#i didn't go into her because i didn't have a direct parallel but Buffy also has more interesting interactions with Cordelia

[symbioticsimplicity]

Okay so @sothatwassomething made this here post and it made me a little feral, so here is the promised essay.

So, I watched this show when I was really young so I didn’t originally notice, but having rewatched it recently, it’s flagrantly obvious. Buffy’s male characters are fucking terrible.

The original post is about Buffy’s boyfriends but I’m including Xander because he has committed too many crimes to not get a mention.

He’s supposed to be the funny best friend character who’s kind of a dumbass but you love him anyway. That is not what comes forward though, not even close. He has a crush on Buffy from the moment he meets her and he does not hesitate to make it her problem.

He makes every effort to insert himself into her life and constantly oversteps boundaries. Not to mention constantly being at least low grade misogynistic, which is admittedly both a product of the show’s time as well as J*ss Wh*don being on the writing team, but still it’s gross for a show that’s supposed to be all about girl power to have a prominent supporting character that’s like that.

He also constantly devalues Buffy’s feelings (when she tells him she doesn’t like something he or someone else is doing he’ll try to talk around it to change her mind), ignores her misgivings (Literally every time something is afoot she pretty much senses it but he tries to tell her she’s wrong or paranoid more or less), gives her terrible advice (See the whole thing with Riley, just that whole talk when she said she wanted to break up with him the first time which honestly makes so little sense to me since he didn’t even like the guy), interferes with parts of her personal life without telling or asking her (multiple times gatekeeping other people from talking to her without asking if she’d like to talk to them, ie Spike at Joyce’s funeral), won’t listen when she’s upset over something (This happens so often I would just say pick an episode it’ll happen at some point), and worst of all tries to talk her into not believing her own thoughts and feelings.  It’s not isolated to a single episode or season either, he is just consistently this bad throughout the show.

Despite all that, the narrative treats him favorably and clearly tries to frame his actions as justified because he likes Buffy, like he’s looking out for her. He’s treated like the “nice guy” who doesn’t get the girl but probably should have. He gets along with Buffy, sure, but I genuinely think that’s only because the narrative forced them to.

Now juxtapose him with Willow. She’s introduced as the cute quirky girl who’s maybe a little nervous but sweet. That’s true for about the first half of the first season. Willow gets so much character development in a way that Xander never really does. It’s almost like meeting Buffy started her on a journey to line up all the little parts of herself she either hadn’t known were there or hadn’t thought she had room for.

She immediately bonds with Buffy and proceeds to be ride or die with her in a way that triggers personal growth for both of them. She helps her with her homework, makes every oportunity to spend time with her that she can with no strings attached, doesn’t pressure her to do things she doesn’t want to do, including telling them Slayer related things.

Willow is who Buffy goes to for emotional support, she’s who she tells her secrets to, and she proves that her trust is not misplaced over and over. There are a few times when she’s not as good a friend as she could be, but it’s rare, and it makes their relationship feel more realistic. She’s usually very supportive and takes the initiative to help Buffy in whatever situation they find themselves in. She started practicing magic as a way to be more helpful to the group and ended up finding a passion for it.

Willow and Buffy continually build each other up, and there’s a genuine sense of comfort between them. They lived together for an entire season, and almost every scene depicting that had so much domesticity to it. They were the calm, soothing moments in the middle of a season full of chaos and change. They give off comfy cottage lesbian vibes and I will defend that to my GRAVE. (Was lowkey frustrated when they made Willow a lesbian but DIDN’T put her with Buffy like why????)

Then we have Buffy’s relationship with Angel. Which. Oh God where do I start??? Oh, I know where to start, at one of my least favorite aspects!

So their entire relationship is an allegory, we know that. It’s the timeless tale of a girl dating a seemingly nice guy, everything being great, then when she “gives it up” to him, he suddenly turns into an asshole. (Especially with younger girls and older guys as was the case here) Great, thanks I fucking hate it.

But, in addition to that, they made Angel the flattest freakin’ vampire ever. Like if y’all think Edward Cullen wasn’t based on this mo’fo right here, I’m sorry but you’re wrong.

