Willow Rosenberg (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
guiltapalooza) wrote2013-08-20 06:55 pm
guiltapalooza) wrote2013-08-20 06:55 pm
Entry tags:
Application for TuShanshu
Character Information:
Name: Willow Rosenberg
Canon: Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
Canon Point: Shortly post-series, after the final episode.
Age: 22
Reference: Buffy wikia entry.
Setting: The world of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer is set in what seems on the surface to be a normal, typical Earth, as we would think of it in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Even the politics and pop culture references match our reality. Yet beneath the surface, unknown to most, is a seedy underbelly of demonic society, a host of creatures that prey on humanity-- or, sometimes, simply live alongside them and run karaoke bars or games of kitten poker. Demons are defined here as almost anything non-human, and often specifically arise from another dimension. In many cases, they bear resemblance to fairy tales or myths, as those stories originated with grains of truth based on actual sightings and experiences.
Across the planet, there are hot spots known as Hellmouths, places where the dimensional fabric is especially thin, and demons can cross over from hell dimensions (note the plural-- this is not a religious hell) to invade Earth. Or, contrarily, they can travel in the reverse direction. Opening such a portal is not like taking a pleasant walk, though. The process tends to be irrevocable, and leads to, quite literally, hell on Earth. In short, it causes the apocalypse, and that means that a Hellmouth, which amounts to a popular tourist destination for demons, requires constant protection and monitoring.
The Slayer is typically stationed there. One girl in all the world, who has the power alone to fight the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness... Stop me if you've heard this before. Throughout history, the Slayer has been called in succession, one at a time as the previous one dies, typically not long after being called. Always a young teenage girl, and always granted super strength, healing, endurance, and sudden martial skills with just about every weapon possible. Her primary enemy is vampires, who in Buffyverse are immoral demons inhabiting the corpses of once living humans, and without their souls (which is almost all of them, with two exceptions) they turn to killing and maiming, in what is effectively joyriding for blood-sucking serial killers.
As you might guess, the Slayer of our story is named Buffy, and she's stationed on a Hellmouth in Sunnydale, California. She's a good friend of Willow's. One of her two closest, in fact, alongside her childhood friend Xander, who's utterly normal, and a lovable dork if there ever was one. The Slayer is always assigned a personal Watcher by the Watcher's Council, which is an old organization based in England, composed of stuffy white people that make the rules for the girl on the front lines. They are responsible for training her to meet her destiny, and providing informational support on what types of enemies she's facing at any given time. Watchers, however, have no mystical calling or destiny such as Slayers do-- they've simply appointed themselves this role, and over the course of the series, Buffy divorces herself from their influence and takes charge of her group of friends herself.
Her Watcher, Giles, is at one point fired from the official Council, and is something of a black sheep of the whole organization. Nonetheless, the four of them compose the core group, affectionately nicknamed the Scooby Gang, or just Scoobies. Their respective love interests come and go as part of the group (Angel, Oz, Cordelia, Tara, Anya, Riley, Spike) but they remain the constants. They act very much like a family, with Giles as the dad and the other three as siblings, with the squabbles and mindless loyalty one would expect. Together they fight off apocalypses and prevent cataclysm on a semi-regular basis. It's all quite ridiculous at times, and then absolutely heartbreaking at others. Death is not uncommon, and in the rare cases that it's not permanent, that's not a thing to be celebrated.
Willow contends with this directly through her magic. Bluntly speaking, magic tends to function as a plot device, and there aren't many consistent or sensible rules, or even explained ones. She starts out the series as a frumpy, shy, nervous geek, and gradually goes farther and farther down the rabbit hole into magic. Willow has immense power, more than just about anyone in the world, really, magically speaking, and it goes to her head. Her magic usage is played extremely obviously as an addiction, with all of the nasty, real world consequences of one-- hurting your friends, sometimes physically; alienating your girlfriend; becoming insufferably arrogant in an effort to self-justify your obsession; and, most of all, resistance to intervention. It takes drastic events for Willow to turn it around, and once she does, the love of her life and the force behind her attempt to get back on the straight and narrow, Tara, is killed in her arms. Willow goes berserk and spends a frightening several episodes as the main villain, completely unstoppable.
