[ SECRET POST #4092 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4092 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #586.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

05. https://i.imgur.com/6W402Yu.png

[(Anonymous)]

Conflict

[(Anonymous)]

OP, did you watch Buffy while it was airing, or after? I watched after, so I knew Dawn was coming, but I always wondered if people watching at the time weren't just so thrown off by her, they never got used to the character. Which I can completely understand, to be honest, even if I never minded her myself. (Although even then, I do kind of mind that it seems to make everything pre-season five almost an AU. I think they should have just dropped the whole Key storyline and made Dawn... I don't know, a long lost sibling or something.)

I also wonder if there's some projection. As the younger, I actually related 100% to Dawn. Your big sister being a mixture of cool older companion and parent? Yup. Being friends with your sister's friends? Yup. But if you're an older sibling, maybe Don seems entitled and annoying?

[(Anonymous)]

But if you're an older sibling, maybe Don seems entitled and annoying?

I think the problem is that Dawn seems annoying and entitled from Buffy's perspective as the older sister, and the show mostly relies on you identifying with and agreeing with Buffy. So it's not just that older siblings find her entitled; it ends up being that most people who watch the show find her that way because that's how she looks to Buffy.

IMO, obviously. But I think it's a pretty standard thing in shows - people often side with viewpoint characters even when their feelings are somewhat unreasonable.

[(Anonymous)]

I never had much of a problem with Dawn, but her introduction was pretty sudden and confusing, even if there had been foreshadowing shortly beforehand (was it the finale of the previous season? The one with the guy who had cheese on his head.) You could argue she was a bit like a Poochie or Cousin Oliver and people were just reacting to having a new main character introduced all of a sudden for no particular reason.

I had only started watching Buffy the season she started college, having only seen a few episodes here and there before that, and at first I thought Dawn must have always existed and had been living with their dad and I had just missed any mention of her and this was just the first time she actually appeared on-screen. I slowly figured out from the show and what other fans were saying that no, she had not existed before (I felt embarrassed by my lack of Buffy knowledge to straight-up ask).

What the other person said about seeing her from Buffy's perspective is also a large part of it.

[(Anonymous)]

You will appreciate this twenty years from now.

[(Anonymous)]

I identified very strongly with Buffy even though I was closer to Dawn's age. Dawn got to be a teenager a lot more than Buffy did. She had a bigger support network of adults who wanted to protect her. Her only job for most of her time on the show is to go to school and be normal.

That wasn't relatable to me. I was the only child with the dead mother and the absent father. I was the one having a breakdown over the bills and working soulless jobs. Fuck I'm so glad I never had a little sister. I would have probably been a lot less nice about her whiny brat moments than Buffy was.

[(Anonymous)]

The younger viewers already identified with Buffy. That's the thing you don't generally need a character for any particular age of fan because they'll be identifying with the main character. Not that Dawn was necessarily that, in comparison to a character like Short Round in Indiana Jones. IMO, the hate was more about the way her character was brought in - not only altering the dynamic of the show, but the way she more or less retconned in.

[tabaqui]

Yeah, I'm pretty much with you. I didn't relate to anybody on the show, really (I came to 'Buffy' when I was over 30 years old), but Dawn never bothered me, other than the obvious, plot-driven stupidity of any other show.

I rather loved how they brought her in and how Buffy did the spell, and the house kept shifting from pre-Dawn to post-Dawn. It was creepy and strange and very effective.

There's an excellent fic by nwhepcat about Dawn, her effect on the Scoobies, and Oz, in particular. One of my very favorite Dawn-centric fics.
https://archiveofourown.org/series/210959

[(Anonymous)]

Because she was really nothing but a plot device in S5. It's similar to Clara hate in Doctor Who S7.

[(Anonymous)]

as far as i could tell, most of the younger female viewers were desperate to pretend they had nothing in common with her at all - "we're not like that" etc

me? i have a younger sister who was EXACTLY like dawn at that point so i got her absolutely fine :)

[(Anonymous)]

Do people really relate a lot to characters that are very similar to them but otherwise not particularly cool or competent? Especially on a show like this... you'd be a kid watching all these older, superpowered characters kicking ass, and then there's this one who is your age but can't do much and must be protected all the time.

