The People vs. Xander Harris (part 2)

Season 3: This is when Xander’s true awfulness really starts to shine through. There are lots instances of lower grade crappiness throughout the season, but his truly heinous acts are as follows.

Dead Man’s Party: Everyone but Giles is awful to Buffy during this episode, but Xander’s behavior is particularly galling. Remember, Xander is the one who made the decision to not tell Buffy about Willow doing the spell, so he more than anyone else should be aware that Buffy may have had to kill a souled Angel with no warning that she would have to do that. You can’t tell me he’s so stupid that in the two months Buffy was gone, the possible consequences of his actions never occurred to him.

And yet he’s the most hateful of all of them when she comes back. He doesn’t even pretend to care about her side of things. He reduces what she’s been through to ‘boy troubles’. Buffy spent months being psychologically tortured, in full view of Xander, by a demon wearing her first love’s face and then had to send that first love to Hell, and that’s how Xander sees it. Boy troubles.

And in the same breath, he bitches Buffy out for not turning to her ‘friends’ instead of running away. I wish with all my heart we had gotten to see Buffy rip Xander a new one instead of having zombies interrupt the whole thing.

Revelations: This is another one of those baffling episodes where Xander acts like a fucking psychopath and nobody cares. He tries to manipulate Faith, who is still desperately trying to find her place in Sunnydale and connect with Buffy, into killing Angel. Let me just reiterate that: he tries to mislead the new girl into being his own personal assassin.

And if he really believed that it was the right thing, that it was simple and obviously necessary and Buffy was just blinded by love, he would’ve told Faith the whole story and expected her to agree with him instead of giving her a bunch of misleading half truths. He knew what he was doing was wrong and shady as fuck.

And somehow, there are no consequences for this except a sharp look from Buffy and a ‘shut up and help me’ from Willow. That’s it. No change to his place in the group. No retaliation from Faith. No lasting repercussions whatsoever. It’s infuriating and bizarre.

Cheating with Willow: They both are responsible for this, but notice how Willow is always the one pushing away and at least trying to be a decent human. Xander, in the other hand, gives occasional lip service to how bad the situation is, but actively pushes for the affair to continue. Again, Willow is still responsible. She made the choice to keep giving into Xander and that’s on her. But at least she felt bad and was conflicted.

Plus, Willow has had a huge thing for Xander forever, and Xander was never the least bit interested until she had a boyfriend she was happy with. Then he all of a sudden can’t keep his hands off her. Gross.

Season 4: As far as I remember, Xander doesn’t do anything truly terrible in this season, so much as he is just your run of the mill whiny asshole the whole time. But he does say something I want to touch on.

Yoko Factor: “Just because you’re better than us doesn’t mean you can act all superior.”

This quote sums up a lot of my issues with Xander’s attitude towards Buffy and the world in general. He expects more from others than he does from himself, and he lashes out if they don’t meet those expectations, but he throws a fit if it’s acknowledged that other people do more or are more important or behave better than him.

He could make himself much more useful to the team than he is. There’s nothing stopping him from learning some magic, or from asking Giles (or Riley later on) to train him to really fight. He could ask Riley to brush him up on military strategy, or, hell, just go to a library and read up on it. He actually has an aptitude for that and he could foster it if he wanted to. It’s true, he can’t be a superhero, and he probably doesn’t have the same kind of magical potential that Willow does, but he doesn’t have to be the token helpless average dude, either. He chooses to be. And then he whines about it. Do not like.

Literally though the Dawn/Faith dynamic in s7 is so tantalizing bc just having Dawn be this hissing feral kitten full of resentment with Faith's only reaction basically being "haha this rules, say something else about how you wish I was dead" is SO funny

I mean ideally this DOES develop out into something more complex, in a hypothetical scenario where Faith has more screentime and shows up earlier.

@jewishsuperfam and I have talked before about how there's actually some stuff Faith and Dawn have in common. They both lost their moms quite young (though the circumstances were way different), they both had rebellious phases filled with truancy and stealing and general acting out. They both kind of occupy this space where they're always positioned in Buffy's shadow to some degree.

I'd wager, based on how everyone else reacted to Faith in early S3, that Dawn would have been really enamored with her. A tough bad girl slayer who doesn't just write Dawn off, like Buffy does, who seems dangerous and powerful and is CRUCIALLY not Dawn's older sister, so she can still be cool. It's easy to imagine how Faith going bad after impressing a young kid like that would make Dawn really hate her guts.