What does eventually get her to stop, and return closer to her earlier personality, is Giles's spell to open her up to feeling her grief, and then Xander's calm persistence in staying by her side as she ends the world, no matter how much she hurts him. Afterward, Willow grapples with relearning her habits. The power is too deep inside her now for her to go cold turkey and abandon it completely, and truthfully, there's no way she'd want to. Magic is critical to her self-identity and almost limitless in potential. (See her abilities section below.)
At the end of the series, she's gotten a better equilibrium with it. Still hesitant and nervous to cause damage or turn homicidal again, or slip back into addiction, Willow is trying to cope with Tara's death and save the world at the same time. Sometimes that calls for magic. The final episode sees her awash in white magic – a first for her – as she calls to power every potential, untapped Slayer in the world, an unspeakably incredible act that will forever change the face of Buffyverse.
But that's dealt with in the post-series comics, and we don't talk about those, here.
Personality: The first and most noticeable thing about Willow is the way she speaks. She's very twentieth century American casual, but with SAT vocabulary peppered in there that reveals just how intelligent she is. Willow has a lot more going on beneath the surface than is apparent at first, and her dialogue is the best indicator of that. Like any Joss character, her speech is full of witty turns of phrase and irreverent mutilation of the English language. Her tone is almost always both empathetic and earnest, and it's only when she's truly at the end of her rope that the tenor of her voice turns flatter. She is expressive and wears her heart on her sleeve most of the time, and although she has moments of shyness and reservation, strong feeling will always overcome that and push her into being aggressive. She's a complex character, but she is very up front about all of her nuances.
"Now we're supposed to decide what we want to do with our lives.
And I just realized that's what I want to do. Fight evil, help people." (Willow)
Chief among Willow's strengths is her loyalty and selflessness. She was pulled into the fight against evil as a victim, but once she turned into a combatant, she never once looked back. We see Buffy fighting against her destiny and struggling with it on a regular basis, but Willow seems to have no self-doubt about it at all. It isn't her pre-ordained fate like it is for Buffy, true, but Willow made her own choice to stick with her friend, who doesn't have a choice. She gave up an acceptance to Oxford University and any hope of a safe, peaceful life in order to support her and help others. She has plenty of faults, but a lack of persistence is not one of them. From the first day we see her until seven years later, Willow is always loud and unflinching about defending what is really important to her.
Aside from her friends, her moral standards themselves are one of those things that she values. Morality is mostly very clear and obvious to her: murder is bad, hurting her friends is bad (even if they deserved it), refusing to make up for your mistakes is bad. She is fairly uncompromising about her lines here, but the interesting part is where she draws them. Willow defines what is right and wrong in terms of who it hurts, and whether the person committing the crime is sincerely regretful. She forgives very easily in a variety of situations, so long as she thinks they're trying to do better. At heart she is kind, and will even help those that have done her wrong in the past if they ask her.
She is slow to forget these judgements once she makes them, however. Willow is extremely biased. As I said, she defines morality in terms of who it hurts-- and if it hurts someone she dislikes, well, she's not going to be much bothered by it. Someone that she's decided is a friend will always be defended, even against valid criticism. She is dependable in the sense that once she says something, she sticks to it, and it takes her a long time to reverse it. It takes her years to truly be comfortable around Cordelia, who in high school treated her disdainfully as the popular girl to the outcast nerd. In contrast she never hesitates to trust Angel or Spike while they have their souls, despite all the violence she's seen them commit in the past, both against innocents and against her and her friends. Her initial opinions about people are ones she clings to.
"Let me tell you something about Willow. She's a loser. She always has been." (Dark Willow)
Willow's most glaring fault is how self-righteous she can be. She's had low self-esteem her whole life, not just an outcast but someone that never tried not to be an outcast, and when she was younger it made her prohibitively awkward in social interactions. She stumbled over her words, went completely silent when too embarrassed, and apologized just for existing. As time went on and she got to know Buffy better and fought demons over the years, Willow's self-confidence grew, and she's quite sassy and self-assured now at times. Yet that is by and large masking her still underlying negative view of herself, as we see starkly when she turns evil and says the above quote.
