I rewatched "Real Me" last week

[thenewbuzwuzz]

and I have 5 (five) opinions.

• Giles can guide my meditation any time. :)
• Is there Dawn&Willow friendship fic?! I want to know more about Dawn's interest in magic! "Willow's the awesomest person. She's the only one I know who likes school as much as me. .... They do spells and stuff, which is so much cooler than slaying. I told Mom one time I wished they'd teach me some of the things they do together." Can't remember if canon ever picked this up again or it ended as a lesbian punchline. :( (At first glance, it looks like there's a couple of Dawn&Willow ficlets on AO3, but none of them seem magic-based. Maybe the kind of story I want would be tagged as a Dawn character study.)
• Re: the Anya/Money arc, this is where Xander informs Anya that "cash equals good" and money means she's winning the Game of Life. As far as I see, the only opinion Anya has about money earlier, in season 4, is that she doesn't want to randomly give it to Spike, which seems fair. In the following episodes of s5, she adjusts to the human problem of having to afford things and enjoys being "part of the system" by earning money for Giles' shop and being paid.
• Harmony is trying so hard to be a good leader for her minions. <3 She's been working out. I'm so proud of her. "I've found the real me, and I like her." Yeah, you tell him, Harm! I wonder if managing the minions went badly because Harm tried to motivate them as if they were human. If she had read some book jackets about vampire leadership, maybe they'd have been more into it. Or... maybe that wasn't the issue.
• I love when Dawn says, "Touch me, and my sister's gonna kill you," and then the bad guy touches her, and there's a beat, and then Buffy comes out of nowhere and kills him.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

+1 to your comments! I especially appreciate your observation about Anya and how her ambition is actually to fit into to this new system she's faced with.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Or it is at this point! I think eventually it does become an 'Anya loves money' running gag, see: the info the Buffybot has on Anya; Xander calls her "really greedy" in OMWF, etc. ...I mean. Both examples that just came to my mind *are* still how other characters interpret why Anya is interested in money.

[trepkos]

Harmony's efforts are heart-breaking in a hilarious way. And Yes to the last thing - wow!

[thenewbuzwuzz]

"Heart-breaking in a hilarious way" is a good summary of Harmony!

[roselightfairy]

I just watched this a couple of days ago and I agree with all of it! I have said before that the Buffy fic I dearly want to exist but am far too lazy to a) write or b) extensively search for (so it may actually exist) is an in-depth rewrite of s1-s4 with Dawn, as the writer imagines their memories must have been crafted. I feel like the Dawn-Willow friendship (particularly as an older-sister's-cool-friend kind of thing) would be a feature!

Also, the Anya/Money arc is nothing short of delightful, ever. "Can I trade in the children for more cash?"

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Yay! I've seen some Dawn-insert stories around, but probably nothing exactly like you mean. There's this Spuffy-centric one (or on FFN)... and the flashbacks in that apprenticebard story... I think they both start in s2.