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101: #1 Dawn Summers
First up: Dawn Summers.
You. You right there. The one who rolled their eyes so hard I'm pretty sure they got stuck for a minute? Yes, you. Stop that. Not that I care if you go blind, but I do want to know why a teen girl character just nearly separated you from your eyeballs.
No. Really. I've got time. Enlighten me.
But while you think of something more convincing than, "She's annoying!" (because that won't count and, in fact, I will not allow that phrase to be used at all so you'll have to come up with something else) let me tell you why I happen to like her.
But I will allow that yeah, she's annoying at times. Heaven forbid a teenage girl be allowed to be annoying on a show when just about every other character, ESPECIALLY those we saw as young teens, was allowed to be annoying, too. I mean, really, what kind of realistic outlook on the world is this.
Thing is? I think she was meant to be seen as annoying. I always figured that BtVS was a story told with a Buffy-centric bent. See: The Zeppo. It's a big thing for that episode to NOT be about Buffy or about Buffy being the center of the episode's universe.
Soooo... Buffy found Dawn annoying from the first time we meet Dawn and she continues to find her littlekey sister annoying and thus the audience sees the annoying things Dawn does moreso than anything else. Your kid sibling is going to annoy the frick out of you. It happens. They follow you around, they get into your business whether you want them to (or they really want to), and you spend a good chunk of your day wishing you were an only child.
But I like her anyway.
She's awkward and adorable and funny and smart and she goes through all the shit the rest of the Scoobies do only she's younger and despite appearing on the canvas by supernatural means, she's lacking in the super powers department. Almost everyone she's ever loved goes away at some point, some far more permanently than others, and she reacts to that in a realistic way. She tries to bring them back, she tries to connect with those who are left or do come back, and she stumbles around a lot because that is life.
She thinks she's Special the same way just about everyone else in her life is, only to find out, no, honey, you're not. Not the way you'd hoped, that is.
But she keeps trying to find her place in the gang and to show that she's got something worth keeping around. She tries so very hard and that probably fuels a lot of the hate, too.
I adore the little ways she finds herself in the group, the way she relates to others. I love the way she fangirls Tara/Willow more than a lot of the fanbase did, and the way she actually feels the losses of characters when they go away for whatever reason. If you're Dawn's friend and you go missing, she's going to notice. She's going to care. On ANY television show that's worth mentioning because of how many characters do go missing and no one cares after the initial loss is mined for it's five minutes of dramatic impact. Dawn misses you long after everyone else has forgotten you ever were.
She's not perfect but she doesn't need to be.
And now some Dawn in action.
You. You right there. The one who rolled their eyes so hard I'm pretty sure they got stuck for a minute? Yes, you. Stop that. Not that I care if you go blind, but I do want to know why a teen girl character just nearly separated you from your eyeballs.
No. Really. I've got time. Enlighten me.
But while you think of something more convincing than, "She's annoying!" (because that won't count and, in fact, I will not allow that phrase to be used at all so you'll have to come up with something else) let me tell you why I happen to like her.
But I will allow that yeah, she's annoying at times. Heaven forbid a teenage girl be allowed to be annoying on a show when just about every other character, ESPECIALLY those we saw as young teens, was allowed to be annoying, too. I mean, really, what kind of realistic outlook on the world is this.
Thing is? I think she was meant to be seen as annoying. I always figured that BtVS was a story told with a Buffy-centric bent. See: The Zeppo. It's a big thing for that episode to NOT be about Buffy or about Buffy being the center of the episode's universe.
Soooo... Buffy found Dawn annoying from the first time we meet Dawn and she continues to find her little
But I like her anyway.
She's awkward and adorable and funny and smart and she goes through all the shit the rest of the Scoobies do only she's younger and despite appearing on the canvas by supernatural means, she's lacking in the super powers department. Almost everyone she's ever loved goes away at some point, some far more permanently than others, and she reacts to that in a realistic way. She tries to bring them back, she tries to connect with those who are left or do come back, and she stumbles around a lot because that is life.
She thinks she's Special the same way just about everyone else in her life is, only to find out, no, honey, you're not. Not the way you'd hoped, that is.
But she keeps trying to find her place in the gang and to show that she's got something worth keeping around. She tries so very hard and that probably fuels a lot of the hate, too.
I adore the little ways she finds herself in the group, the way she relates to others. I love the way she fangirls Tara/Willow more than a lot of the fanbase did, and the way she actually feels the losses of characters when they go away for whatever reason. If you're Dawn's friend and you go missing, she's going to notice. She's going to care. On ANY television show that's worth mentioning because of how many characters do go missing and no one cares after the initial loss is mined for it's five minutes of dramatic impact. Dawn misses you long after everyone else has forgotten you ever were.
She's not perfect but she doesn't need to be.
And now some Dawn in action.