This hidden, intrinsic self-loathing leads her to emotional extremes in order to justify herself to herself. Willow makes countless selfish decisions, and is bull-headed and stubborn when her friends try to tell her what she's doing wrong. It's hard for her to accept when she's being selfish and is in over her head because that validates those inner feelings of worthlessness, something she struggles hard to avoid. She has a vested interest in being right and justified, as being presented with her faults hits her so hard. Willow has abandonment issues from her parents ignoring her, and was a stellar student in school for years to gain the attention and approval of teachers, her other authority figures. Ordinarily she's meticulous and terrified to break the rules, but when she loses control of herself and sinks into her own, protective self-interest, that all goes out the window, and she rejects any kind of authoritative influence (Giles, Tara, and even Buffy).
In practice it can seem that she whips wildly from the meek, mousy girl in the fuzzy sweater to a wrathful, unrelenting witch of unimaginable power. But there is a method and a reason to these changes and apparent mood swings. Willow doesn't do anything without an underlying cause-- she is not capricious, but rather passionate. Sometimes she acts out of pure loyalty and devotion, and sometimes it's out of selfish defensiveness, but she is not truly cruel. It's just that she has a self-righteous justification on hand for everything that she does, ready to lash out with it should she, and her self-worth, be questioned. She feels she is owed certain things for all the effort she puts in, particularly in regards to what she thinks she's owed in relationships, and she's not afraid to reach out and grab it if someone isn't giving it to her.
However, she is trying to change that. The car accident with Dawn, even before Tara's death, and then going after the Trio and fighting Buffy afterward all convinced her that she needed to seriously re-examine herself. Willow doesn't want to hurt anyone, even for her own benefit, and while her dark magic addiction can pull her into a dangerous undercurrent, under her normal mental faculties she would never want to go that far. She feels her guilt heavily, and is slowly changing.
"Except I'm less worried about hitting my thumb, and more worried about going all black-eyed baddy and bewitching that hammer into cracking my friends' skulls open like coconuts." (Willow)
This is a long, hard road she's been on, first as a shy nerd, then an addiction-riddled force of nature, and now a more balanced, fair-minded woman in her early twenties. Willow is determined to make it, to learn where that line is and how the balancing act works, because she knows without it not only could she destroy the world, but she'd lose her friends. Being more or less without family support her whole life means that she is hugely reliant on her friends, and their opinion of her. They are what shore up her self-esteem and make her cheerful and positive as she usually is, instead of depressed and reckless as she might be otherwise. Even aside from them, once her eyes were opened to what she was doing, Willow could no longer conveniently not apply her morals to herself. She realizes what she's done, is horrified, and can't really live with herself unless she changes.
Overall she is a good, kind person, but the lure of her magic can prove too much for her sometimes. Magic makes her special, it makes her unique, useful, and amazing. It makes her feel like a goddess instead of part of the wallpaper. Although Willow on her own, without magic, is as I mentioned gradually becoming more stable and self-confident, with magic she feels a thousand times better. No one could truly be immune to limitless power, and with her innate talent, intellect, and access to Giles' books and supplies, that's effectively what she has. There are several limitations, but for the most part Willow's abilities border on terrifying. Feeling that for herself, that absolute surety and that guarantee that no one can go against her, is by no coincidence addicting.
After spending time with the coven in Devon to learn how to grip her magic more effectively, and not let it ride her, she's becoming more even-handed about it. She no longer uses it for anything that could be done manually without it, and she does spells the longer, slower way if possible, with rituals instead of waving her hand. She stops and thinks, she uses her rational mind and applies her morals to herself instead of just everyone else, and she's learned how to embrace the white, healing side of magic, as Tara did. Yet this is still, and probably always will be, an ongoing battle for her at least in part. It is a slippery slope, and with her loved ones constantly in danger and needing her help, it's almost impossible for Willow to completely give up black magic. It's simply too powerful to ignore in her circumstances, so she's trying to find a way to use it without letting it use her.
"You've been my best friend my whole life. World gonna end... where else would I want to be?" (Xander)
Willow is in many ways defined by her relationships. Her friends are her support and her direction in life; they are, metaphorically speaking, her compass. They guide her back to the right path when she strays from it, and if she sometimes (in fact, more often than not) resists that, well, it doesn't mean she appreciates them any less for it. She is convinced that on her own she is a worthless, weak person, but with her friends she is strong and capable. Willow's efforts to be independent always lead to heartbreak and regret for her. She needs others in order to remain stable.
