fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6632 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6632 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 56 secrets from Secret Submission Post #948.
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12. https://i.imgur.com/PgSKWCn.jpeg

Eh. If my best friend did the things Willow did, I’d cut them out of my life. They can certainly move on from it and be a better person but it’s also reasonable for those that knew them to not want anything to do with them again. For me as a viewer, about the only good thing about keeping Willow around was seeing how no one fully trusted her ever again. Because that’s real life.

Yeah. She was a murderer and a rapist.

You don't keep people like that in your life.

No, wait, that is Spike. Willow was..., shit, she was a murderer and a rapist too. Only not a soulless monster at the time.

She did work to make up for the bad things Dark Willow did. She did not work to fix the character flaws that made Dark Willow possible. To be fair, Joss didn't see most of those things as bad.

I really can’t remember how I felt at the time about Willow’s redemption from going Dark Willow.

I wonder if it was just such a big thing that I found it hard to hold on to.

Because I do remember feeling uncomfortable before that, in her relationship with Tara. Not stuff they couldn’t have gotten past, but it felt like she was forgiven very quickly without changing her underlying attitude towards other people’s autonomy.

Because she was pretending nothing she did was bad for so long, or actively believing it was good (mind-fucking Tara, for instance), and so many fans just stanned the hell out of her for so long.... I was over Willow by the end of season 1 and never warmed up to her. I don't care that she killed whathisname for killing Tara; I care that she magically manipulated someone she claimed to love.

I think her 'redemption' was tenuous, at best.

Fist bump.

Dark Willow was the end result of a long, long, LONG list of "Oh, but I didn't do anything wrong, and even if I did I'm the cute sidekick so sorry"

What she did to Tara was the worst, and since they decided to kill Tara, well, Willow never had to Redeem herself from that because well, Tara had forgiven her before she died right??

Agreed. Willow was always possessive and entitled when it came to other people. She was always irresponsible and "can't blame me, I'm just sweet little Willow" when it came to her own actions. She never really addressed any of those things, but we're supposed to give her a cookie for eventually agreeing that murder is bad? Okay.

fucking PREACH.

Yep! There was a lot that she never recognized as wrong or atoned for. Her redemption was just for killing Warren which, lbr, was not a big deal. Killing was how they solved nearly every villain except Angel. So the gang’s response to that was pretty hypocritical. But what Willow did to Tara was unforgivable and she never really owned that, she merely pretended to and Tara forgave her and suddenly trusted her again. It didn’t make any sense.

I feel like I have to forgive this, because being able to magically mindfuck people would be terribly hard to resist if magic actually worked.

I'd just use it to rob banks, though.

I never watched Buffy, so I don't know anything about this specific case, but there are absolutely people in fandom who don't believe in redemption. Many of them spend their time complaining that someone dared write a shipfic where a villain or minor bully gets to smooch someone instead of being ritually dismembered with barbed hooks for their crimes.

I thought Willow's 12-step magic rehab showed real redemption on her part. But some of my same friends who never forgave Willow for mindfucking Tara ended up handwaving Rodney mindfucking Sheppard into cleaning his room because "it was a joke." People just have favorites.

Well. Part of that might be that lot of people see ‘mindfucking your girlfriend into continuing to have sex with you’ as worse than the room cleaning thing. Also, there’s the part where Rodney being an asshole was an established part of his character, while Willow was supposed to be the best Scooby. But, as you said, people have their favorites.

Obviously, what Willow did was horrific? I just mean mindfucking is horrific period. It's rape even if there isn't literal rape attached. Our minds are the only safe place we have. Because our bodies sure aren't.

It was the show turning a really interesting story about Willow wanting power and control over people into a vague, dumb "magic addiction" storyline that I hated.

Yeah, that's the issue. They built up to Willow's personality flaws causing her to turn evil and then derailed it with the horrible magic-addiction arc, and blamed her end-of-S6 villainy on a drug relapse, because they thought she was too cute to actually have to face up to her flaws.

Its a privilege thing. No-one believes in redemption until they need it, no-one is willing to grant forgiveness until they have needed to be forgiven. Until you have been that low, you tell you're too good and noble and infallible to really ever need that level of atonement. And I think people resent the idea. Like other people are being given the gift of forgiveness, when the truly righteous - like me - would never have needed it and get no such reward.

That's fucked up. Growing up and working hard on yourself also means understanding that you need to respect other people's boundaries and do the work for yourself, not to get something from them because you made amends. People don't have to listen to your apologies, forgive you or keep you in their lives if they don't want to. You did the work for yourself or you haven't really learned anything.

Someone working through their own issues?

Absolutely.

Most people on this comm have unresolved issues, and despite their supposed liberalism, are very punitive and authoritarian in how they think other people (but not themselves! It's different when it's them!) should be treated.

Well, I'm not the right person to rebuke anyone for trying to work through their issues on Fandom Secrets, so I guess this has to be an agree to differ kinda situation.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-04 17:49 (UTC) - Expand

Hey, an upside to the baked-in-your-bones feeling that there’s something wrong with you that you needed to make up for from the moment you were born.

I desperately want to grant forgiveness to others who are trying to be better because maybe if they deserve it, I might too, eventually.

no <3