I would really, really love to see how that relationship could have played out, given more development.

But at the very least Dawn absolutely loathing Faith and Faith being like "lmao sick" is very, very funny

You know, I know we all have thoughts on Hank Summers- If he was actually a good dad, people trying to pinpoint when he stopped caring, etc. but I think a huge point that I haven’t seen anyone talk about was that when Giles came into Buffy’s life he was very involved and cared about her not just as a slayer but as a person, and that was enough to make her realize how uninvolved Hank had been since the move. Obviously this is underscored when Joyce dies and Buffy can’t get a hold of him, but I think the change was in Buffy’s perception of him more than who he actually was as a person. Giles was the one to comfort her after Angel lost his soul and never once blamed her even after Jenny died. He was the one Buffy called when Joyce died because she knew he would show up for her. He was the one she turned to for help. Giles consistently and reliably showed up for her when her father didn’t. It’s not actually about whether Hank is a good or bad father, it’s how her view of him changes as she realizes the kind of care and consideration she deserved all along and her refusal to settle for less.

That theory that Kim will show up at some point with a new husband/family is possibly one of the stupidest things to ever come out of Reddit. Besides the lack of imagination, besides the fact that it would reduce Kim to nothing more than a plot device to "punish" Jimmy some more (because what other purpose is there to her showing up just to rub her new happy life in his face?), it also proves how little attention people paid to her characterisation and background.

We haven’t seen Kim mention any ex, dates, or any previous relationship in the 6 seasons we’ve known her. She's never expressed an interest in marriage or kids. She seems to have little to no personal life outside of Jimmy both during the present timeline and in all of the flashbacks (the only vague mentions of people she has dinner or drinks with all seem to be related to her work; the ABA mixer, the tax fraud guy and his wife, Paige). And now, on top of her canonical loner persona, she has the baggage of someone whose scheming unintentionally got her boss killed by the cartel, found herself willing to gun down a complete stranger, and must keep it all a secret forever. The idea that she would find it within herself to try and have another relationship, when she knows she’d have to hide all this baggage from her new partner, when part of the reason she’s so disgusted with herself is that she hid stuff from Jimmy, and, as a consequence, she literally doesn’t think she deserves love or a relationship, is absurd. 

The tragedy here is that the only person Kim could ever talk to about what she went through, the only one who would understand, is the very same person she decided to cut herself off from. If she tried to be with someone else, the guilt and the shame would just eat her up alive, it would be miserable and dysfunctional and not bound to last.

There is of course the one in a million chance she’d stumble upon Mr Perfect, with whom she develops the deepest and most trusting relationship EVER, to whom she decides she can tell everything, and, Mr Perfect being Mr Perfect, won't at all be terrified and disgusted by this revelation and still stick by her no matter what because he loves her so much, she gets over her trauma, and they lived happily ever after. But, even ignoring for a moment how cheesy and lazy a Mr Perfect would be for a show that’s all about flawed and complex characterisation, you would need something like this to happen ON SCREEN. And it would take an awful long time, not just half an episode. You don’t spend 6 seasons building up her character and a 12-year-long relationship with Jimmy as the most important and deepest of her life, and then handwave her moving on off-screen.

I am totally clueless as to what Kim's professional life will look like. But for her personal life, unless the writers all simultaneously knocked their heads and decided cheap romantic drama is the way to go, I think there are only two possible logical futures: either she somehow finds her way back to Jimmy, or she ends up alone for the rest of her life, kind of like Gus. And I’m not saying this just because I’m a hopeless romantic who thinks she could never love anyone else, but because everything we know about her character, combined with the most recent events, sort of make this an inevitability.

I think unfortunately the most likely scenario is that she'll end up alone. From Rhea's interviews, I'm not getting the best vibes about Kim having a hopeful future. I can only hope that she was discussing Kim's ending in the BCS timeline, rather than her ending overall.

Re-emerging from my silence to rant/reblog this now in light of Schnauz's latest reveal that this is something they actually considered at one point.

I cannot f***ing believe that this is something writers of this calibre would even remotely consider fitting for a character like Kim. I stand even more by my post above now. Besides the points I raised above, besides the endless tediousness of using women living "normal happy lives" being used a manpain tool, while I ended up understanding the Glenn scenario as a form of "punishment" for Kim (I explained why in this other post), it's absolutely absurd to think that Kim as we know her would willingly involve children into her "self-punishment".

