Fannish Topic Meme Part 2: Is Dawn Summers the Worst? (Public Post)
Requested by
rogueslayer452 and
ragnorak_08
Click the cut before dawn Dawn. ;)
Ahh, Dawn. Dawn Dawn Dawn.
The short answer is that no, I don't think Dawn is the worst. But I can see where her execution would bother many fans - especially those who'd seen the show from the beginning. I'm a potential (heh) odd one out as I saw the show years after its run, and was fully spoiled for Dawn's appearance. Yet I've also heard from fans who were also spoiled that they didn't like Dawn either, and some fans who watched from the beginning loved her.
When I've spoken about original characters in fanfiction, one of my golden rules has been this: Your OC can't interfere with the canon universe, because then you lose readers immediately. Meaning that if you give Faith an older brother who, it turns out, works for Wolfram and Hart, or ends up being one of Angel Investigation's cases, fine. If you write a backstory fanfic about Wesley's time training to be a Watcher, OCs will be necessary to the story. But if you write an OC who is suddenly important to everyone important in canon, who replaces established roles and dynamics, or who just sticks out like a sore thumb... readers are going to be disenchanted. There's a similar problem with Cousin Olivers in canon series, where we just pretend that the Cousin Oliver was there the whole time. But he wasn't. He could not have been. Compare that to minor characters who a work may have always alluded to here and there, but never shown until an episode revolving around that character. The canon characters, apart from maybe one or two, have no idea who Olly is. We meet them with everyone else, and we're intrigued to meet them, because we've gotten nuggets of their existence here and there.
Dawn is a bit of a hybrid between a Cousin Oliver and an OC at first glance, and even with the explanation we're given, it can be easy for her to fall into that space. She's the OC who doesn't actually fit in; she's the character who everyone treats like an old friend when we, the audience, know she's a stranger. It also creates a divide between what the characters now interpret to have happened between seasons one and five, and what we do, as the appearance of Dawn would undoubtedly mean that at least some things went down differently. (Yet in some cases, that might be an explanation more than a quandary. I'm getting to that, don't worry.)
The other issue is that Dawn acts more teenagerish than the Scoobies did. We meet the Scoobies when they're in their second semester of 10th grade, so 15/16. Dawn is 14, and... acts it. Because for all Original Buffy portrayed high school and the teen experience, in a lot of ways the characters acted older than they really were. Dawn has to be babysat when Joyce was out of town every other episode. Joyce is written as not even noticing that Buffy's out slaying every night, yet if Dawn were out slaying every night, I get the impression that Buffy and Joyce would notice. On the other hand, it could be the difference between raising an older/younger child, and it might also be that once Joyce realized there were freaking vampires in Sunnydale, her approach to parenting changed. If she couldn't stop her oldest from Slaying, she sure as hell was going to make sure someone protected her youngest. In any case, I think that Dawn appearing younger than the Scoobies appeared makes her seem less tolerable. Which I don't think is entirely fair, because Dawn IS still a teenage girl.
Dawn definitely has flaws, but I think they're understandable. I think it makes sense that after losing so many people in her life, she starts stealing. It's wrong, certainly, yet the poor girl has been through more hell than almost all of the Scoobies except for Buffy went through at her age. And even Buffy got Angel back. Dawn lost both parents (for all intents and purposes), then Buffy, then Buffy "came back wrong," Willow was having her issues (love or hate that plot), Tara was around less because she and Willow broke up... yes, Dawn has her moments, especially in season six. But I think all of the Scoobies have their moments, and they especially had them as kids.
I also think that there's an interesting side to Dawn's appearance on the show. In season six, we learn that apparently, Buffy was institutionalized after she told her parents about vampires. Except Joyce acts like Buffy was a "troublemaker" back in Los Angeles, not a mentally ill teenager who'd been hospitalized. Furthermore, her reaction to Buffy being a slayer isn't "not vampires again," it's total shock. Arguably Joss simply Joss'd his own universe, but I wonder if there wasn't a different version of events once Dawn came into the picture, via the monks. Maybe Buffy never was institutionalized; maybe in the altered reality, the one where Joyce was a much more cautious parent, Hank and Joyce realized Buffy was disappearing every night much faster. Maybe Dawn even told them that she'd gone off when she was supposed to be watching her. Maybe according to the false memories, Buffy had to tell them everything, and they decided she was very sick.
The dark part of this theory is that it means Buffy's traumatic memory is false, too. Still, I think that it could explain that inconsistency, and I have to wonder what else the Scoobies remember differently. Dawn brings about a lot of questions.
At most, I do think that she could have been introduced a little differently. I'm not sure Dawn really needed to be a kid sister to Xander and Willow, an annoying niece-esque figure to Giles. Also, I'm not sure why the monks couldn't have just given Buffy the actual key and said "don't let this get to Glory, or the whole world will be destroyed." Seems like it would've been a lot easier. But I also think that Dawn is a compelling character in her right, and far from the worst.
rogueslayer452 and
ragnorak_08
Click the cut before dawn Dawn. ;)
Ahh, Dawn. Dawn Dawn Dawn.