Buffy is great at banter, it’s one of the things the show is known for, but almost every quip she made smacked into Angel like a brick wall. Like yes, he is being eternally tortured for being the most massive douche in a whole species of assholes, but still. He has a lot more chemistry with freaking Cordelia of all people than with Buffy. He and Buffy get along best when they’re tragic and dangerous together, which yeah, is chemistry but it’s not long term, and it once again doesn’t suit the vibe the show is trying to foster.

Angelus had great chemistry with Buffy, but in the villain way which is actually one of the only ways she does get to have decent chemistry with a dude. But you know, he also stalked her, killed her friends, and generally terrorized her that entire time so not real great on the boyfriend vibes there. 

Now contrast him with Faith, who was also an absolute nightmare.

Faith was clearly intended to be a narrative foil to Buffy. But the minute those two got anywhere near each other, holy shit. There’s magnetism there, there’s tension, and most of it is sexual. It feels as if Buffy is being drawn into Faith both by the promise of freedom she’s never gotten to taste, and the allure of Faith herself. She’s dark, she’s dangerous, and she can absolutely keep up with Buffy in every way. She’s who Buffy could be if she weren’t bound by the rules she keeps to. (She’s who Buffy could be if she weren’t so well loved.)

She shows Buffy parts of herself she hadn’t known existed, makes her confront things about being the Slayer that she’d never put to words before. She understands her in a way that no one else really can, and she’s not shy about letting Buffy know that.

She immediately moves in close, and while the plot frames her as trying to get close to Angel because she wants what Buffy has, I think it’s also to do with wanting to be closer to Buffy. It would be easy to argue that’s part of the confusion of being young and queer and not knowing if you want someone or want to be them. Especially for a character as love starved as Faith.

These two got on like a house on fire and they were every bit as dangerous to each other as Buffy and Angel were, but in a way that made me want to watch them for as long as they could draw things out. Honestly they could have dropped everything and made out and I would not have been in the least bit surprised.

There’s bad blood, there’s distrust and hurt and apprehension but there’s still that same magnetism underlying every interaction. I HATE that this show was made in the 90’s-00’s because goddamn would I like to have seen where that could have gone.

Which leads us to my absolute least favorite of the boyfriend bunch, Riley. I wanted to like him. I really really fucking did. He seemed like he was going to be the all american himbo, and honestly Buffy being the girlboss she is could absolute have vibed and thrived with a himbo.

But no. That’s not what they did with him.

Rather than just giving Buffy a pretty, sweet boy to protect, they gave her another asshole with an agenda. First of all, ACAB. (I know he was technically some bullshit sort of special ops, I don’t care, they acted like cops, they’re getting lumped in) Riley was another case of a guy who seemed pretty nice on the surface but just turned straight to suck as they got to know each other better.

He was portrayed as a supportive boyfriend but just about every time it came down to actually supporting Buffy, he either failed to do so or gave her the absolute wrong thing. I don’t know if the writing team just got tired of writing for him or what, but his downward spiral was terrible.

It was entirely centered around Buffy being stronger and more competent than him.

Seriously.

In a show, that’s main selling point is having a heroine who’s literal job it is to kick ass and take names, we’re going to give her a boyfriend who gets his feelings hurt about that very thing?? Riley was the champion of the fragile male ego (I could go on about how his whole character was pretty much just a male power fantasy run wild but that’s a whole other post) and it was a pretty consistent theme throughout their relationship that he felt inferior to her. But at the end it just went off the rails. A vampire blood drinking den hooker?? Really Riley???

Not to mention he had all the personality of a dry biscuit. He wasn’t even Buffy’s type to be honest, which even he knew. Their whole relationship felt like Buffy trying to force herself to be normal, to force herself to be something she isn’t. (Cough Lesbian symbolism, cough cough.)

Which brings me finally to Spike, my beloved trash man.

First, it should be said that he absolutely has some of the flaws outlined above. He started out a villain and did his best to stay that way for quite a long while. That said, he also went through a lot of character development.