Honestly, I am so damn glad they didn't go this route, but the fact that it was ever on the table is one example why I have trust issues with showrunners no matter how elite their writing seems to be. It seems that they are willing to sacrifice anything to the altar of "angsty" these days. I can only hope that by "early on" he means something like S2, when Kim's characterization was still being fleshed out (and thank GOD now and forever for Rhea), and not early S6.

had to keep @imreallyloveleee’s tags because yes yes yes you get it

faith in s7 is just. i know what ive done i know why everyone in this room hates me so i wont say too much and i wont make a fuss. i'll joke about it but without any bite i'll let them say what they want about me bc its all true. if she accuses me of criticising her i'll back off even when she's clearly in the wrong. i'll let her hit me for making a legitimately fair point bc the last thing i want is to fight. when everyone starts liking me better than her i'll try and tell them theyre wrong when they try and put me in charge i'll tell them thats never what i wanted. she'll accuse me of trying to steal her life from under her again as if thats ever what i wanted. i wont tell any of them what it is i only ever wanted. the hollow image of the man who groomed me (the only person i ever believed loved me) will say it out loud and i wont meet his eyes

god this show is perfect. he did come out on top. he had them down to seven years, he likely would have served even less, but the victory was meaningless. no victory or money or power ever meant anything real to him. the scams, the manipulation, were his way of taking back power. of coming out on top of the people who made him feel small, but he never really wanted to win. he didn’t want to be better than everyone else, he wanted to be their equal. he wanted their respect, and he was incapable of winning that. the only person to ever respect him, to see him as their equal, was kim, and he lost that, and so the scams got worse and worse, more and more extreme. the further down he sank the more desperate he was to win, but it never fixed anything, because it’s never been what he really wanted. he finally came out on top here, for the first time ever, really, because he stopped comparing himself to everyone else. 

kim didn’t care that he was always down. maybe she cared in the sense that it made her sad, because she wanted better for him, or it frustrated because she knew he was capable of more, but her faith in him was unwavering. that’s why she cleaned up his messes and picked him up when he fell down and protected him from the consequences of his choices. she never stopped protecting him. i think she wished other people could see him the way she did, but it never actually mattered to her what they thought. she saw him, and that’s what mattered, and in the end jimmy realized that too. he could win a million more times and it would never make up for what he lost when he lost her. he gave up on the whole idea of loss and victory. he admitted he was wrong, because he felt it was wrong. it went against what mattered to him. he won, but he hurt people. he won, but he lost everyone he loved. now he’s lost, but he got what he actually wanted. the only thing that walter really cared about was power, and so he ended up alone. all jimmy really wanted was to not be alone anymore, so he gave the power up.

apologies for jumping in on your post, but i just wanted to say that this conclusion is really important, and i feel like it’s being missed a bit in a lot of recaps/reviews that are comparing him to walt, and his confession to walt’s, “i did it for me.” walt’s conclusion is still him craving that power, needing it, his hubris and ego in attaining it consuming everything. he dies still feeling it, and in a lab representing the extent of it and his closeness to it and to the chemistry, even though it’s malignant, even though it’s jesse’s meth, it’s jesse’s prison, to walt it represents his empire. he never let his ego go, he can’t. he loses everyone he loves, but he never gives the power up.

but jimmy does, because it was never about jimmy getting power, it was jimmy feeling small and seeking acceptance and love and belonging, and then failing, and lashing out in the wrong ways.

walt is seen clearly and negatively at the end, and the world will remember him as heisenberg, but walt wouldn’t entirely reject that. and maybe the world will remember jimmy as saul goodman, corrupt lawyer and consiglere, but it doesn’t matter, because jimmy let that go in his soul, and the world’s opinion is irrelevant, because he knows who he is, and the only person whose view of him matters sees him for who he truly is, what he is able to be, and he earns her love. he loves her, and she loves him, and that glowing ember is a power all its own, not one that takes from or crushes others, but one shared quietly and restoratively between them. walt died free, but alone. jimmy lives by giving his freedom up, but he will never have to be alone again. they have each other.

Kendra is such a prime character to explore black girl horror like. Particularly when it comes to the aspect of adultification of black girls and what that means for a black girl chosen to be part of the Slayer line which inherently accelerates that. The only slayer we know to have been a (single) parent is Nikki, also a black woman. Or that the slayer line was founded by forcing the gift (curse?) upon a black girl against her will. That "you never had a watcher" line when Giles has his brief interaction with Sineya went straight to my heart. Like you could argue about the relatively parental role of Watcher but it's supplementary. It wasn't always there. And the isolation is. UGH.

actually no I'm not done. The Slayer line is inherently dehumanizing, it says to these young girls You Are Not A Child, You Are A Beast Born To Serve, and it is founded upon the exploitation and dehumanization of a black girl. Black slayers will ALWAYS hit different because black girlhood is denied regardless.

