30 days of Buffy, Day #21

[itsnotmymind]

Day #01: Favourite season
Day #02: Favourite episode
Day #03: Favourite song used in an episode
Day #04: Favourite female character
Day #05: Least favourite female character
Day #06: Favourite male character
Day #07: Least favourite male character
Day #08: Favourite friendship
Day #09: Favourite romance
Day #10: Least favourite season
Day #11: Least favourite romance
Day #12: Least favourite episode
Day #13: Favourite potential slayer
Day #14: Favourite female villain
Day #15: Favourite male villain
Day #16: Episode you like that everyone else hates - Favourite piece of monologue
Day #17: Character you relate to the most
Day #18: Character who didn’t get enough screen time
Day #19: Character you like that everyone else hates
Day #20: Best Spike-centric episode
Day #21: Best Willow-centric episode
Day #22: Best Xander-centric episode
Day #23: Two characters you wanted to get together that never did
Day #24: Favourite example of 90s special effects
Day #25: Favourite Buffyverse saying
Day #26: Favourite Scooby moment
Day #27: Cutest moment
Day #28: Character you love to hate
Day #29: Episode you hate that everyone else loves
Day #30: What you think made Buffy so great


Day #21: Best Willow-centric episode
"New Moon Rising", easily. It depicts a difficult situation where nobody has done anything wrong, and everyone is sympathetic. It left me feeling that Willow had absolutely made the right choice, despite the fact that it went against my shipping interests. And, as someone online once pointed out, it's about the only time that Willow doesn't try to fix things with magic when faced with a dilemma like this.

Comments

[kikimay]

This episode doesn't do too much to me, but man how I love the ending. The "Istanbul speech" with Oz is so touching and beautiful (Exes loving each other <3) And the final scene with Tara, when Willow tells her that she's her choice. Marti Noxon does magics when it comes to mature themes.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

And the final scene with Tara, when Willow tells her that she's her choice. Marti Noxon does magics when it comes to mature themes.

Oh absolutely on both counts! If I'd been watching the show back in the day as a younger lesbian I might have been more pissy about the FtB but watching it as a 40-something, keeping in mind the restrictions and censorship of the time, I found it charming. Hell, it's charming anyway - one of the most romantic moments in the entire series. Tara's "Oh, yes" before she blows out the candle? I'm in tears.

And Marti is a superb writer of dialogue - the morning after scene in Wrecked is one of my favorite examples. She really doesn't get enough credit for that. I don't think Joss, for all the praise he gets, has the same touch in that department. He's good with the big and showy, not so good with the small and intimate (with exceptions of course.)

I actually saw someone at the AV Club threads for btvs claim that compared to her relationship to Oz, Willow and Tara had a "chaste" relationship in S4. I'm sorry? WTH did they think they did after Tara blew out the candle, play checkers in the dark? How anyone can watch NMR and WAY and call their relationship "chaste" - does not get subtext and symbolism.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I actually saw someone at the AV Club threads for btvs claim that compared to her relationship to Oz, Willow and Tara had a "chaste" relationship in S4. I'm sorry? WTH did they think they did after Tara blew out the candle, play checkers in the dark? How anyone can watch NMR and WAY and call their relationship "chaste" - does not get subtext and symbolism.

That's an interesting interpretation. I guess because the sex with Oz was more explicit and less implied, but that still seems a strange way of looking at it. As you say, the subtext is pretty clear.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Then again I was in a women's film studies workshop in college watching a key scene from Fried Green Tomatoes (where Izzy repeats a key passage from the book of Ruth to her beloved Ruthie, and they are staring longingly into each other's eyes) and several mature, extremely intelligent (heterosexual) women DID. NOT. GET IT. At all. They thought it was just a scene about "friendship". So maybe one has to be really hip to the cues?

But, still...some people just are not paying attention, is all I can figure. W/T are explicitly paralled with Buffy/Riley that entire season. (I rather prefer Tara as Willow's partner anyway. Oz was cute but there was something of a brother/sister vibe to the pairing IMO.)

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

It has a great ending.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Nifty choice - I was expecting dopplegangerland because that's what EVERYONE says. (I think it's a good episode but I don't understand the massive amounts of love for it.)

And, as someone online once pointed out, it's about the only time that Willow doesn't try to fix things with magic when faced with a dilemma like this.

At least from S4 onward - and I don't think I was even aware of it. Nice catch by said someone.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Nifty choice - I was expecting dopplegangerland because that's what EVERYONE says. (I think it's a good episode but I don't understand the massive amounts of love for it.)

I liked "Dopplegangerland", but I love "New Moon Rising".

At least from S4 onward

She also tries to use magic to fix her feelings for Xander in S3, although she doesn't try to use magic to get Oz after he finds out.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten about her using magic in S3, although I remember Xander using magic in BBB in S2. which reminds me that the way things went re: Dark Willow seem foreshadowed and inevitable from the beginning (once you've seen the whole series) but really weren't; Joss had been undecided if he wanted Xander or Willow to "turn gay", and Xander could have easily have been the one to turn "dark" - I'd say he has a much darker (and sometimes nastier) streak to his personality than Willow; but he's also far less repressed about it than she is.

Of course I haven't rewatched any of S3 since the first watch, except for Dirty Girls, bits of Graduation Day, Earshot and The Wish. (Which I absolutely adore.)