rapacityinblue: writer-at-the-table:willowrosenboob:BTVS 3.05
I don’t even get why you care ab

rapacityinblue:

writer-at-the-table:

willowrosenboob:

BTVS 3.05
I don’t even get why you care about Homecoming when you’re doing stuff like this.

#buffy sounds like being homecoming queen is something every girl is entitled to but maybe this just exposes her privilege#as a skinny pretty cis white girl#she thinks the whole world owes her 

It’s not that unreasonable for someone in Buffy’s position to want some sort of tangible proof that she is valued for more than her ability to kill and die. To be Chosen to do something she can talk about publicly, and that she asked for as opposed to had thrust upon her against her will.

I actually really like this moment in parallel with the Class Protector scene in The Prom, where she finally does get her recognition. It’s a play on the ‘classic high school’ recognition she’s longing for here but incorporates her identity/role as the Slayer, which by that point in season 3 she’s come more to terms with/

And while it is her Slaying that she’s being recognized for in The Prom, it’s the ‘saving people’ rather than the ‘killing’ or ‘dying’ that’s highlighted, which is a big thing for Buffy.

Also, I can’t remember, and I’m not looking it up right now, but isn’t it canon that Buffy has been told numerous times that being the Slayer means that she’ll die young?

I seem to remember a quote about expiration dates and cheetohs.

And for someone who was Chosen to die young saving a world that won’t ever know about her, without any input on her part, to want or think she’s owed a small moment of joy in a life that will (as far as she knows) probably end before she hits her mid twenties doesn’t seem that entitled or selfish to me.

It just seems sad.

I can’t believe I’m here in 2020 for the BtVS discourse but

I’d also add that before she was the slayer, Buffy was exactly the sort of girl everyone assumed would be homecoming queen: popular, pretty, vapid. Buffy was Cordelia, but bigger and better, because she lived in the big city. Not only that, but she was a legacy homecoming queen: Joyce and Hank met at the homecoming dance. Buffy ended all of that when she became the slayer and burned down her high school gym. She lost her popularity, her friends, her home — the entire life she thought she’d have.

And she’s allowed to grieve that. Even if it’s inconsequential and silly compared to being the chosen one, she’s allowed to resent that the life she wanted was taken away from her. Being the homecoming queen is a small thing, but controlling your life and making choices that fulfill you is a really big thing. Buffy doesn’t get that as the slayer. That’s what this scene (and quite honestly the first 5 seasons) is about.

No but like I’m still thinking about this so I’m back. The thing that made early Buffy great and the reason joss whedon was unironically hailed as a feminist in the 90s because this really encapsulates what Buffy at its best was: a show about silly things like vampires and high school and teenage girls and nerds, but also (when you got past the weird themes punishing women for having sex) a show about how women aren’t allowed to be fully developed people. I mean that in the sense that they don’t control their life or their choices but often have a destiny predetermined or dictated to them by earlier generations of men.

And I know that sounds basic and absurd on tumblr in 2020, but you just really have to believe us old fogies when we tell you the gender and sexuality politics of the 90s were just unthinkably bad. I could go into 50 year cycles and 20 year cycles and post war nostalgia but just… this really was radical to see on tv in 1999/2000. At a time when the 80s powersuited business woman was still sitcom gold and the biggest political question was would Hillary Clinton stand by her man, you had a young blond girl with a literal unbreakable destiny and a limited future on TV every Tuesday and she was *salty* about it. God knows it wasn’t perfect but it was relevant.