#this dynamic is really interesting actually despite the lack of interest people seem to have in it  #okay so in the early seasons we see that willows parents aren’t really there emotionally for her  #which is horrible to see esp as i get older and think about it  #bc she’s so young and going through so much that must be SO emotionally stunting  #anyway here willow is w/ a lack of parental influence running around in the supernatural world  #and then theres giles who is CLEARLY a father/parental figure to the kids  #the thing about it is that buffy is his main priority because she has to be  #and willow  #who is an only child and obviously has some need to please  #or the best or in control or all of them take your pick  #is slowly shown not to know how not to deal with it  #re: her issues w/ magic and control  #ANYWAY this rly comes to a head in season six  #where every single fault and insecurity shes felt since childhood is laid bare  #her identity crisis her abandonment issues her need for validation and attention and power  #her and giles get into a fight about her bringing back buffy  #which was done with good intentions but was DEVASTATING in the long run and giles calls her out on it  #and once again she is put behind buffy  #not only that he calls her a rank beginner (or smth)  #which must be AWFUL for her as someone who needs  #a) to be in control and good at what she does  #and b) making everyone happy  #so this interaction is so…  #fascinating  #bc she has been raking up issues w/ giles for years  (via aisakataiga)

£50 is around £4200 now, so about £21,000 for 6 women to live on today for the Bennets.

The Dashwoods at £500/year are at about £42,000 for 4 women to live on today.

Mr bennet definitely messed up, and mrs b deserves way more respect for the immense amount of pressure she’s under

I wrote an entire essay about this my last year of school, and my teacher thought I had lost the plot. He was my most hated teacher for other reasons, and this did not help his case.

I am Here for the Mrs. Bennet Defense Squad. Yes, she can be unsubtle in a major way, but she is also terrified of the alternative outcome. However, for all her lack of tact, she is also hella strategic, as demonstrated by setting up an “oh no I’m stuck in your house” romance trope situation for Jane and Bingley. She’s a clever lady, and she sees exactly what kind of shitty situation they’re in, and she can’t get her husband to do anything.

It’s really easy to read Mrs. Bennet’s inability to be subtle about anything as a sign of stupidity or inability to understand “society” (and the Bingley sisters are inclined to do this and link it to her very middle-class family because of classism) but she is literally panicking at all times about a very real concern, and everyone is just rolling their eyes. No compassion for her poor nerves indeed!

Ok so I started to scroll by. But the problem with the Mrs. Bennet discourse is that it can too quickly swing too far in the wrong direction. Yes, everything about this is (mostly) true. The Bennet women are in a really delicate position. Their safety and continued financial security hangs on Mr. Bennet’s faintest breath. It is in fact a conversation point several times that the girls are not educated enough to serve as governesses, but are of too high a social status to expect marriage to a tradesman. 

The problem is that while Mrs. Bennet is certainly the only one in the Bennet household taking this issue seriously, she’s also gone too far in the opposite direction. The point of the Bennet marriage is that it’s bad for both of them. Mr. Bennet married a beautiful, foolish woman and then didn’t live according to the economy he would have had to in order to leave her a tidy sum once he died. Mrs. Bennet held herself safe under the happy expectation that she would produce a son, who would inherit the estate and provide for her in her own age.

Once it became clear that wouldn’t happen (and remember Lydia is only fifteen when the book opens, so Mrs. Bennet might only have given up the idea that she would have a son possibly a decade before, when Jane was about twelve) Mrs. Bennet had to focus on her daughters’ marriages in order to ensure the family’s well-being. The problem is that she overcompensated beyond what the society she lives in found good form. 

Mrs. Bennet is a foolish, vain, nervous woman who is often called out in the narrative as an older woman with Lydia’s naturally foolish and selfish character. Her husband long ago realized he’d someone for looks who he was incompatible with personality-wise. The readers (especially modern readers) see his neglect of family affairs readily, and his gentle (and at times less than gentle) mockery of his family (particularly his wife and his three youngest daughters). But importantly, Mrs. Bennet also is meant to come across as a lesson to the reader. A silly woman who married above her station (it’s mentioned several times she secured the better marriage compared to her own sister) Mrs. Bennet doesn’t have the social graces she should have been expected to, as her husband’s wife.

