning women into sex slaves makes you cool.

These themes come to a head in Dead Things, an episode that makes both our hero and our villains deal with a crisis of moral responsibility, and has no easy answers for any of them. It’s a one-off, midseason episode (episode 13 of 22, to be precise), but it casts a long shadow over not just season six, but I’d argue–the entire show. Something that becomes more and more apparent the more references to past and future episodes you notice. I’ll take them approximately in order.

[Warnings: (1) This post assumes knowledge of the episode and show. (2) I discuss pretty much everything that happens in season six, which means there will be references to rape/assault. In addition to all the other unpleasant things that happen that season that one might not want to read about. (3) It’s about 7500 words long. The next post will be of similar length.]

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) 

you be the spoon

dip you in honey so I can be sticking to you

folkmore headers

*It's NOT my art, I took these photos from pinterest*

5.05 // 5.11