One thing that never changed however was his chemistry with Buffy. He plays off of her beautifully, although he has a good rapport with pretty much every character. He's great at their style of banter and his attitude has him fit in pretty nicely with their sass. He’s a great foil to Buffy in a similar way to Faith. He constantly tempts her to live outside her comfort zone, outside of what people think of her and he encourages her to seek out whatever it is she wants. Buffy is more reluctant to latch onto that in Spike (she’s already seen where that leads with Faith, and she has plenty of history with Spike that tells her he’s untrustworthy) but ultimately ends up pursuing him as well.

Spike, for his flaws both in their relationship and as a person does one thing most of the rest of these characters don’t or aren’t able to do for Buffy, which I think ends up drawing her even further in.

He gives her emotional support.

That’s something absent from a lot of Buffy’s relationships in any capacity (JOYCE I’M LOOKIN’ AT YOU HONEY YOU WERE A FUCKING TERRIBLE MOTHER) and I think it adds a lot more depth to their connection than Buffy has with Riley or even Angel.

Spike is shown multiple times to pretty much be one of the girls, it’s played for laughs but it’s still there. He watches soap operas with Joyce and genuinely gets invested in them, he’ll talk about boys with Dawn even though he really has no reason to, and in one of the earlier seasons he kidnapped Willow and pretty much just…vented to her? Talked about his problems and his feelings about them. It’s really rare for any of the characters to do that, much less any of the male ones. Spike for all his mischievousness and villainousness has quite probably the most emotional intelligence in the entire group. (Which I suspect is part of why he gets girlfriend-vibe privileges.) His relationship with Buffy was the shortest and they spend a good chunk of it trying to force it not to become deeper (which is also pretty telling in itself) but I think it settled into one of the best she had, if not the best. Had they gotten time to work through their issues, I think they probably would have been the best canon relationship Buffy had.

But this whole issue is pretty easy to see even in some of Buffy’s more brief interactions.

Kendra the Slayer. She was only around for a few episodes, was wildly different from Buffy, far more rule oriented but just as dedicated to her job and eventually loyal to Buffy. They had a rocky start, but ended up bonding pretty well before Kendra’s death.

That one dude Buffy dated for like three seconds before Riley appeared that broke her heart for literally no reason other than to emphasize that every nice seeming pretty boy is going to be a jackass underneath it all. They barely even spoke before Buffy had a thing for him. He was supposed to come off as charming but pretty much just talked about himself, used a bunch of lines, and was a cheating asshole. Willow verbally incinerated him. 

I don’t know how this show managed to be so utterly bad when it came to it’s hetero relationships, but it sure did. Almost every single male character (with the exception of Giles, Spike, and Oz before they volleyball spiked his character straight into the ground, pretty much) was crap in some capacity which lent itself to the reverse version of the “Every woman in this show is a cardboard standee so we have to ship the guys together” syndrome. Buffy had much more going with the women in this show and it’s a shame she never got to kiss one.

#btvs #i told you i would write that essay and i did #i got a little off topic but i had some shit to get off my chest #buffy summers #buffy should have been a lesbian #willow rosenberg #xander harris #faith btvs #angel btvs #riley finn #spike btvs #kendra btvs #this show would have been so much better if they let buffy kiss women #and got rid of Xander just like altogether #i didn't go into her because i didn't have a direct parallel but Buffy also has more interesting interactions with Cordelia #the prom episode where they were being hunted down in the woods? #great loved that would have loved to see more #frankly i would have loved to see more of Buffy and adult Cordelia interacting #baby girl got so much development on Angel #not that I didn't already love her #(headcanoning her as autistic was the best thing I ever did)

[inmyhorrorsera]

S5E9 & S5E10 thoughts

Well, I liked it!

The biggest loser here is Episode 9 because all my thoughts are so occupied by the finale that I can't say much about the previous episode which wasn't even bad. So just three quick things:

Finally I get some good fucking food (The Guide content).

"I'm… going…to kill you… Guillermo" gave me CHILLS.

Guidja real.

Now, to Episode 10:

Didn't notice the previous episode how feral Nandor was filmed, his face all darkened except for a beam of light on his furious eyes, good and classic vampire shit!