This is an important plot point. Raising Mrs. Bennet up as the only Bennet aware of their impending doom as Mr. Bennet ages is important and adds depth to her matrimonial scheming on her daughters’ behalves. But vitally the way she goes about her work causes Mr. Darcy to hold the greatest of disdain for her and her family. It’s that disdain that helps induce him to persuade Mr. Bingley to leave Netherfield Park. This isn’t truly questioned by Elizabeth, who understands that her mother’s over-eager grasping immediately raised Mr. Darcy’s concerns. Remember, at this time there was an abundance of women who were deliberately setting out to marry men of good fortune, and desperate to make themselves amiable enough to secure that marriage, regardless of their true feelings. Mr. Darcy (and honestly Mr. Bingley too should have known better) would have spent his entire later youth and then adulthood on the alert for women whose intentions were only for his wealth, and not for his happiness. That’s important, especially after we see the great care Mr. Darcy takes with Pemberly and his dependents. 

Mrs. Bennet’s desperation is understandable. Her character (grasping, foolish, too needy and nervous to understand the social graces she must display to appear acceptable to men of the station she wants her daughters to marry) isn’t virtuous. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are intended by the narrative to stand as examples for what happens when people who are not of similar or compatible characters marry. Mr. Bennet grew so disillusioned with his wife that his reaction to his family’s financial insecurity is to make jokes and wave his wife’s concerns away as foolishness. He’s not really concerned with the future of his female family members. Mrs. Bennet on the other hand, doted on for her beauty then ignored and trivialized after that beauty lost it’s attraction, is left to indulge her worst impulses as she tries to snap up eligible young men for her daughters. Importantly, Mr. Wickham easily fools her as to his true character, even after he runs off with her daughter. 

While we look at Mrs. Bennet’s desperation and find it both pitiable and understandable, that doesn’t mean that she’s the better person in the marriage.  These two people could have been better than who they became as they aged. The problem is that in their youth they found a spouse who wasn’t compatible with them, and their own character deficiencies were magnified in the marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are intended as a warning to the reader over marrying for shallow reasons (beauty for him, money for her). Character matters in a marriage, as does mutual compatibility. 

@thebibliosphere

I feel like it’s important also to acknowledge that while, yes, Mrs. Bennet pushing Mr. Collins on Elizabeth is completely understandable from a material point of view, it’s also setting up a repeat of the Bennet’s marriage that Mr. Bennet absolutely does not want for any of his daughters. Not just because Elizabeth would be unhappy, but because she’d be unhappy for the same reasons Mr. Bennet is unhappy with Mrs. Bennet.

Mr. Collins is repeatedly shown to be essentially the masculine equivalent of Mrs. Bennet: obsequious, social climbing, and utterly incapable of conducting himself in society without embarrassing himself and anyone connected to him. Charlotte is only able to handle the situation by either a) manipulating him so as to avoid him as much as possible or b) maintaining a stone cold poker face at all times:

This is an objectively shitty situation for Charlotte to be in, but it’s one she went into voluntarily, as the benefits (namely independence in running the house and having space of her own) outweigh the detriments for her. Lizzy would not be doing it voluntarily.

Sure, Mrs. Bennet’s primary concern is making sure her daughters are not in poverty, but Mr. Bennet’s is making sure they’re not trapped in unhappy marriages for the rest of their lives. In both Jane and Lizzy’s cases, he is only happy when he believes that they’re choosing husbands of good character and compatible personality, and extremely upset if he thinks they’re not. Compare his initial reaction to Bingley’s proposal (which comes after spending significant time with him, during which he confirms his good character and disposition) with Darcy’s (which doesn’t):

Versus:

Mr. Bennet clearly isn’t going to forbid Lizzy from marrying for money rather than love – this is what he initially thinks is going on, and he gives consent to both Mr. Darcy and Lizzy anyway – but he really, REALLY doesn’t want her to. He KNOWS what happens if you jump into a bad marriage for the wrong reasons, and he is going to try to talk her out of it by any means possible. He has to be convinced that her attraction isn’t a passing crush or a coldblooded bid for Darcy’s wealth, but something real and capable of being maintained over time, and ONLY THEN is he truly okay with it.

Like, Mrs. Bennet’s concerns are understandable and rational given her situation and that of the family, but so too are Mr. Bennet’s given his own situation.

