Thursday, January 19, 2017

Dear Buffy,

Dear Buffy,

I recently was thinking about some of Willow's behavior in season six. She grows to become so controlling of Tara, messing with her mind, doing intense memory spells that backfired and almost killed the entire group, fighting when Tara was just trying to be helpful and supportive... I personally have been in relationships with controlling, manipulative people, (also see Spike and Buffy before he got his soul) and so many of my friends have as well. It's so scary because Willow was introduced as such a sweet, awkward, funny, gentle, nerd. (Honestly, she was much more relateable to teenage Babs than you were, Buffy.) How did Willow, who wore red cordoray overalls and baked treats for her teachers, grow into becoming an abusive partner? The short answer is that she became addicted to magic, which is an allegory for drugs. It scares me because if drugs could do that to Will, who's to say that my eating disorder hasn't in the past and won't in the future morph me into someone who can hurt the one they love? I guess in order to keep the people we care about safe, me and Willow both have to put in consistent work on our mental health. We have to take care of ourselves so that we don't hurt or viciously flay anyone. I'm gonna work on my mental health a lot this year.

love you, B,
Babs

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Dear Buffy

Hey B,

It's early afternoon on New Year's Day, and right now I'm just staring at my computer the way you started at the tv on the day after you discovered beer in "Beer Bad." You touched the tv and you were like "I like tv, all the tiny people..."

Anyway, I hope this year is better than the previous. 2015 was so bad, and when it was over I was so happy because I thought nothing could have been worse than the year I was assaulted, cut out of a tv show I was in, and hit by a car. And then came 2016, and it was so rough and lonely. ("There's that word again, what you are, how you'll die: alone")

But I am totally going to be proactive girl this year. If I'm lonely, I'm going to reach out to friends. If I'm clinically depressed and suicidal, I'm gonna get on meds. (Even though when I'm depressed the idea of figuring out health insurance seems like fighting a horde of uber vamps.) If people don't think I'm funny, I'll get funnier. If the world is a horrible place and everything I'm worried about in the news comes to fruition, maybe I'll fly to the top of a mountain, erect a satanic temple, and destroy the world. We can dream.

Speaking of which, what's going on in the comics right now is a little on the nose and they've done a registration act plot a bunch of times in X-Men, but I forgive you because you're Buffy.

Keep slaying,
The hardest thing to do in this world is to live in it,
Babs