Nadja Detective Policeman visiting Guillermo in that outfit😩

Wow, Guillermo treating Derek bad after all he did for him really make the point across that he's a shitty person.

There's something so 😙👌 about Nandor going back to Panera, always love a full circle moment.

I don't care about Patton Oswald as a comedian or person due some disgusting shit he pulled years ago, so sadly I couldn't enjoy his scenes with Nandor that much. I loved that after the whole conversation he still killed him tho. I read someone in the tags paralleling this scene to Guillermo and Meg in S3E2, and I fully agree with that interpretation.

Laszlo helping Guillermo and apologizing…😭 He loves him! I would love to see more of how Laszlo feels about his "frustrations" (his innability to help Guillermo, the impotency of seeing Colin grow up and not remember him). That's something that should be explored better next season imo.

Him trying to have a serious conversation but keep getting distracted by the porn is me trying to watch this show as a dumb comedy but getting distracted by the nandermo of it all.

All the vampires visiting him with dumb excuses was so cute. I wish I never see those creatures ever again tho.

Ahhhh Nandor calling Guillermo from his mother in law mom's house was some psycho shit. Also it remind me a bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Spike visits Buffy's mom just to taunt her. Imagine Nandor pulling this shit:

(Silvia immediately stakes him of course).

"My friend, Patton Oswalt, he passed away". The solemn way he says it as if he wasn't the culprit 😭.

The moment of Guillermo putting the stake on Nandor's neck was an explicit sex scene for me and for everyone with good taste.

On the opposite side, Nandor helping Guillermo with the red cape is SO SOFT, it's all about being equals this time.

The Djinn… oof… as someone who was begging for his appearance since the beginning of the season, this stunt left me cold… sorry but everything that starts with "it happened off screen" it's bad writing. It's giving "Daenerys kind of forgot…" level of bad.

Didn't like that suddenly Nandor is smarter than the others (specially if we come from an episode when Laszlo called him 'a fuckin idiot' for not getting the Guide reveal).

I already mentioned this in a post I made last night, but I'll repeat it verbatim here, because I stand by it:

I don't believe FOR A SECOND that Laszlo didn't try to feed Guillermo human blood 🤔 Remember when Nadja on s1 went on an entire mission to help Jenna to complete her transformation? (hey everybody, remember Jenna?) How Guillermo 'all my life I dreamed of being a vampire' did not know that piece of lore??

"Guillermo can't kill people" Umm whoever decided to go on this direction, I recommend them this show on FX called What we do in the shadows it's very good! (when consistent).

I…. don't trust that "Guillermo is not cut to be a vampire" stuff… sounds like retcon… BUT! I love the "Guillermo is not cut to be a vampire YET, specially if he isnt sired by Nandor" interpretation.

From the beginning I had this hunch that Guillermo's longing for a family and community (I'm not saying he dislikes his bio family, but obviously he grow up distant from them, probably for being queer and feeling like "an outsider") was a reason for being so desperate to become a vampire. Now that he has the family (bio AND chosen) and the community, it's his time to think if he STILL wants to be vampire or not (and he said at the fake ceremony that he still wants it 😌).

Lmao Guillermo's beard... that thing... didn't look like it was growing from Harvey's face.

🗣️HE 🗣️KEPT 🗣️THE 🗣️GLASSES!!!

More Derek! And with better make up than that ashy talcum powder nightmare from Episode 1!! WTF they got rid of another character of color again??!! Benedict Wong what are you doing here???!!! Yay??????

I really like that Topher is a "functional" zombie in comparison with his state in S2E1, it makes sense with the zombies we saw on the original movie.

Still weird that we end the episode and season here, with Derek happy ending?

HOT take but I like that it didn't end on a cliffhanger, considering that we don't know the state of the show post strikes yet AND after s4 I don't trust this people with cliffhangers ever again lol.

Now that the season is finished I came to realize Nadja's entire arc AGAIN was a big 'ol nothing, huh? The hex, her Antipaxos found family, the little stunt as a teacher, literal "throw at the wall and see what it sticks". I'm sorry but I'll repeat: WWDITS learn how to write women challenge.