Rewatched This Years Girl/Who Are You last night and I CANNOT stop thinking about Faith's extended monologue at Spike about how cool it would be to have sex with Buffy. Like, completely unprompted, she delivers this CREATIVE WRITING ASSIGNMENT to a guy she doesn't know and doesn't care about. "I've got muscles you've never even dreamed of. I could squeeze you until you popped like warm champagne, and you'd beg me to hurt you just a little bit more." HELLO??? "And you know why I don't? Because it's wrong." SO WE'RE NOT EVEN REALLY TALKING ABOUT SPIKE ANYMORE HUH

Like. She really said all that. Out loud. An extremely detailed sexual fantasy about how cool sex with Buffy would be if Buffy wasn't such a stuck-up tight-ass with no sense of fun. Or if Faith wasn't Wrong

And honestly, it's still not as completely insane as last episode when she tied up Joyce to complain about being dumped and how much she hated Buffy's new boyfriend who she has seen ONCE for a total of about 30 seconds through a window

i know that the real reason amber benson never played tara as ‘the first’ is because she was too busy, so they had cassie pretend to deliver her message instead, but my headcannon is that ‘the first’ couldn’t imitate tara because there was no darkness in her, and even ‘the first’ can’t appear to you as a dead person who’s that good, and kind, and pure. the first evil can’t touch her, even in death.

#oh willow  #your ambition is one of the most fascinating parts about you  #it could have been so cool if the text in any way acknowledged its destructive facets as part of your personaility  #instead of ‘she did it cus of druuuuuggggsssszzzz’  (via buffyofwinterfell)

#OH THE IRONY  #willow rosenberg: legit a terrible fucking person  #could’ve been the best villain  #one of the most fascinating characters in the buffyverse  #instead tara got fridged and willow got a half-assed redemption arc in which she didn’t actually get called out on her shit  (via bloodofwinterfell)

#i love this parallel so freaking much  #what a brilliant piece of characterisation  #to introduce vamp!willow as an apparent foil  #to everything willow stands for  #and then slowly reveal that she does in fact have that darkness in her  #until suddenly it’s our willow saying it  #but now she’s seen the true evils of the world  #and they have devastated and consumed her  #so she says it to warren  #and then flays him alive  #and suddenly it’s not so funny anyore  (via taraduende)

Like. The quote “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend” is such an integral quote/concept to LOTR that I just cannot for the life of me comprehend how people come away from LOTR inspired to write the grimdark i-love-war-and-suffering stories that populate fantasy

literally JRR TOLD us that if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But did we listen? No of course not! More angsting about redeeming our rightful throne by slaughtering hundreds!!!

I personally feel there’s a strong correlation between the ‘heroes save suffering world through WAR AND SUFFERING’ school of fantasy and the people who think Aragorn is the hero.

Instead of, you know, functioning entirely as a) a healer, b) a distraction, and most importantly c) a hobbit delivery system.  

Hobbits brought down Sauron AND Saruman, thwarted Denethor’s insanity, stopped the Witch King of Angmar, thwarted Saruman again, and REBUILT AFTER THE WAR. And they did it all with, I swear to God, the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP. 

Bilbo befriends Gandalf and a bunch of cranky dwarves, intervenes repeatedly to try to prevent dragon attacks, murder and war, and then just WANDERS HOME WITH THE RING.

Bilbo’s POWER OF FRIENDSHIP allows him to actually leave the Ring, something nobody’s ever done before.

Frodo and his friends set off to take the Ring to Elrond, make friends with the local reclusive demigod and survive purely thanks to THAT FRIENDSHIP. 

The hobbits unite the Nine Walkers with FRIENDSHIP. 

Merry and Pippin befriend the reclusive tree people, GOODBYE SARUMAN. 

Frodo trots across the world befriending people and gets them all the way to the fiery mountain, when Sam’s friendship GETS THEM THE REST OF THE WAY. 

Meanwhile, Pippin makes friends in Minas Tirith and SAVES THE DAY AGAIN. 

Merry befriends Eowyn and inspires ‘Dernhelm’ to just suit up and go like he does and distracts the Witch King at the crucial moment DAY SAVED THANK YOU. 

Then when they think it’s all over, they amble back to the Shire, find it in trouble, and CALL ON THEIR FRIENDS TO FUCKING CARE BEAR STARE SARUMAN OUT OF TOWN. 

