from axe to zee other axe

Cordelia Chase + Outfits (Season 1)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1.03 | "Witch"

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER | 2.10 & 1.03

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1.05 — "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date"

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER | 1.02 "The Harvest"

Willow Rosenberg + Outfits (Season 1)

Ranking Buffy Summers' hair evolution (as voted by my followers) 2/11

Buffy the Vampire Slayer | 1.11 — "Out of Mind, Out of Sight"

btvs season 1 episode 10 "nightmares" is a story about abuse, and more specifically about a young boy who has been abused by an authority figure. in a very real sense, the titular nightmares stem from this act of abuse—they're of course doing some metaphorical work on the level of individual character (e.g. willow's opera dream represents her fear of being scrutinized and "found out"), but as they all come from billy, we can also understand them as a metaphor for the kind of unreasoning fear an abusive authority figure might inspire in a child under their care.

see buffy's behavior, for example. this episode identifies buffy with billy—she serves as a kind of proxy for him, running from the monster with him and ultimately helping him defeat it. it's the running that's interesting here. buffy describes the ugly man as "too strong" for her to fight, something we only rarely see her do, and usually in reference to enemies of a far greater caliber than this kind of villain‐of-the-week. in fact, buffy spends a big chunk of this episode in abject fear!

in the end, of course, she faces down the ugly man and saves the day. it takes her a good while, though, and by that time someone else has beaten her to the punch (🤡) and already faced his fears.

despite his connection with buffy in this episode, the fact that billy is a young boy who has been physically abused by someone who was supposed to look after him positions him as a much more direct parallel to xander, who at various points in the show is heavily implied to have been (and at this point in time presumably still is) a victim of abuse at his parents' hand. interesting, then, that it's specifically xander who turns around and decks his nightmare in the face!

it's played as a comedic beat, and there's not much in the way of on-screen justification for xander's sudden burst of courage, but given the context of the episode it feels significant that it's him. in fact, if the ugly man represents billy's baseball coach, then there's no reason why we can't understand the clown (textually an adult who terrorized xander when he was a child) as a stand-in for xander's parents.

what's more, towards the end of the episode, when billy is "unmasking" the ugly man, willow expresses confusion—but xander says, "i get it." out of all of them, he's the one who understands exactly what billy is going through. this similarity between them is further underscored by xander's line in the final scene, when buffy expresses disbelief at the coach's actions: "you obviously haven't played kiddy league. i'm surprised it wasn't one of the parents."

"i get it." and of course he would. he's been there himself.

BUFFY SUMMERS | 1.09

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER — 01.06 - "The Pack" (1997)

every single cordelia chase look #34

↳ BtVS | 1x12 | Prophecy Girl