People who know me are aware that I spend too much time on Twitter. It’s the perfect website for my distracted, overactive mind.
A few days ago, while I was busy getting my procrastinating doom fix, I encountered this tweet:
In case you don’t know, the “Willow” from the tweet refers to a character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a TV show that ran from 1997 to 2003. As the title explicitly describes, it deals with the adventures of a woman named Buffy, who is —you guessed it— a vampire slayer.
However, she is not alone in her quest, for her friends support her in any way they can. One of those friends is none other than Willow.
Willow starts the show as a painfully shy nerd who, despite her fragile appearance, manages to grow into a powerful witch. I know, such a fascinating character arch!
At one point in the show, Willow loses someone very important to her, which causes her to go into a fiery rampage of magical revenge. Things get so bad that the entire world is in danger, and Buffy and the rest of her friends have to do everything in their power to save the day.
As my fellow Twitter citizen pointed out, she was willing to destroy the world just so she could stop feeling the pain.
I know we are talking about a fictional character in a fantasy show. She never existed, and everything that happens in the show is make-believe. And yet, when I read that tweet, a thought instantly came to my mind:
The above tweet is just another example of me projecting my inner conflicts into fictional worlds. I love it when I do that. All jokes aside, deconstructing characters and their context is extremely useful because it allows me to tap into the dark side I refuse to see in myself.
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