bisummers:bisummers:This is what Willow has to say after her break up with Tara, the one where Tara
bisummers:bisummers:This is what Willow has to say after her break up with Tara, the one where Tara tells her she violated her mind the same way Glory did, by making her forget their fight and thus controlling her emotions towards her. The same break up where she observes she fixes everything to her liking, including people, including her. @onegirlinalltheworld i saw your old anti willow post and it reminded of this post i made about willow and how much i agree with youThis is super important, because so much of the problem in their relationship was Willow’s descent into an immediate-satisfaction control-freak. She (like many of us) wanted things to always kind of go her way, satisfy her wants and needs, and to have that occur with minimal effort and minimal consequences (I mean, to be fair, who doesn’t want that?).The problem arises when she starts to use magic to achieve this, because magic exists outside the realm of reality. Its existence accelerates and expands every possibility. Willow is now truly able to cater everything to her wants and needs, and that is the true dangerous power of magic. She does what is easy, rather than what is right.We see this all the way back in Lovers Walk when she attempts to do a de-lusting spell on herself and Xander to help them control their totally normal teenage hormones that are “getting in the way” of them making intelligent decisions regarding their relationships. They run into the very normal problem of “I want to follow my sexual desires but right now they are directed at not-my-boyfriend/girlfriend”. And Xander (who previously wanted to use a love spell to solve his problems) has learned that you have to just work through it the hard way. And Willow tries to work through it the easy way.Willow’s character is about control. As she becomes more confident in herself as a person (following Buffy’s introduction to her life), she starts to take on more leadership roles in the Scooby Gang. She maintains skills that no one else has (computer system hacking, and later magic), which makes her invaluable and gives her an interesting amount of control within the group (think about how important it was from a non-friendship standpoint for Buffy to trade the Box of Gavrox for Willow in Choices). And working through hard relationship things is not something that she can 100% control. And dealing with another person’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions is also not 100% in her control. And now she has the means to force it into her control.And that is as close to rape as you can get without the sexual assault element. And unfortunately, it really should be considered rape to a certain degree. This goes beyond toxicity or forced control. This is a manipulation of another person for your own satisfaction.And while it makes for a truly interesting character arc, and a really strong point of conflict between friends and lovers, as a fan of “early Willow” it sucks so much to see this happen. Because you want to believe that she was not capable of such darkness and vile action. And it sucks so much to watch her refuse to recognize her actions, and lie to herself in this manner show above. She’s too smart to not know that she’s wildly in the wrong.But the more you look back at it, there is a natural progression to this point eventually. They had been building it up for a while, with everything from the de-lusting spell (Lovers Walk, 3.08), to expanding the power of “tiny Tinkerbell light” (Out of My Mind, 5.04), to the rank, arrogant amateur conversation between Willow and Giles (Flooded, 6.04). -- source link
#analysis#bisummers#willow rosenberg#dark willow#flooded#rupert giles#season six#season five#lovers walk#season three#xander harris#tara maclay#buffy summers