Being separated from her canon relationships is very hard on her, and in a game setting she usually immediately reaches out to make new connections. It's not something she does lightly, despite the eagerness with which she approaches it-- anyone that she disapproves of will be met with summary rejection. But Willow instinctively will seek out other people and can't really exist without them. In a situation without castmates, this is exacerbated, as she has no preexisting relationships from which to draw stability. It is unhealthy and somewhat dependent, but Willow always returns everything she's given, and is a stalwart, devoted, and unconditionally supportive friend in turn. Given her lack of family in her life, and her current struggle to be in any sort of romantic relationship after Tara's death, her friends become the world to her, and 'friendship' is far from a trivial word in her view.
In short, it's no coincidence that Willow's darkest moment, her worst grief, was assuaged with nothing more than a heartfelt confession of love from her oldest friend. It's the single most defining example of her character.
In regards to her reaction to arrival, Willow is pretty jaded to wacky happenings by now. She'll be fussed, because this is beyond even her realm of experience, and there'll be some delayed freak outs as it sinks in that she really is stuck here and God knows what is happening to her friends-- but overall, she's genre savvy and will mostly answer arrival with quips and an outgoing, proactive attitude. She'll need to make some friends before she starts to unload her distress onto people. Willow's kind of a sensitive soul, and will take her separation from home hard as time goes on. To start out with, though, she'll think this is all a merry, and very temporary, jaunt, not too far removed from standard Hellmouth antics. That attitude will change depending on the CR she forms.
Appearance: She is played by Alyson Hannigan.
Abilities: At the end of the series, Willow is capable of flight, telekinesis, regeneration, superhuman strength, teleportation, resurrection, telepathy, force field projection, energy manipulation, invisibility, pyrokinesis, sonic scream, electrokinesis, clairvoyance, precognition, portal creation, absorbing life from others, locating people and objects at a distance (even when theoretically protected from such spells), being impervious to physical damage, memory manipulation, and mind control. This mind control even extends to demons that are immune to mind controlling magics.
This list is taken directly from the Buffy wikia, and actually, it's not in the least complete. Willow is more or less one big giant plot device. She tends to be capable of doing exactly what the plot needs her to, and no more. At the moment she's fairly well balanced and stable in terms of her magic use-- she has previously struggled with addiction and falling to the dark side, but her experiences near the end of the series have lead her to be more confident without slipping over the edge. In general, she will not do anything unprovoked, and right now is disinclined to use her power for anything that she could do herself without it.
It is actually canon that it's absurd how much power she has: she's considered the most powerful witch in the world. I try to be very conscientious and mindful of not stepping on toes with how admittedly godmode-y she is, and am totally open to any mod-imposed limitations if you'd like to place any. She does have several canon limitations as well, and I try to play those up when I can, and wherever necessary.
Practically speaking, she is an exceptional, dedicated student and has some measure of computer proficiency, including extensive hacking and maintenance of advanced robotics. Willow is not in any way world class with this, but she is the go to tech person in the series. Her knowledge of gods, goddesses, demons, and other occult subjects is moderate but not encyclopedic like Giles.
Inventory: The clothes on her back and a plain navy messenger bag with a cutesy floral design on it. In the bag is basic spell supplies and one spellbook, Witchcraft, which we see in Giles's library several times. The spell ingredients are nothing special and include things like lavender, rose quartz, an earthenware bowl, matches, etc.
Suite: Earth, one or two floors. She has a whole thing in canon about connecting to the Mother Earth Goddess, and more generally just feeling the energy of the Earth. She uses it as a strongly grounding influence and relies on it for stability at this canon point, and to keep her on the right path. It's not necessarily a good fit for her personality, but it is the kind of influence she's trying to find.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person: (Taken from my time playing her at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
towerofanimus. Coming to terms with Tara's death.)
From the outside, it doesn't look like she's doing much. Willow carefully wobbles her way out far enough to have an approximation of privacy, so that she's visible but inaudible to him. There's certain things she needs to say that aren't meant for anyone else.
There's no grave here, so this will have to do. She slowly sinks down onto her knees, hands out to stabilize her on the ground, trying not to tear her injuries open. The grass is long and yellow, picturesque, and it and the breeze are warm on her skin. It's strange and comforting and so much like Earth. It's not hard, to picture Tara out here. To imagine her loving this place. It's why Willow's been drawn here since the first day it appeared.
