[ 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

[(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.

[(Anonymous)]

But...

from the point of view of the person watching the show, what is actually different about the relationship between Dawn and Buffy, and a preexisting relationship between two characters in the first episode of a show? Xander and Willow's childhood friendship isn't any more earned or real than Dawn and Buffy's relationship, when you think about it.

[(Anonymous)]

The difference is that one is backstory and the other is a major plot development. They’re not comparable at all. It would be like if halfway through the second Lord of the Rings movie, Legolas’s kid brother Billy was suddenly a part of the fellowship and everyone kept talking to each other about how great it was that Billy’s always been around for everyone. Meanwhile, Billy spends most of his time summoning Balrogs and getting kidnapped by trolls.

[(Anonymous)]

The difference is probably that as viewers we understand that not every series can begin with total strangers earning each other's trust, so when we start a new series, the characters may have established roles and relationships with other characters. We had no investment in any other dynamic and no reason to doubt their friendship, so it was easy to accept Willow and Xander as childhood friends.

Dawn, on the other hand, was introduced in season five, far past the point where people began expecting new character relationships to take a little more work. Plus it was an actual plot point (and a point of insecurity for Dawn) that she wasn't real and neither was her relationship with Buffy--that Buffy loved her only because the monks forced her to.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, this is it right here. Buffy suddenly *loved* Dawn and would do anything for her (including die), even though Dawn was annoying and bratty and self-centered (as all teenagers are).

Now, the thing is: little babies capture your heart--the biological imperative (and hormones and their big baby eyes and neoteny!) makes you love them, and by the time they get to be bratty teenagers you put up with them and refrain from stuffing a pillow over their heads in the middle of the night, but Dawn never earned that familial affection, she's a magical object.

So she gets shoehorned into the family and the Scoobies and she never does do anything to earn their love because she really is a self-centered teenager--the writers don't try to redeem her at all. And Buffy is going through a really crappy time, anyway, and then she saves the world, again, and sacrifices herself for Dawn, and why? Dawn didn't earn it. She's not really her sister.

Ugh.