#buffy rant

okay first things first season 7 is all about the mythology and lore of the slayers and yeah great buffy is here she's the main character so duh, these lameass no personality potentials are here okay...dam even sineya is here!! whole slayer party going on but i guess faith's invitation just got lost in the mail hmm ok yeah sure. and yeah yeah i know faith is busy busting out of jail and busting up angelus and getting herself into mystical comas....but oh my godd who cares about angel season 4. name one person who cares about angel season 4. exactly no one. because it's ass. (not you spin the bottle, not you orpheus, just everything else). anyways my point is faith's level of slayer iconicness and bisexual girlpower badassness should not have been wasted on the dumpster fire of angel season 4. she should have been in buffy season 7, you know the season focused on all the slayers?? and yes she was in season 7...for like 5 episodes at the end where she didn't do much expect begin a romance with.....robin wood? and like no hate to robin but god season 7 really was the season of forced romance wasn't it? willow and kennedy, faith and robin, xander and ashanti for some reason, (dare i say buffy and a certain blond vampire...) but i digress!!

back to willow and faith. okay so like i previously mentioned i would have preferred willow's arc this season to focus on her redemption and path towards good again. hmm who else is an ex-murderer, who was once evil, who is now on their redemption arc, who has great power but has trouble using it, hmm i guess no one sorry willow there's no one for you to relate to this season oh wait a damn minute there's faith lehane. faith lehane, who is very clearly bisexual, i mean anyone with eyes could see that. and then willow is of course a lesbian. they had more potential than the potentials. potential that got wasted, spat on and flushed down the drain. had i been in the writers room season 7 would have gone very differently for them.

episode 10ish faith arrives in sunnydale they fill her in on the goings-on and she joins the "let's beat the first" team woohoo. she's surprised to learn that willow is no longer the shy timid nerd she once was, instead she's actually....a misogynist-murdering lesbian ultra-witch badass? (faith's words, 100% canon), so she talks to willow. willow talks to her. they *gasp* bond?? they connect? willow detested faith and faith kidnapped willow and they're now understanding each other and confiding in each other about trauma and guilt??

and as the episodes progress...there's more than trauma-bonding and guilt-sharing in the air. what is that i smell? sexual tension? huh? and...romantic tension? between faith and willow? buffy asks willow if anything is going on but they just deny deny deny. they're not quite sure themselves yet. the killer in me episode goes ahead but with faith in kennedy's place. goes more or less the same however at the end, when willow is sobbing over the belief that she murdered tara by moving on, faith can empathise with her situation because she too knows what it's like to murder someone. they talk. about tara. about killing people. willow knows that tara would want her to be happy, and that finding love again doesn't erase any of her love for tara.

i'd like willow and faith to be a slow-burn, out of respect to tara and the beauty that was tillow/willara (or as i like to call it, clayrose), but you know not too slow as this all over the course of less than 15 episodes. i'd say they'd definitely help each other out with their respective redemptions, emotional moments here and there, go on missions together and save each other and tend to each other's wounds and obviously have sex. in the finale they have to split up and kiss goodbye and they promise to see each other again and then in the last scene it just shows them holding each other like the badass beautiful girlfriends they are.

Guys I hate this guy. Like seriously hate him so bad. This post is gonna legit be so hateful please be warned

I genuinely envy the people who LIKE Xander Harris because clearly they don’t know anyone irl who displays the same sexist charisma that he does, leaving them free to insert a blorboificied version of him in their minds.

Clearly yall (by yall I mean xander stans) can’t imagine what it’s like to be in a friend group where one of the guys clearly wants to be with you or another woman for YEARS (buffy and xander) and makes it obvious via gross comments. It’s actually nauseating but so normalised. Don’t know how it feels when a guy you know makes sexist jokes like ALL THE TIME but just gets away with it because like what’s the big deal yk? It’s just how he is ;D.

And (call me too woke or not woke enough idk) but his popularity in this fandom is straight up sexist. Not in a hating women way but in a loving men regardless-of-anything more than women way

There are literally so many beautiful and flawed women characters yet somehow Xander x Spike is the 4th most popular pairing on ao3?? “I just don’t like straight ships” okay so then why is it Above the CANONICAL LESBIAN PAIRING of willow x Tara. Above Faith x Buffy. Are you guys really so obsessed with men that you would opt to write about this piece of shit instead of any juicy wlw pairings?

Are you so desperate for men in your media that you would choose to focus on this man who sucks in every way? Whose only good points are so few you have to cite the yellow crayon speech every time?

Not even gonna explain these (I could if you want, just ask!) but just a reminder of the BIG ONES: “Kick his ass”, Dead man’s party. Actual Cheating. Into the woods. Spike vs Anya kill. Sweet. ALTAR. (Thinking about it it’s actually too much but yeah those are the main criticisms I see)

Not gonna talk about s7 cuz I hate s7 but you can guess what I’d say about that.

This man genuinely has zero growth over the course of the series. I just don’t get it. I don’t get it!!! Why do we like him?

I’m sure what I’m saying has all been said before and for that THANK GOD because gosh every xander hate post I see on here makes me so happy. I love u guys.