"Hey, sweetie," she says softly, hardly more than a whisper. A smile comes over her face, and a few tears leak from her eyes, but she doesn't move to wipe them away. "I wanted to talk to you. I... I miss you. I'm sure you know that-- you probably look down at me and wonder what I'm doing, wasting all this time thinking about you when I have so much else. You always wanted me to be strong.
"I... haven't been doing so good at that. I've hurt people." Silence for a few long moments. "Hurt them like I promised I wouldn't, ever again. I don't know who I am, whether it's that awkward, weak girl who met Buffy, or the woman who almost got Dawnie killed. Who took away your memory whenever I wanted to. Who tortured Warren." She lists off her sins, and as she says them, she releases them into the air. Lets them drift into the sky, this implausible, fake sky.
Willow closes her eyes against the tower, and imagines her there with her.
"I'm not either of them. I'm just me. And I miss you-- I do, I miss you so much." Her voice starts to choke, caught on a suppressed sob. "I miss the way you'd smile at me, and sing for me, and tell me when I was wrong. I even miss the stupid things like your hair and getting to order your tea for you. I love you every day, will love you every day, until I die and after that and-- and forever. But I don't need to just be strong for you, do I? It's funny how long it's taken me to see this.
"You want me to be strong for me. You always have."
She takes a long breath in, and holds it. Feels her blood thrum in her ears, and slowly, still crying, lets it out. "I'm saying goodbye. You've been waiting for me to say goodbye all this time. Waiting to rest. It's okay, baby, I'm okay now. I can take care of myself. You can go."
She doesn't need magic, she doesn't need Tara, she doesn't need anyone but herself. She can trust herself, finally, and though it's precious and tenuous, a bird resting on her finger about to fly off with the wrong breath, Willow can see it there. It's all come together for her in the last day, inexplicably. But she can't be graceful about all of it, she just can't; she starts to cry in earnest, ugly and cathartic, and repeats, "You can go."
Her hand raises, outstretched as if to touch, and very faintly it starts to glow gold. Her magic comes back, in that moment where she remembers how to trust herself, and the relief and joy counterpoints her loss. It's a balance, it's everything Tara had tried to teach her, and Willow is ready to see it for herself. She stays there like that for several minutes, letting the light grow stronger, inhale by inhale. Her roiling emotions gradually seep away. It's like the world is leveling out beneath her.
Eventually when she's exhausted, it fades again, and she climbs to her feet, and walks back. Tear-streaked and empty and calm.
Network: So I got here just in time for the party, huh? [Willow looks, if anything, tired and exasperated rather than freaked out. She's done her research, she's poked around. She's tried a teleportation spell, a rather reckless one, out of desperation-- to no avail.
Seems like she has to meet people, as the only option left to her. Willow doesn't mind that, not at all, given how social she is, it's just that the people she's left behind are foremost on her mind and she's fretting about them more and more. The knowledge that time stops and they're clones or whatever else she's learned from backreading the network, and the kedan around her, isn't really soothing that. Those are her friends, and their town just fell into a sinkhole and Anya and Spike had died, and she--
She needed to be there.
Worrying at her lip with her teeth, Willow gets herself together, focuses.] Is this, um, normal? Do our... interdimensional kidnappers throw Roman festivals for us a lot? Cause, I gotta say, this isn't usually how kidnapping goes for me. There tends to be more, crying into my sweater.
[She falters. Oh Goddess, this is hard. Meeting new people has always stymied her, made her nervous, but she tries to hold onto the memory of all the good she'd done, the white magic washing over her. With that in mind, Willow finds a smile.] I guess if anyone wants an awkward wallflower to go to the party with, I'm game? I sort of left my, everything, at home. Friends included.
And anyone who knows magic, I'm game for that, too! [This part she gains some momentum on.] I'm not sure how it all works here, and I'd really like to find out before I blow something up with a misplaced hand gesture. ... Which is maybe more likely than you'd think.
Name: Willow Rosenberg
Canon: Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
Canon Point: Shortly post-series, after the final episode.
Age: 22
Reference: Buffy wikia entry.