[(Anonymous)]

Because she was always screeching and whining. In stories, it's one of the fastest ways to make people hate a character. It's why there's a fairly formulaic rule for protagonists that they're proactive about their goals, and don't just throw themselves on their bed whining about some trivial thing while others are saving the world.

[nightscale]

She never bothered me much either tbh, sure sometimes she annoyed me but so did every character at some-point because they all did a lot of stupid shit. She was certainly no worse.

[(Anonymous)]

I never hated her but her introduction certainly changed the show. I'm not sure who exactly you think would relate to her but all the viewers I knew were in their early 20s by that point, so definitely not someone any of us would relate to. More a plot device viewers had to endure long after it served its purpose.

[(Anonymous)]

I've always LOVED Dawnie. She was just such a good little sister character.

She's Scrappy Doo.

[(Anonymous)]

Most people don't like Scrappy, the suddenly introduced younger character whose story takes away screen time from the original characters and their storylines. Plus, the writers often think they are being cute when they are being irritating.

is this secret about me

[(Anonymous)]

because i hated her with a PASSION. i think i made a secret about it too.

(and to debunk the myth, i watched buffy last year!)

she was INCREDIBLY self-centered("oh you guys only want to break the demon's curse because you don't want to hang out with me :(") and useless. her "realistic" teenager traits (oh no, my sister is super special and i want to be super special too) just didn't work in the context of the show (for me). people are dying. your sister and friends could be dying. your mother already died. get some fucking perspective, girl.

but even then, maybe all of that could have worked, but the actress was absolutely horrible and clearly only chosen for her pretty face. incredibly wooden and emotionless, no depth. to make such a character likeable would have taken a lot more than squealing in fear every now and then.

[sabotabby]

I thought she was kind of a clever addition; she was a brat, but I really liked what they did with her introduction.

[(Anonymous)]

I think a lot of Dawn hate can come down to how she was introduced, at least for me (though I'd say for me it's more 'dislike' than 'hate). Even though the show explained it, it was just so....bad Mary Sue fanfic-ish. New girl shows up, related to major character, everyone already loves her and cares about her except the audience who did not get magic monk memories and have never seen her before. And we're just supposed to accept that the rest of the cast's relationships with her make sense because magic memories, which are never corrected so Dawn the character never has to do anything to 'earn' the way the other characters treat her. For me, that ruined the character. The entire final arc of S5 was about Buffy sacrificing everything to save the sister she loved but to me the show never gave me a reason to feel that this was sensible because all this love was built on false memories. And I've had people argue with me that 'they were real to Buffy' which is fine if you're okay with that but for me personally I could never get past it, that this super important relationship was entirely built on a known falsehood and events that never happened, but that we the audience like the characters were just supposed to act as if Dawn had been there all along. She basically got an easy express pass to every important relationship she had in the series rather than having to earn it via characterization and actual interaction, and I could never fully accept her because of it.

[supermanda]

Eugh, Dawn... I refuse to acknowledge her as canon for some reason. My brain just won't allow it. I don't even think the actress and SMG had any chemistry tbh

Anyway, thanks for reminding me that I need to rewatch this!

[(Anonymous)]

Dawn's very existence made Buffy's life so much suckier, so I resented the character for that.

[(Anonymous)]

personally speaking my hate for her character was carried over from hating Harriet the Spy and her nosy ass

[(Anonymous)]

Season 5 was the start of the “How Much Can We Make Buffy’s Life Suck?” show, and Dawn is the ambassador/mascot of that show.

[(Anonymous)]

I think I remember a scene where Buffy and Dawn had a disagreement, and even though Buffy was the one struggling with the whole, you know, being a slayer thing and trying to keep everyone around her safe, and she was IMO the "right" one in this argument, all of her pals took Dawn's side and were against Buffy because how dare she not try and cater to this whiny and annoying teenager?

I could be remembering it wrong because I blocked the majority of Dawn's episodes from my brain, but I just remember seeing Buffy being all moody while the rest of the gang was buddy-buddy with Dawn, and Buffy was questioning whether or not they'd be better off without her or something like that.

Even if I am remembering wrong though, fuck Dawn and her ungrateful ass. I wasn't even that big a fan of Buffy as a character, but seeing how Dawn treated her filled me with a burning rage.