Excited to see how Guillermo and Nandor's relationship will develop from now on, I know some people are frustrated but as someone who is used to slow burns being SLOW this is my shit. I joke a lot about the pairing but also I understand that this is the shit&farts show first, nandermo nation second (unlike some people that appears they only consume and rate media depending on how much kissy kissy is on the screen).

From 1 to 10, I'll give this season a 7. Not that good as my god tier seasons (S2 is a 9, S3 is a 10), but not so bad as S4.

What I want next season:

Guillermo NEEDS to be a Bad Bitch again: slaying vampires like the Van Helsing he is, being gay af, not being scared to sass out Nandor, etc.

Laszlo and Colin NEED to have a real talk.

Consistency.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LEARN HOW TO WRITE FOR NADJA I'M ON MY KNEES AT THIS POINT!!!

#sorry if this is rambly have to rewatch both episodes again last nite i had zero braincells #wwdits #what we do in the shadows #nandermo #wwdits thoughts #wwdits spoilers

[zorilleerrant]

the running references to the Sadie Hawkins dance in I Only Have Eyes For You don't actually make sense in the context given. the entire point of the interaction is the student (boy) asking the teacher (woman) to go with him, over and over again, unable to ever stop. even in reference to Buffy and Angel's relationship, that's not notably descriptive of any part of it. so why specify that it's a dance where the girl asks the boy?

on the other hand, if the story were about a student (girl) in love with her teacher (man), asking him repeatedly to run away with her... then it suddenly has a lot of narrative closure. a story where she waited for him to make the first move over and over again, but then there was a thematic opening for her to finally ask him, only to have him turn her down. her one chance at love (the only dance of the year where the girls ask the boys) shot down.

plus it would have more direct parallels in a way the version told kind of doesn't. Buffy blaming the girl would be more clearly blaming herself, and it would also be more apparent that her view was too forceful and ignored the realities of the situation (i.e. she shouldn't blame herself). the gun would directly parallel a stake through the heart. and, of course, we'd see a man who should've known better taking advantage of a girl who didn't have the life experience yet to know what he was doing was inappropriate.

but making the teacher seem creepy and rapey would in turn make all of Angel's actions seem creepy and rapey, so despite writing that resolution dialogue first, in Buffy's voice, they turned it around and made the teacher a woman and the student a boy to muddy the waters. which didn't actually work because then it sort of ends up with the impression this was a boy who'd been stalking a teacher who never gave him the slightest encouragement, while simultaneously seeming to blame him for being a victim of an adult's inappropriate actions (by comparing him to Buffy). overall a poor showing and I think they should've nixed the genderswap

#look i said something

[coraniaid]

Director's commentary for Coexist. How much of the story did you have in mind when you started? Did you make any big changes to your original plans?

Hmm.

In theory I had everything planned out when I started writing, but in practice I’d left a lot of details vaguer than I realized.  I also found myself increasingly rethinking my early plans, especially towards the final third of the story.  Partly this was because I refined my idea of what sort of story I was trying to tell, partly because things I’d written no longer felt credible for these versions of the characters.

(Spoilers for all of Coexist below the cut.)

I think I’ve alluded to a few changes before.  

Chapter 3 – where Buffy and Faith fight Kakistos – had an early draft which I gave up and rewrote from scratch, though the basic beats ended up being the same.  And the Xander/Cordelia break-up was originally supposed to happen several chapters earlier, as was the Xander POV chapter (which was going to happen after Chapter 12, in line with The Zeppo in canon).  In particular there are a couple of lines in Chapter 12 that were meant to imply that the break-up has already happened by this point.  This was something that Buffy was only going to find out about in Chapter 15.

Speaking of Chapter 15, the aftermath of Allan Finch’s death originally played out quite differently too. The basic idea was that Fatih would ‘confess’ to killing Finch, inverting what happens in canon, and that everyone would believe her (which would have played into her general feeling of inferiority compared to Buffy).

