Dear Flist, I need your help. Sincerely, me

[kwritten]

This poll is research for my Thesis on fandom. Please, please, please share and tell your friends.

Comments

[pocochina]

I love Dawn. I was tempted to write that as "I love Dawn *but* have some thoughts about x usual criticism," but I think that was kind of inappropriate.

Because...yes, she's kind of annoying from time to time? She's the little sister, THAT'S HER JOB. I do like Dawn for her own sake, but also, she allowed me to get a lot more out of the show as a whole, because I think Dawn was a part of why I related to Buffy much more easily in the later seasons.

Particularly in S5, she's frequently mystifying, in bouncing around from being very precocious to uncomfortably childish. But like. She's fifteen. Buffy, Xander, and Willow were not any less teenaged in S1, they were just being compared to other teens through their own perspective, rather than being surrounded by adults. Which, I feel like I'm verging into inelegantly telling you your business on perspective and narrative construction? so I'll just say that I love how she works as this benchmark for the coming-of-age narrative.

But I do think a part of why I enjoyed that so much was that I watched the series in sequence, within a couple of months, and I generally think that a lot of stuff fandom is weird about is better on DVD. I didn't have to wait for days or weeks between episodes to figure out what her issues were. I hadn't had years to forget that the main characters were teenagers when they were teenagers? and it probably didn't hurt that I'd been out of high school for a few years myself as I was watching, so I had at least a little distance from the more cringeworthy stuff.

She just...ugh, what a nightmare. To be at the eye of the Sunnydale maelstrom. To find out that instead of at least getting the super-power to be able to fight back, your special thing is to be sacrificed and objectified. And that she not only survives that, but thrives, and turns herself into little Watcher Junior, at least as adaptable and useful as half of Quinten's lackeys. She's extraordinary. ♥

[kwritten]

To be at the eye of the Sunnydale maelstrom. To find out that instead of at least getting the super-power to be able to fight back, your special thing is to be sacrificed and objectified. And that she not only survives that, but thrives, and turns herself into little Watcher Junior, at least as adaptable and useful as half of Quinten's lackeys. She's extraordinary.

THIS. This is potentially my favorite description of her narrative I've ever come across.

Thank you so much for participating and commenting.

And yes - I think the DVDs rather than watching live significantly change the viewing experience.