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kikimay asked for my Top 5 Buffyverse women!Buffy Summers: For the ways she both resists and embraces her calling. For her kindness. For her determination. Because I love her sweet, silly early season self and her relatively hard, battle-worn late season self. Because she loves cheesy puns and figure skating and has a stuffed pig named Mr Gordo. Because the mission matters to her. Because she gets a visceral joy from slaying, and she knows that if she wasn't the Slayer, she'd lose an essential part of herself. Because she loves as deeply and brightly as the First Slayer tells her she does, and she expresses that love most fully not to a boyfriend, but to her sister.
Because her lot fucking sucks, and when she realises she can change it, can share her power and responsibility, she does.
Willow Rosenberg: I don't admire Willow the way I do Buffy, but I feel a lot of affection and sympathy for her and am in awe of the quality of her character arc over the show's seven seasons. Willow is intelligent, hard-working, ambitious and arrogant. She's insecure and in need of approval, and unlike Buffy and Tara, she doesn't have a super strong internal moral compass. She wants to fight the good fight alongside her friends, but she also wants to be important. She doesn't want to be wrong about anything ever, because if she isn't perfect then who will ever love her? If her friends don't need her, why would they want her around? She's at once complex and multifaceted yet very consistent. Sometimes she makes me angry, sometimes she makes me sick, but she is so very human and beautifully written and performed.
Cordelia Chase: it's possible I have a soft spot for pretty girls with hidden depths. She makes me laugh, she plays off other characters in a group incredibly well, and I love her transformation from selfish oblivious rich girl to a member of the team in Angel.
Tara MacLay: she brings a strength and emotional maturity to the Scoobies that no one else on either show possesses, with the interesting possible exception of Oz. The support she gives Buffy from "The Body" to "Older and Far Away" is wonderful and I love her so much for it. You deserved better, Tara.
Anya Jenkins: this last one was tough because I also love Dawn. Which matters more, my involuntary empathy for Dawn and admiration for how she grows in later seasons, or how much Anya makes me laugh? The episode "Selfless" was the eventual tiebreaker. Hands down my favorite character study episode -- when the character being studied isn't Buffy anyway.
Honorary mention (in addition to the one for Dawn) for Faith Lehane. She's a fantastic character, though funnily enough my favorite incarnation of her is on AtS S4/BtVS S7, when she's all emotionally mature and repenty. And when she arguably gets the least narrative attention.
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on 8/12/14 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
on 8/12/14 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
on 8/12/14 02:49 pm (UTC)(I love Dawn an enormous amount, partially because I was that annoying kid sister myself, and partially because I love how she embraces what it means to be the Zeppo so much more comfortably than Xander does.)
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on 14/12/14 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
on 8/12/14 06:10 pm (UTC)Also, yes, Tara, Anya! ♥
And Faith! I totally agree, her best arc is her redemption arc. *nods*
/And when she arguably gets the least narrative attention./ - Mmm, I wonder if there's a moral lesson there, like if you do bad stuff you get all the attention but doing good stuff is (supposed to be) its own reward...
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on 14/12/14 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
on 8/12/14 09:21 pm (UTC)Now you're making me want to rewatch the show :P
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on 14/12/14 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
on 9/12/14 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
on 14/12/14 05:11 am (UTC)