So, you know, any swords-and-orcs fantasy that has the Aragorn/Boromir character as the hero and no hobbits? You know that author Missed The Point. Aragorn was a great guy, but he wasn’t the hero. The hero, always, was the Ordinary Person, the Little Guy, the kindly souls who never wanted to pick up a sword, but did it because it needed to be done. 

many people think they know the ‘ Tolkien hero’, but they do not. they skim, they assume that theres some destined turnip farmer who defeats evil because prophesy and gets the girl and theres a happy ending. missing every point of Tolkien they believe Aragorn is the hero and his virtue was valor the true Tolkien hero hates adventure, every step of the way wishing they were back at home having eggs for breakfast and cake for teatime, and the only reason they havent left to go back home is they fight to preserve eggs and teatime as something that exists at all. on their adventures they saw the beauty of the world and would defend that beauty even if it meant great personal sacrifice. the true Tolkien hero is Samwise and his virtue was compassion the evil may be beaten back, but never truly gone, you may have returned home but your scars remain eggs for breakfast and cake for teatime are not somehow magically better because you bled for them, your journeys should be seen as a necessary pain and not something to glory you spit in the eye of glory for youve seen good men die for honor and never again will they return home or sit beside you in the garden watching the sunset

to understand the heros journey is to understand the pain of loss and the compassion that keeps you together

i do think it's interesting that in willow's ritual to resurrect buffy it's specifically a snake that she coughs up. like there aren't that many snakes in the series it's pretty much the giant snake monster in "reptile boy," the mayor in "graduation day" and the snake glory uses in "shadow" and it feels interesting that all of those snakes are about the pursuit of something for selfish reasons — "reptile boy" is literally about sacrificing the lives of girls so that rich, powerful men can get and stay rich and powerful; the mayor's ascension in "graduation day" similarly is about power, is about consolidating power, and also involves the sacrificing of a young girl, faith. and like, buffy is the one who stabbed faith, but in terms of the violence done, the mayor was the one using faith to further his goals. he loved her in his way, but still at the end of the day her strength and ability coupled with her destabilized sense of self were fodder for his political ambitions, and he sent her to kill angel knowing full well the danger she could be in. "shadow" is about glory trying to find the key so she can destroy everything in existence just to go home, and even though she doesn't know it's dawn at that point, it's still once again a young, vulnerable girl being implicated, losing her life.

and then you have "bargaining," willow coughing up a snake, in this sort of reversal of "reptile boy" and "shadow," where the snake is this external thing you're feeding to attain a goal. it's much closer to "graduation day," where the snake erupts from within the mayor and consumes him.

and that's interesting when you consider the role of faith for the mayor, the role of buffy for willow. that's the chink in the mayor's snakeskin. the other cases of young girls in snake episodes are very straightforward attempted sacrifices for power. but there's something curious about the fact that for willow and the mayor, the young girls they care about really were stabbed, really did die, and that it wasn't an intentional sacrifice to a snake. rather, it contributed to the swell of desire for power and protection and invulnerability that makes willow's snake and the mayor's snake live inside them, rather than an outer force that they feed.

for the mayor, faith is at the heart of why he wants that power to begin with. the mayor is "a family man" without a family. he's the sort of guy who would say he does what he does "for the children," and faith is that. faith is his adoptive child. he had this plan before her, but it means more now, it's more vulnerable now, he wants to protect her. he genuinely thinks, as you can see in "this year's girl," that without him there is nothing for her. you can hear the emotion and ache in his voice when he says "some people who should be here today aren't." wanting faith's safety is a massive contributor to his feelings towards the ascension and amassing as the season progresses, and yet he is the one who sacrifices her. he sends her on the mission to kill angel which ultimately leads to her coma. the way him becoming the snake is linked to this sacrifice of an innocent life.

and willow is so similar. she didn't cause buffy's death. but her snake arises in this undeath, her snake appears when she traumatically rips buffy from death, in a sense sacrificing buffy in reverse. sacrificing buffy's peace in heaven so buffy can continue to fight against evil, because willow needs her. while willow's stated goal isn't greater power and influence, that's definitely a part of it. i read willow in "bargaining" and beyond as being in deep denial — she really thinks she's not a bad guy, not a bad person, that her aims are pure. and i do think she really Believes buffy is in a hell dimension. but, at the same time, she's been anointed the boss of the group in buffy's stead. she's living buffy's role, by being the programmer of the buffybot, the bot becomes this extension of willow. and there's this curious dichotomy where resurrecting buffy is both this event that gives her tremendous power — she's one of the most powerful witches in the world at this point — and also this attempt to get rid of that power. she doesn't want to be the leader of the group. she's off-kilter. she desperately wants buffy back, so that buffy can take her rightful place as the glue of the scoobies. but buffy comes back fragmented and traumatized and not in a place to be anyone's hero, she's just trying to remember how to be a person again, and the fact that willow's power play to fix everything didn't work if anything only fuels her power spiral. she keeps trying to fix things with magic and intimidation and forcing her will, over and over again, for the rest of the season, so that she can be so powerful that she doesn't have to feel this way, this destabilization, ever again.

