I'm deep in my Spuffy era so I've been thinking about this. There's so much value in using fiction to explore things you don't want or approve of in real life. I don't want a crazy man to be obsessed with me, but in a story I absolutely eat it up!
So what is it for you? Is it the glamorized violence? Is it the broody handsome vampire men?
I genuinely find it hard to care that much about the age difference between the magically animated walking corpse and the super powered girl who has already died once by the time she turns seventeen.
It just doesn't bother me that much.
But a real life sixteen year old dating a "26" year old is creepy as hell.
The constant adventure seems cool, but honestly, I think I'd grow tired of patrolling and fighting pretty quickly.
Plus the way they portray the gang often has them acting like adults so I think the helped a bit too.
uh... vampires?
Having multiple people in high school die is funny in Heathers and makes for great storylines in Buffy but IRL, not so great.
I love Oz’s line about how he always starts reading the school paper with the obits, but I literally can’t even imagine how horrible it would be IRL having multiple student or teacher deaths within a school each week.
Having an evil boyfriend who wants to stop being evil for you 😂 irl anyone is crazy to want this but enemies to lovers is the most famous trope of all time and the Buffy vampire soul-logic is bizarre enough to make it work
Depression.
I hate going through depression, myself (obviously), but I absolutely love when it's portrayed accurately in fiction, and Buffy's depression felt pretty real.
I’d love to be able to do magic but fear if it were real I might end up the same path as Willow and let it take over my life.
I would definitely magic my house clean. Magic traffic away, or just magic myself place to place. Magic party decorations sound great! I want to have people over but my table is too small? Magic expansion!
I’d be all over thy will be done. Watch out Reddit people who disagree with me 😈
I am a big Spuffy fan and I've had people get mad at me for it because they're toxic and I'm like yeah. They're interesting. It's good storytelling. I wouldn't cheer them on of they were real life friends.
Yeah, enemies to lovers is a big selling trope in the book world but for obvious reasons most people would hate irl.
I could probably come up with many things in this show and others. Most characters make stupid decisions because it creates drama. And without drama we don’t have our shows
My personal one is just characters having a simple conversation, rather than hiding things and having it revealed later.
Buffy not telling everyone Angel has returned in season 3. Jenny not admitting she knows about Angel’s curse. Xander not telling Buffy about Willow doing the spell to restore Angel’s soul. Buffy not telling everyone Dawn is the Key.
All of these should have been conversations. Yeh yeh, there’s this reason or that justification. But ultimately, most people would just talk about these things in real life. But there wouldn’t be any drama if they did
Probably dating a demon. In fiction it's a cute girl like Anya whose lack of social norms is both quirky and endearing. In reality it's probably all "I'm tired, rub my cloven hooves," and "my dad Lucifer wants to meet you," and getting stabbed in the eye in the middle of the night by an errant horn.
god youre so right
Xander and many other high school or other boys/men are portrayed as one minded sex hounds. It works in the show for many characters, and it's entertaining.
IRL, it's not that simple because puberty is a real mind fuck, but doesn't make young people villians.
The passing of a parent. Its my biggest fear
It seemed amazingly done but was obviously absolutely devastating and terrifying to watch even the first time around. A few years later my mom was diagnosed with cancer and ever since her diagnosis I struggled to rewatch The Body because it addressed one of my biggest fears, finding her like that.
Then, many years later, it actually happened in a pretty similar way and I can now confirm how realistic the grief was portrayed. Still can’t rewatch it, but now for different reasons. One positive thing, though: Finding a loved one dead in such a relaxed position actually helps processing it because you can assume they didn’t suffer when it happened.
Magic use. Great in theory, bad in real life.
And the universe has a way of humbling you when you least expect it.
Definitely this. The fact that there wasn’t more chaotic episodes just by them having the Magic Box be a store of stuff with actual magic available to the public was pretty crazy. In real life. It’d be absolute chaos, the amount of love spells thatd be done, and all the other stuff sold there, it’d just be horrible lol
Vampires
Definitely the drama.
None. The show moralized about many themes and issues but the writing was consistently terrible there. I pretty much ignore any moral lessons the show has. It looks absurd to take Whedon or the story there. I just judge the story as story it's moral themes are a complete bad joke. Not wasting time on that.