#btvs rambles

How many times did Buffy chat away about her mom and Dawn while Willow and Xander shot each other confused glances trying to correlate the kind of love they're hearing about with their own version that they messily pieced together when they met in kindergarten. And then Buffy talks about Hank Summers and they're like ah yes. Much more familiar territory.

And of course it all culminates in the ending of S6. Xander can't stop Willow spiralling into nihilistic evil. They're both broken people who never had a real blueprint for how to be a functional child, let alone a functional adult. But at the same time, they taught each other love before they learned how to write the word. It doesn't matter that he's kind of shitty in general. It doesn't matter that by this point she's kind of worse. Even if they can't fix themselves or the world that shaped them so cruelly, he can at least love her. She can at least trust that much to always be true.

And you try explaining it to anyone who hasn't watched Buffy like yeah this character has more sides than a d20 and you show her to them and she's just like

Soulless!Willow would for SURE try to turn Xander (wHICH SHE DID IN HER OWN DIMENSION OKAY TRUST ME). Like she does find a certain amount of comfort in him even if it's not her Xander and he's human, he'd desperately try and do stuff to help her even if she's soulless and there's nothing he can do and they can just Not let him be around him cause she WILL sire him.

For Soul!Willow Xanders is the only person here who's actually her friend. BUT not only does she have memories of whatever fucked up way she sired Xander in her dimension but also all she's done to him HERE. There's enough guilt in her about HIM specifically to kill her, at first she'd cling to him for a second because for 3 years while being soulless she lost him but now he's back and she's back (neither of them are the same, but they both pretend they are).

Soulless!Willow famously does NOT like Buffy. She killed her Xander so yeah no. But staying around longer she'd realise how much Buffy fucking cares about Willow. (You're reading one of my posts, it's boutta be the summersberg show). And she'd fucking THRIVE in the oppertunity to use it to torture her. Someone tells her about angelus and Buffy's relationship to her "puppy" and she takes the additional golden opportunity and kisses her. All around they fight a lot and there's a whole lot of guilting and ruining Buffy's life. Buffy would be with her fighting when the soul gets restored.

Soul!willow would have a . Complicated relationship with Buffy. Because she also has the memory of her killing Xander, even if it's a different her, and it's a demon version of xander. She can't really un-forget that. She also has a bunch of guilt around her too, and all those pesky feelings. She also realises Buffy really loved their version of Willow, but she's not her, their version of Willow did magic and restored souls and and and. She's just. The girl who got killed at 15.

Angel is well complicated. Soulless!willow would want to turn him into her puppy again. And soul!willow would once again, say it with me, just feel a bunch of guilt about him. But they'd probably get some forced bonding as souled vampires.

Soulless!willow wouldn't take any particular interest in Giles past just another person clearly hurt by this that she hates from her dimension. Soul!willow would actually not have that much guilt with him !!! Crazyyyy. He'd hug her when she gets her soul back and she wouldn't understand but she'd melt into it and just. She needs the parental figure (vamp!willow killed her parents in her dimension long ago, maybe this one too) somehow this made them less complicated (for now at least).

Cordelia, soul!willow still hates but she also has both memories of killing her and trying to kill her so the guilt is back !!! I think she'd almost drift to her cause it'd be less complicated with her, and Cordelia would show an amount of care for her yeah, she misses the old willow though, she'd gotten more tolerable. (You can't tell this to anyone but she even maybe liked her a bit)

Everything about Willow at the end of s6 is so awful and tragic but also so very fun, because not only does she get to vent every single issue and mean thought she's had for years now to show how committed she is to burning bridges, but she also gets to say as many silly villain lines as she wants. The amusement in her voice when she summons a fireball to murder two men and says "fly my pretty fly" like she was having so much fun ticking every villain cliche and joke off her list and honestly good for her! I was having fun watching it too. You go Willow, say bored now and complete your downward spiral by referencing your own evil mirror from years ago who foreshadowed your slide into the dark side. Give Buffy an enemy to destroy so she can go out fighting. Make fun of how Dawn was underutilised and only seemed to suffer. Mock Xander for his obvious power of friendship speech but then get friendshipped anyway sucker because no matter your level of metatextual awareness you are still a part of that text and you suffer the real emotions that come with it.