The short answer is that no, I don't think Dawn is the worst. But I can see where her execution would bother many fans - especially those who'd seen the show from the beginning. I'm a potential (heh) odd one out as I saw the show years after its run, and was fully spoiled for Dawn's appearance. Yet I've also heard from fans who were also spoiled that they didn't like Dawn either, and some fans who watched from the beginning loved her.
When I've spoken about original characters in fanfiction, one of my golden rules has been this: Your OC can't interfere with the canon universe, because then you lose readers immediately. Meaning that if you give Faith an older brother who, it turns out, works for Wolfram and Hart, or ends up being one of Angel Investigation's cases, fine. If you write a backstory fanfic about Wesley's time training to be a Watcher, OCs will be necessary to the story. But if you write an OC who is suddenly important to everyone important in canon, who replaces established roles and dynamics, or who just sticks out like a sore thumb... readers are going to be disenchanted. There's a similar problem with Cousin Olivers in canon series, where we just pretend that the Cousin Oliver was there the whole time. But he wasn't. He could not have been. Compare that to minor characters who a work may have always alluded to here and there, but never shown until an episode revolving around that character. The canon characters, apart from maybe one or two, have no idea who Olly is. We meet them with everyone else, and we're intrigued to meet them, because we've gotten nuggets of their existence here and there.
Dawn is a bit of a hybrid between a Cousin Oliver and an OC at first glance, and even with the explanation we're given, it can be easy for her to fall into that space. She's the OC who doesn't actually fit in; she's the character who everyone treats like an old friend when we, the audience, know she's a stranger. It also creates a divide between what the characters now interpret to have happened between seasons one and five, and what we do, as the appearance of Dawn would undoubtedly mean that at least some things went down differently. (Yet in some cases, that might be an explanation more than a quandary. I'm getting to that, don't worry.)
The other issue is that Dawn acts more teenagerish than the Scoobies did. We meet the Scoobies when they're in their second semester of 10th grade, so 15/16. Dawn is 14, and... acts it. Because for all Original Buffy portrayed high school and the teen experience, in a lot of ways the characters acted older than they really were. Dawn has to be babysat when Joyce was out of town every other episode. Joyce is written as not even noticing that Buffy's out slaying every night, yet if Dawn were out slaying every night, I get the impression that Buffy and Joyce would notice. On the other hand, it could be the difference between raising an older/younger child, and it might also be that once Joyce realized there were freaking vampires in Sunnydale, her approach to parenting changed. If she couldn't stop her oldest from Slaying, she sure as hell was going to make sure someone protected her youngest. In any case, I think that Dawn appearing younger than the Scoobies appeared makes her seem less tolerable. Which I don't think is entirely fair, because Dawn IS still a teenage girl.
Dawn definitely has flaws, but I think they're understandable. I think it makes sense that after losing so many people in her life, she starts stealing. It's wrong, certainly, yet the poor girl has been through more hell than almost all of the Scoobies except for Buffy went through at her age. And even Buffy got Angel back. Dawn lost both parents (for all intents and purposes), then Buffy, then Buffy "came back wrong," Willow was having her issues (love or hate that plot), Tara was around less because she and Willow broke up... yes, Dawn has her moments, especially in season six. But I think all of the Scoobies have their moments, and they especially had them as kids.
I also think that there's an interesting side to Dawn's appearance on the show. In season six, we learn that apparently, Buffy was institutionalized after she told her parents about vampires. Except Joyce acts like Buffy was a "troublemaker" back in Los Angeles, not a mentally ill teenager who'd been hospitalized. Furthermore, her reaction to Buffy being a slayer isn't "not vampires again," it's total shock. Arguably Joss simply Joss'd his own universe, but I wonder if there wasn't a different version of events once Dawn came into the picture, via the monks. Maybe Buffy never was institutionalized; maybe in the altered reality, the one where Joyce was a much more cautious parent, Hank and Joyce realized Buffy was disappearing every night much faster. Maybe Dawn even told them that she'd gone off when she was supposed to be watching her. Maybe according to the false memories, Buffy had to tell them everything, and they decided she was very sick.
The dark part of this theory is that it means Buffy's traumatic memory is false, too. Still, I think that it could explain that inconsistency, and I have to wonder what else the Scoobies remember differently. Dawn brings about a lot of questions.
At most, I do think that she could have been introduced a little differently. I'm not sure Dawn really needed to be a kid sister to Xander and Willow, an annoying niece-esque figure to Giles. Also, I'm not sure why the monks couldn't have just given Buffy the actual key and said "don't let this get to Glory, or the whole world will be destroyed." Seems like it would've been a lot easier. But I also think that Dawn is a compelling character in her right, and far from the worst.