Mystic the Blog Slayer

Buffy is a show that is always existing on both the narrative and metanarrative levels. In every scene we see, there is both the literal story being told, and the metaphorical one. Almost every other character that isn't Buffy herself exists both as a person within their own right, but also as a metaphorical aspect of Buffy - her mind, her heart, her child self, her shadow self, etc.

Take for example Xander's Lie in Becoming. What is literally happening is that Xander as a Character is making the decision to not tell Buffy that Willow is attempting to re-soul Angelus, so that she will be less conflicted about killing him. Metaphorically, what is happening is Buffy's Heart is letting go of Angel and allowing herself to make the tough choice in killing him. There's the narrative, and then the metanarrative.

I believe that this is at least in part why Once More With Feeling is such a successful episode. It takes no effort for the show to shift into the mode of musical storytelling because it's already comfortable telling both the narrative and meta-narrative within the same story. Yes, the songs in OMWF actually are diegetic, but it's the fact that Buffy is so well acquainted with the way musicals tell stories that helps the episode to feel so congruous with the rest of the show.

I learned to hate myself for being transgender before I knew I was transgender. I laughed at the jokes in stand up comedy routines, and prime time sitcoms, and animated comedy shows, and in the movies, and in books, and in games, laughing at trans women for existing, about “men in dresses”, about people who “got their dicks chopped off”, and I learned to think that was worthy of ridicule.

And then a day came when I felt a pang of envy at what my female classmates were wearing and I repressed it, and felt guilty, and a day where I felt incomplete because I had no breasts and I repressed it and I felt disgusting And a day when I realized the only images of romance that made me feel anything showed two women together and I repressed it and I felt like a monster And a day when I realized I felt sick when I looked at myself in the mirror after every shower before work and couldn’t bear to look at my own face, and I hated myself. And then there came a day when I hated myself so much, and I thought I could never understand why, and so I just wanted it all to end. And it was just a miracle that I swerved my car back into my lane in time.

And all of it started with a joke that I heard on TV, and then kept hearing from all the voices from the ether, over and over and over, worming an idea into my mind before I was old enough to realize I was absorbing it, the idea that a man in a dress is funny, and that changing your body parts makes you a freak, and that women who have penises instead of vaginas are liars and hurt men. And they’re still making these jokes. And somewhere out there right now, just like all those years ago, there is a little girl in a t-shirt and cargo shorts with buzzed off hair watching the TV, hearing that joke and absorbing it without knowing it, who will someday have to pry herself apart to tear it out of her head, just like I did.

From the TV tropes page called “queer is funny”:

“There is a tendency for works, particularly older works and works aimed at young men, to treat same sex relationships as being inherently funny. Obviously, gay people and gay relationships can be funny for lots of reasons — for example, if the characters are incredibly mismatched, or if the behaviour of one character is amusingly offputting, so this doesn’t just apply to any humour derived from gayness or from gay relationships, only when the punchline is that it is gay. Litmus test — if this were heterosexual, would it be (roughly, if not quite) as funny?”

And that is the issue. It’s not seeing a joke about characters like you that’s the problem - that’s just the strawman that people like to pretend it is so they can continue making/laughing at these jokes.

• taking us all out for dinner and drinks tonight to thank us for dealing with the first week of December rush

• a guy sexually harassed me at work and I laughed it off but the boss had him banned from the entire mall premises

• he’s kicked people out permanently for yelling at me and coworkers

• i have a driving lesson in the middle of a shift next week and he’s coming in on his day off to cover it for me

• he buys us coffee from the local cafe every morning bc “how the fuck could we survive customers without it”

⟕ 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚐𝚒𝚏𝚜𝚎𝚝 𝚙𝚎𝚛 𝚎𝚙𝚒𝚜𝚘𝚍𝚎 ⟖