But probably the chapter that changed the most between my initial draft and the final version is Chapter 18.

In theory this is the Doppelgangland chapter, in the same way that the previous chapter is The Zeppo (pushed back from its originally planned position) and the next chapter is Earshot.  And there’s definitely still a common thematic thread, I think – it’s not a coincidence that all the people Faith dreams about are to some extent doppelgangers of Buffy, up to and including her final fight against her own reflection –  but I think the direct plot parallels between the chapter and the episode itself are pretty slim.

The original plan was for something much much closer to canon: Anya would try to get Amy to recover her amulet, and in the process they’d accidentally bring vamp!Buffy (from Chapter 9) back into ‘our’ reality.  This Buffy would then capture Faith from the hospital, and Faith would wake up and assume at first that this was the ‘real’ Buffy, having been turned while Faith was unconscious.

I dropped this for a couple of reasons pretty early on: it was hard to work out how to write it from Faith’s POV (without a lot of exposition after the fact) and I didn’t want to stop Anya and Faith being friends (which I think would have had to happen if Anya clearly was still trying to get her powers back).  And I also didn't really feel I had anything else left to do or say about vamp!Buffy, so the end of the chapter felt a little bit too much like a retread of her first appearance.

Having dropped this idea, it took me a while to realize what I wanted to happen instead.  There was one version I started planning where Drusilla showed up in town looking for Spike (which is part of the reason Drusilla appears in Faith’s extended dream sequence in the final chapter).  There was one version where the Watcher’s Council tried to abduct Faith from the hospital and the Mayor intervened to stop it.  (In general I couldn't really work out how to get the Mayor and Faith to interact in this AU, which is why they ... basically don't.)

It was only quite late that I finally worked out what I wanted to happen instead, with the various nested dream sequences. Essentially, the final chapter owes more to Restless than it does to Doppleglandland.  But I’m really pleased with the result: it’s definitely one of my favorite chapters.

Weirdly enough though, despite all these changes, the very last few chapters of the story – from Buffy getting her Class Protector award at the Prom from Debbie and Jonathan together onwards –  were some of the closest to what I originally had sketched out plans for two years earlier.  (You might have assumed this would make them easier to write, but unfortunately...)

#btvs #asks #my writing #thanks for the ask!

[impalementation]

Hi! I just wanted to let you know that I have watched your video essay so many times already and (as I hope you know) I think your analysis is incredibly smart and fascinating to read. I had a question about Buffy's shadow selves: you've talked about Cordelia, Faith, and Spike being shadow selves at different times, and one thing I find interesting is that they seem to represent different parts of her life (Cordelia as human, self-absorbed; Faith as Slayer, isolated; Spike as vampire...). I was wondering what your thoughts are on Cordelia - the human - being Buffy's shadow self in season 1 specifically? It feels like an interesting choice to have the part of herself that she is repressing be represented by someone who is ostensibly what she wishes she could be? Apologies if this is a dumb question, I just would love to hear your thoughts!

Thank you so much!! And actually, this isn't a dumb question at all. In fact I think it's a very very key question. I was asking myself the same thing too, and I'll be talking about it a lot more over the course of the season one videos--especially when we get to "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" and "Prophecy Girl." I think this question is also crucial to why Xander plays a particularly large role in season one.

A bit braindead, so this is going to be sort of vague and general. But basically, throughout almost the whole show, Buffy tends to be torn between her humanity and her non-humanity (being the Slayer). At different times, she either doesn't trust one half of herself, or thinks she cannot access it. Or simply thinks that her halves cannot be united. Metaphorically, Buffy's sense of division is a representation of the division between the conscious and the unconscious (as well as stuff like persona vs self). The unconscious half is of course the shadow and tends to be represented by Buffy's shadow selves.