and you can honestly read those other snake moments as about destabilization and vulnerability as well. the frat bros in "reptile boy" live and die by hierarchy — they sacrifice people at the bottom of that hierarchy so they can stay at the top, and their position on the top is so fragile, however it might appear. the mayor is deeply afraid of being vulnerable as well — literally he taunts others about how he is "invulnerable," verbatim. he's immortal and unchanging and represents old guard values that are crumbling. the world is trying to eat the things that he holds dear — patriarchy, order, law — so he needs to eat them first. and glory too, is so vulnerable, is in this human form that can be killed at any moment when she used to be the most power being in the world. she doesn't know who she is on earth, she is constantly being destabilized by the shame and desire and feeling that creeps in when you have physical human form, and she wants to go home so she can be bigger than those feelings, squash them like bugs.

i find it so interesting with willow's snake that it's coming from within her, and she's vomiting it up. the desire for power, the fear of vulnerability, the willingness to sacrifice the lives of young girls specifically, that's within her, and she is trying to eject it, compared to the other cases, where they are literally feeding or trying to fully embody that snake. but vomiting the snake doesn't save her from it, because it came from within her. she never acknowledges her link to the snake, and so it keeps pursuing her. it doesn't feel like coincidence that the effigy of proserpexa is wrapped in a snake, and has a snake tongue:

willow's desire for power, for specifically invulnerability — to have protective snakeskin wrapped around her, to have the power to swallow things whole, a power you need when you are so aware of your own vulnerability because you are constantly slithering on the ground — follows her. she can't protect herself from the world, no matter how powerful she gets, and so she decides the only way is to destroy the world.

there's something haunting about that, about the fact that willow is in the world. willow in "grave" is making a suicide attempt, this dark mirror of buffy's self-sacrifice in "the gift". which can also be read as a suicide, as buffy's death wish and depression catching up to her. there's something about willow, buffy's spirit, as per "primeval" feeling SO destabilized without her best friend. wanting someone back from oblivion. she thinks buffy is in hell because she is in hell, and willow's spirit is buffy's spirit, so how can they not be in the same place? willow starting the season trying to make everything better by reversing a suicide, but it doesn't make everything better, from willow's black-and-white perspective, it doesn't necessarily make anything better, the world isn't worth saving. and she ends up right back here. with the snake she didn't accept she had. trying to destroy the world and herself.

it's the fact that in the end, the young vulnerable girl willow is trying to give up to attain power is herself. she's sacrificing herself to the snake. proserpexa both has the power of the snake, and is totally bound by it. and so is willow.

it's the fact that what saves her is vulernability. there's sort of a transitive property you could read into "primeval"'s model of the scoobies-as-buffy. willow is buffy's spirit. xander is buffy's heart. so, transitively, isn't xander also willow's heart?

and willow's heart comes to save her. totally vulnerable. knowing he could very well die. says he loves her. no matter how afraid and vulnerable, and alone willow is, her heart, her spirit's heart, still loves her. and now im crying bye!!! except not bye because this is literally jsut me watching the fucking previously-on of "bargaining part ii" and i have the rest of the episode to watch and did i MENTION season 6 is gonna destroy me

literally just the tenderness buffy has for dawn ... like her repeated assurance in spiral that she wont let anything happen to her ... buffy in 'the gift' saying "she's a part of me. the only part that i ...." and the fact that dawn is 14 being offered up to a cosmic destiny she has no control over and buffy was 15 when she was offered up to a cosmic destiny she has no control over and how this season started with buffy furious that dawn got to be a kid and buffy never did and now buffy's just trying to make sure that if she never got to be a kid, at least dawn will..............

literally it's the buffering lyric 'the easiest thing i ever did, was let it go so you could live' .... 'you wont miss graduation, i wont have to miss my mom....'

... guys i started crying just typing that so that's how that's going