#bvts

Critical Role - campaign 2 is great, I started with that and it works and there are HUNDREDS of hours of media to consume if you’re ravenous. There are also plenty of shorter series and one shots and other content apart from the main campaigns.

The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein animated series! It’s Critical Role campaigns 1 & 2 but animated and way shorter!

Dimension 20 - many shorter series if you don’t want to invest quite as much time but still want to have a good amount of content to sink your teeth into. They even have a series that’s basically the Terf property but NOT awful and terfy (Misfits & Magic)! And Escape from the Bloodkeep is one of the best things ever.

Watch Lord of the Rings if you haven’t (extended editions only, let’s be so real), or rewatch them if you have.

The Chronicles of Narnia movies, especially The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Season 1 (& maybe season 2) of The Witcher.

Avatar: the Last Airbender, obviously.

Adventure Time! Animation ain’t just for kids, folks.

The 10th Kingdom - it has everything: camp, romance, adventure, fairy tales…what more could you want?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Again, obviously.

Galavant! It’s actually criminal that this series was canceled waaay too soon.

Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (and the 1982 film also, of course), another one canceled WAY too soon.

Okay, we as an audience know that Buffy is imperfect. She's brave and compassionate and selfless, yes, she's a deeply good person, but she's also a person! She's seventeen, and she's scared all the time, and she can be self-centered and cutting and messy. She just spent a summer taking care of herself, all alone in a dingy little apartment in a lonely, dirty city. We know this!! Buffy knows this about herself!! She fails and falls sometimes, and it's genuinely difficult for her to get up again. She's flawed. She makes mistakes.

But Faith. Faith comes to town running from the monsters that killed her Watcher, the monsters that Buffy is brave enough to face. Buffy understands Faith's paralysis - she's run from things, too! She's frozen up before, too! But all Faith can see is this hero, the original slayer, who has more experience and more courage. Buffy has friends and family, and Faith doesn't really know what she looks like alone - hardly even knows that she's been alone. Buffy is responsible and reliable, and Faith doesn't know that she really isn't, for a Slayer. Buffy is the good one, and Faith is the bad one, and that's all that Faith can see.

It just. It kills me every time. Because Buffy understands Faith! She reaches out to her and has hope for her and tries to help her, as much as she can at seventeen years old and faced with her shadow self. She worries about Faith because she's been Faith, or at least been on the brink of being Faith. "Slaying's a rough gig," and "Stuff gets pent up," and she GETS that.