The reason I see Cordelia as Buffy's shadow in the first season is because in the first season, in contrast to subsequent seasons, Buffy doesn't trust her humanity. Most obviously, this distrust is shown by her trying to tell Willow, Xander, and Giles not to help her in the first two episodes. But there's also another level, which is represented by Cordelia. Which is: she thinks that in order to be herself, she has to deny being the Slayer. Which means that to choose to be human and herself must be inherently selfish, right? If being human and being the Slayer is incompatible, then if you choose to be human, aren't you choosing to let people die? This is why Buffy is constantly trying to do human things like cheerleading and going on dates in season one, and Giles is constantly telling her that she has a sacred duty and can't. He's her consciousness, which is still ruled by tradition, telling her to repress her humanity because it gets in the way.

But what Cordelia and Xander both prove, from different directions, is that her humanity can be trusted after all. Xander may be powerless, but the way his ability to love and care motivates him to help parallels the way Buffy's own emotions do the same thing. Eg, as I'll talk about in the video for "The Harvest", he and Buffy both want to rescue Jesse despite others telling them not to. It's a very direct parallel that shows the value of her having a heart. And this is why "Prophecy Girl" has Xander help Buffy even after she rejects him; it resolves the fear that her human heart is deep down only selfishly motivated. Because he still loves and wants to help her even if he didn't get what he wanted. But Cordelia embodies the fear that to be human is to be selfish much more completely, which is why she's the shadow. And this also gets resolved in "Prophecy Girl." If even Cordelia, this embodiment of human selfishness, can turn out to want to help in Buffy's fight, then Buffy doesn't have to fear her humanity after all.

By contrast, the later seasons have Buffy going in the opposite direction, with fearing she's losing her humanity, and instead it's her non-human half that can't be trusted. Which is why the shadow becomes a Slayer and then a vampire. The progression of things she thinks cannot possibly be part of her becomes steadily more inhuman, as she plumbs scarier and scarier parts of her psyche. Though no matter how scary it gets, it always turns out--Cordelia, Faith, and Spike all included--that her shadow wants to help her save the world.

Anyway, there's obviously a ton more to say about all of this, but that's what I've got for now. Thanks for asking!

#s1 #buffy #cordelia

[coraniaid]

Directors commentary on the chapter titles in Coexist. I always enjoyed them.

Thanks!

Some of the chapter titles were actually part of the very first plans I wrote down for this fic.  I still have an old file on the notes app of my phone, dating back to the autumn of 2020, which summarizes the basic premise of the AU and then gives a list of possible titles for each chapter, mostly playing around with the titles of the corresponding episodes.

They didn't all stick (and some of them were pretty bad), but going back to look at it now I'm surprised how many I kept.  The downside of that is that I'm not always completely sure where I was originally going with them.

Anyway, full post gets a bit long (and also mildly spoiler-ish, I guess, for anyone who cares about that) so:

Unbecoming was always going to be the name of the prologue.  I'm not completely sure why, thinking about it, because the episode Becoming is not the point where the AU diverges, but I assume it made sense to me at the time.

Equally Lily was always going to be named after the character who, this time around, doesn't end up changing her name to Anne.

And the chapter when Buffy meets her new Watcher was always going to be Dead Men's Shoes (as in the method of promotion). 

One thing I sort of wish I'd hit harder when I wrote the scene where Buffy accuses Diana of trying to "step into what's left of Giles' life" (or, you know, into his shoes) was how this scene parallels the big confrontation in the library in Prophecy Girl.  Buffy could almost be saying something here like "I remember the drill.  One [watcher] dies, next one's called.  Will [they] train me, or will they [bring] somebody else?".  But if I went back and tried to rewrite older chapters I'd literally never finish.  

(And if I keep waffling I'll never finish this list.)   

Hope Is Important is sort of a joke, because Scott Hope is even less important in this AU than he is in canon, but it's also not because the idea of hope is important (I mean, in general, but also in this story).  This is the first chapter not to use the original title. I think I changed it because I ended up rewriting most of my first draft of this chapter, and the old name had sort of stuck in my head as the name of the bad version.

Some Kind Of Monster is a play on the title of Beauty and the Beasts, of course, but it was also meant to reference the fact that this was (at the time) by far the longest chapter I'd written: almost ten thousand words!  I wanted to remind myself not to do something like that again, which ... uh.  Didn't work.  (Originally it was called Someone New, I guess because in canon that's who Buffy tells Platt she's dating now.  I still kind of like that, actually.)

