Darmani
Well-known member
No it's a marketing tactic. One that if you use one on one is called a grooming tactic
It's basically meant to create a divide between those who might have authority over you
Teens have a lack of supervision and abundance of responsibility with little power outside of reaction and so can promote and get involved in a project but if they know that they're not supposed to be doing it they're more than likely to Triple down as a form of identity and be more malleable to what is being sold.
To be fair another part of it is as a teenager you're much more aware of the b******* that goes on while being utterly powerless to it. As an adult people have to ostensibly respect you because at the very least you have the same level of social threat, unless they know that you are socially a run beneath.
Also let's not kid ourselves adults often are ignorant of the specifics and the difficulties of teen interaction especially as Society changes. the problem is there's a sort of funhouse mirror effect on Buffy. Such as how she talks about being disadvantaged and on the verge of poverty but she has a wardrobe that could probably feed a small nation
Some always hated the series just for having the seemingly microscopic Sarah Michelle Gellar be able to punch up guys. While I wouldn't call the Show out-and-out racist, it did not comport itself well on racial representation in the main show and in the spin-off... I kind of I suppose cringe is the wrong word, but I try not to think too hard about how they handled Gunn. all the more disgusting as they started treating the demons as minorities and an actual minority along with his group that have pre-existing ties were treated as a bunch of psychopaths. Not even a matter of the complex racial tensions that can happen amongst minorities in America, so much as out of control thrill killers
The social commentary got particularly bad. I think the best commentary on Buffy actually came in Venture Brothers, where we have three occult adventure/heroes. One who's a rip off of Doctor Strange. one who's like a sort of older blade. The last the guy who has the voice of Master Shake who's a gay Alchemist
Anyway at one point the Blacula Hunter talks about his origin story, which is how he saw his mother raped and murdered in front of him by a group of Blaculas and it explains so damn much about him. The setup of this scene is to dig deep into a dark tragedy in order so that they can open an event flag effectively. He says this and it's considered the Midway point and dismissed only for someone to go onto an elaborate bit about a personal relatively minor issue I think about them having a bad smell
this pretty much describes Buffy in a nutshell. trivializing very real social problems or tragedy in order to focus on then blow up the indignities of everyday life into full-blown insults and tragedies above set tragedies. On one level it's nice, because it humanizes and lets us know about the human condition. On the other level it's annoying because of what I just said
I am convinced that when people talk feminism on Tumblr Twitter what they want is a group of male submissives into femme dom. And not the actual dynamics of you know the submissive is actually always in control and all that stuff I mean they basically want the jackass to do what they want and to be able to treat him like a garbage. Hence why Xander is problematic but Willow on Buffy absolutely are not or how if there was ever a fall with a female character find the nearest male character or actual writer and blame them
people always say this but I think it's just because it highlighted the problems since all the other status quo was gone and there was no inertia left. Cuz I would say the problem started with the overall Arc of Buffy returning and how they had to treat her and especially with works like gingerbread. In which the town becoming enlightened and concerned about the very real Horrors in it and Buffy getting a little bit of criticism on how she fights evil being treated as a personal offense and the results of Panic going out of control and everything. It's not that that's not a reasonable story, but it was all done in the service of justifying the characters and it completed the transformation of Witchcraft from a dark art to be used sparingly to borrowing the likeability of Wicca as a underground religion that was persecuted without even necessarily adopting or honoring its actual virtues values and traits
Buffy is a heroic character and so are the kids they're not meant to be gangsters having a bunch of kids working clandestine to kill people with guns would have made that my gang. They do show up in angel but they're also very explicitly shown to be dangerous and someone in effective against demons
do we call these kids were in high school and they were often dealing with hostage situations were the hostiles we're all together. But you have to give some shout out to the fact that they stole a rocket launcher but didn't think to still pistols but to be fair it's one of those more a liability things. You can easily justify having a crossbow as a sports weapon you can make the ammunition yourself in Shop class
they often hit the fact they have something as nasty as a knife let alone a sword or hammer
They had a tendency to favor incidental weapons that they hit on their person to attack all at once like staves up the sleeve or something like that. And also it's a matter of escalation as Darla proved
remember the average per Patrol needs to look not all that dangerous. She often encountered vampires while just hanging out at a bar or something like that.
technically the entire point of the initiative plot line is to decry the whole why don't they just use guns all the time
I seriously prefer Angel here. Even though we had a corrupt power that be it was indicative that she herself was a rogue element and even then her corruption was more - I don't know you - could see how it was corruption and not never trust Authority folks. Hell A character like Holtz I don't think ever even had a chance on Buffy. And finally I think that show managed the right balance between Authority and power with Angel often being on the outs of the greater Supernatural Community because while they often played it off as a laugh he just as often Bumbled, did cause problems killing other good guys as well as making things harder for bad guys. And although this is framed in terms of the delusion of his romantic relationship with Buffy it's nice to see all that come to a head when he takes over Wolfram and Hart's and gets told to his face that the Slayer organization just cannot trust him
you know I never really thought of Connor as a brat. or if he was he was certainly more Justified and have more depth than say Dawn. Overall I just really liked the character and what he brought to the table. For one he was actually Angel's kid as to Dawn who was Buffy's daughter by way of Skipper (as in Barbie) like introduction. His central focus and emotional impact made sense as a result. Why so damn important, because macguffin and prophecy and memory alteration? No he's the child of Angel with a one night stand with his ex. I mean I fully accepted that he was screwed up but the show had reasons for being screwed up. I mean how does he deal with the fact that he was essentially brainwashed to hate his biological father; doesn't know what he is; and also attempted to murder his biological father who was also a monster in and of himself? After that he got groomed and then sexually abused! Then got his head screwed with by Jazmine in two forms.
overall, I mean I feel for the character, but I think that the show always manage to characterize him with depth without being too sympathetic to his f*** ups. As opposed to Spike where... oh haha isn't he just so lovable! hey did he kill a woman or something? oh who cares it's spike.
I think the problem with super Xander fics is that they focus on making him a powerful fighter and not just a good man. I think his ultimate goal should much as ended up as with Angel. to be a good adult man with a strong tie to his community, a sense of self Direction and purposem and not be defined by trying to sort of romantic male ideal so much as achieve it. Such as in season 7 when he's hitting on a girl in order to make himself feel better and dreams of the potentials coming onto him. That just feels so off especially as Nicholas Brendon wasn't passing for young guy anymore (not exactly moral objection just I mean surely Xander's taste in women have AGED with him right?)
they kind of had it sort of at the beginning of season 7 where he had moved to the head of the Construction Group. He had adult friends and ties and the beginnings of a career as well as influence in something like building the school.
In short he didn't have to be the loser guy trying to find himself. He had found himself and he had actually grown up. Even though that included things like leaving his fiancee at the altar.
"I need a marriage in order to make him a man." and considering there's just no ignoring the fact that he was in this entire fight for Buffy long after the point where he should have been over her by then ... him sort of leaving the life but not losing his awareness could be that final step. They sort of hit this at season 7 when the trio has Jonathan come to the realization that he's over High School. Xander was missing that when the development was there. He's an adult now and doesn't need to define himself by the highschool insecurities and developments.
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