I’d rather watch a Joffrey Baratheon spinoff show where is just him being a shit for 8 hours than watch a 5 min xander compilation. God.

Now, xander fans might be thinking a few things so I’ll try to predict and rebut:

“Be the change you want to see in fandom, stop complaining and make your own art” yeah already doing that, peep my profile. And you’ll NEVERR see me draw Xander if I don’t have to.

“You only dislike xander because of fandom” HELL no. I disliked this guy on my OWN I would legit yell at my screen when Xander would do stupid shit on my first watch. When I joined the fandom I was expecting to be the only hater but was so surprised and happy when it was a semi-popular opinion.

“Xander wasn’t seen as that bad when he was written a quarter of a century ago, times have changed” absolutely untrue. Source? My mother, who did not watch the show, but when I brought up the fact I was watching buffy, she knew 2 things about it “oh with that guy Angel? Right? David bor-something?” And later when I brought up my dislike for xander “the guy friend? All my friends who watched the show hated that guy”

“You don’t like Xander cuz you think he’s a Joss Whedon self insert” gang I do not GIVE A FUCK about Joss Whedon or whatever that rumour is. Death of the creator in this household. I’m tenured in the Harry Potter fandom for goodness sakes. (Fuck jk Rowling btw) I’m not giving these people money!

“Just because a ship isn’t canon doesn’t mean it can’t be shipped” (regarding spike x xander). I’m multiship supreme okay? Idgaf if a ship is canon, most of mine (esp in other fandoms) aren’t. I LOVE Bangel Spuffy Fuffy Bangelus Coffy Cangel Sprusilla Duffy Biley Spangel (and so many more) but you’ll NEVER catch me touching Xander with a slash anywhere near him. In fact, I actively dislike ship Xander x Cordelia and Xander x Anya as well.

“You’re projecting your own experience with sexism onto Xander” No, I think you’ll find I just have an appropriate reaction to Men who think Other of women.

TLDR: I hate Xander. I see no reason why people should like Xander. You should dislike him too!

Spike while a likeable character for sure is actually still a terrible person throughout the show... I don't see how people can ship him w buffy meanwhile he continuously wronged her before AND AFTER he got his soul. I have felt empathy for him many times throughout the show and can see why people like him although I think he definitely does not deserve to be with buffy.

First off - you wanna see disconnected and uber-bitch Buffy, check out season five. She orders everyone around, yells at them, keeps secrets, and tells them she will let them all die or kill them herself if they don’t do what she wants. So yeah - this is what she has always done, and how she has kept them alive.

Giles lets Faith take the girls out to party at the Bronze. Really? A few episodes ago he was yelling at Willow, Xander, Anya, and Buffy for joking about their dates. Now he doesn’t think to have the potentials go train - or even decorate for Xander? He tells them to go party at a bar. That’s because he is still upset that Buffy got rightfully pissed at him, and that now she questions his judgement. He wants to confront her alone.

He’s not happy with her responses because she actually doe want to be the general - and she can no longer trust him. So he makes no effort to calm things down. In fact, he escalates the situation.Wood has every reason in the world to want Buffy out of there - so he calls Buffy out for responding to something Faith says.

Faith  follows her accusation that Buffy was the reason why girls were hurt and killed by Caleb by telling  Buffy she needs to learn the names of the potentials. We’ve seen Buffy working with them - we’ve seen Buffy training them. But now she suddenly doesn’t know their names? And Faith is an expert because she took them drinking and dancing? We never saw her train with them - we’ve just seen her avoid them.

ANYA tells Buffy that being a slayer is lucky: You really do think you're  better than we are. But we don't know. We don't know if you're actually better. I mean, you came  into the world with certain advantages, sure. I mean, that's the legacy. But you didn't earn it. You didn't work for it. You've never had anybody come  up to you and say you deserve these things more than anyone else. They were  just handed to you. So that doesn't make you better than us. It makes you luckier  than us.

Yeah - being the slayer has been so great for Buffy - sheer overwhelming luck. Willow, Xander, Giles, Faith, and Dawn are all silent - they all tacitly agree. No one speaks up for her. Willow actually allows Anya to say what she says without even giving her a dirty look - great bestie there.

Buffy gets her earlier conversation twisted by Giles. He clearly wants a slayer he can control - like Faith. Kennedy - who called her useless earlier - attacks her again, and Willow supports her new girlfriend against Buffy.

Buffy gets blamed for Xander losing his eye - even though he knew the risks when he went into battle. She gets blamed for potentials  being scared - and being hurt and killed. It’s a war. It is impossible for her to protect all the potentials from any harm, or spend her time listening to each one and trying to make them feel all better. She gets blamed for not caring enough when she is spending every second trying to win this war, carrying them as usual. She gets blamed for having an idea of where to attack next - even though she says they can all come up with the battle plan (strategies). 

Dawn kicks her out - Willow, Xander, and Giles all just let her leave knowing she was beaten once already that day. The only person who follows her out is Faith - and while she tells Buffy she didn’t try to push her out she doesn’t tell the others she is not ready to lead them.

There is no scene in the entire series that pisses me off more than this one. Bad writing is usually blamed - but that is so Doylist. You can excuse anything and everything by calling it bad writing.