Like Going Home was originally called No Place Like Home, and I assume I changed it when I remembered that there's an actual canon episode called that.  I think the new title comes from the Yo La Tengo song "I Feel Like Going Home", though that might not have been a conscious decision.

Regression was always called Regression.  Because the adults ... you know.  What's slightly weird to me is that this feels like a chapter which I changed the title of at the last minute, but apparently not.

No Trouble At All is a direct quote from Lover's Walk (Spike promises Buffy that he'll "be out of your life in a few short hours.  No trouble at all."), though this chapter was originally going to be named after a different (and more Fuffy-relevant) Spike quote from the same episode: Never Friends.  I think I changed it because there's another chapter which had the word 'friends' in it and I didn't want to repeat it.

Acts and Revelations are both books of the New Testament, but also this is a chapter in which Faith is ... well, acting.  And then acts.

The Price was always going to be the episode where Anya arrived (which I know because it was originally to be called Vengeance).  Think I changed it to be a bit closer in form to The Wish, and also because that's just a better summary of what the chapter ended up being about.

I know that Damages was always going to be called that, but I can't remember exactly why.  I think it's meant to be a sort of double pun (to change something might be to amend it or to damage it, and to pay damages is a way to make amends).  Maybe it made more sense in 2020.

As Fast As You Can, on the other hand, I remember was a last minute change: in fact I think it was something I only came up with an hour or two before posting the finished chapter.  (It's from the fairy tale about the gingerbread man, and I don't think there's any deeper meaning to it.)  Well, the original title I'd planned wasn't any better.

Catalysts and Reactions I like, even if they've got nothing to do with the title of the episode they're both based on.  Splitting Helpless into two chapters wasn't part of the original plan, so when I did it I wanted to give the resulting chapters a matching pair of titles.   Once I realized I could push both the “Buffy is preparing for a chemistry test” : “Buffy is going to be tested by the Council” and the “Buffy is thinking about chemistry” : “Buffy is thinking about Faith” metaphors, I decided on chemistry as the subject matter of those parallel titles pretty quickly.

Come Clean is what Buffy tries to do in this chapter (first in regards with her feelings for Faith, then to the cops after Allan Finch's death), but it's also the name of the album on which Curve's Chinese Burn appears, as of course heard in Bad Girls (and then heard many times more on the Season 3 DVD menus).

Trust Issues was originally called Truth (as in the gameshow/town Truth or Consequences).  This is another case where I wrote quite a lot of the chapter, decided it wasn't working, and threw the original title out along with everything else I'd written. 

Keep Your Friends Close ... and your Enemies closer, although I suppose this doesn't have much to do with the plot of that episode.  This was another original chapter title from autumn 2020, and I'm not sure exactly what the original plan for it was.  Of course, Enemies is an episode that’s hard to directly repurpose in an AU without Angel.

It doesn't feel like I have to point out that, like The Zeppo, But Don’t Let That Fool You… is a Marx brothers reference (although I guess I just did).  This is another chapter title that appears in my original notes, though in those notes that episode still appeared in the proper episode order.

Undertow - as I said in another answer, this is ultimately a convoluted reference to 'Full of Grace'.  But it's also because this chapter is my take on Restless-but-with-Faith, and I couldn't quite bring myself to call it something like Faithless.  Another chapter that changed title (and premise) a few times during the planning stages.

Finally (for now), Louder and Louder was another case where I picked the final chapter very shortly before posting something.  Obviously it (sort of?) works as a reference to the increasingly loud impressions Faith is telepathically picking up as she takes Buffy's place in Earshot. But I think it's mostly a reference to the fact that I was listening to Florence + the Machine's Drumming Song at around the time I decided I had to settle on a title.  

Actually went through quite a lot of different names for this one.  I mean, it's a chapter in which Faith has to deal with (supernaturally generated) intrusive thoughts: there should be something there.  But I couldn't figure it out.  I think this is probably the only chapter I reserve the right to rename at some point.

Thanks for the ask!

#btvs #ask games #my writing