Setting: The world of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer is set in what seems on the surface to be a normal, typical Earth, as we would think of it in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Even the politics and pop culture references match our reality. Yet beneath the surface, unknown to most, is a seedy underbelly of demonic society, a host of creatures that prey on humanity-- or, sometimes, simply live alongside them and run karaoke bars or games of kitten poker. Demons are defined here as almost anything non-human, and often specifically arise from another dimension. In many cases, they bear resemblance to fairy tales or myths, as those stories originated with grains of truth based on actual sightings and experiences.
Across the planet, there are hot spots known as Hellmouths, places where the dimensional fabric is especially thin, and demons can cross over from hell dimensions (note the plural-- this is not a religious hell) to invade Earth. Or, contrarily, they can travel in the reverse direction. Opening such a portal is not like taking a pleasant walk, though. The process tends to be irrevocable, and leads to, quite literally, hell on Earth. In short, it causes the apocalypse, and that means that a Hellmouth, which amounts to a popular tourist destination for demons, requires constant protection and monitoring.
The Slayer is typically stationed there. One girl in all the world, who has the power alone to fight the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness... Stop me if you've heard this before. Throughout history, the Slayer has been called in succession, one at a time as the previous one dies, typically not long after being called. Always a young teenage girl, and always granted super strength, healing, endurance, and sudden martial skills with just about every weapon possible. Her primary enemy is vampires, who in Buffyverse are immoral demons inhabiting the corpses of once living humans, and without their souls (which is almost all of them, with two exceptions) they turn to killing and maiming, in what is effectively joyriding for blood-sucking serial killers.
As you might guess, the Slayer of our story is named Buffy, and she's stationed on a Hellmouth in Sunnydale, California. She's a good friend of Willow's. One of her two closest, in fact, alongside her childhood friend Xander, who's utterly normal, and a lovable dork if there ever was one. The Slayer is always assigned a personal Watcher by the Watcher's Council, which is an old organization based in England, composed of stuffy white people that make the rules for the girl on the front lines. They are responsible for training her to meet her destiny, and providing informational support on what types of enemies she's facing at any given time. Watchers, however, have no mystical calling or destiny such as Slayers do-- they've simply appointed themselves this role, and over the course of the series, Buffy divorces herself from their influence and takes charge of her group of friends herself.
Her Watcher, Giles, is at one point fired from the official Council, and is something of a black sheep of the whole organization. Nonetheless, the four of them compose the core group, affectionately nicknamed the Scooby Gang, or just Scoobies. Their respective love interests come and go as part of the group (Angel, Oz, Cordelia, Tara, Anya, Riley, Spike) but they remain the constants. They act very much like a family, with Giles as the dad and the other three as siblings, with the squabbles and mindless loyalty one would expect. Together they fight off apocalypses and prevent cataclysm on a semi-regular basis. It's all quite ridiculous at times, and then absolutely heartbreaking at others. Death is not uncommon, and in the rare cases that it's not permanent, that's not a thing to be celebrated.
Willow contends with this directly through her magic. Bluntly speaking, magic tends to function as a plot device, and there aren't many consistent or sensible rules, or even explained ones. She starts out the series as a frumpy, shy, nervous geek, and gradually goes farther and farther down the rabbit hole into magic. Willow has immense power, more than just about anyone in the world, really, magically speaking, and it goes to her head. Her magic usage is played extremely obviously as an addiction, with all of the nasty, real world consequences of one-- hurting your friends, sometimes physically; alienating your girlfriend; becoming insufferably arrogant in an effort to self-justify your obsession; and, most of all, resistance to intervention. It takes drastic events for Willow to turn it around, and once she does, the love of her life and the force behind her attempt to get back on the straight and narrow, Tara, is killed in her arms. Willow goes berserk and spends a frightening several episodes as the main villain, completely unstoppable.
What does eventually get her to stop, and return closer to her earlier personality, is Giles's spell to open her up to feeling her grief, and then Xander's calm persistence in staying by her side as she ends the world, no matter how much she hurts him. Afterward, Willow grapples with relearning her habits. The power is too deep inside her now for her to go cold turkey and abandon it completely, and truthfully, there's no way she'd want to. Magic is critical to her self-identity and almost limitless in potential. (See her abilities section below.)
At the end of the series, she's gotten a better equilibrium with it. Still hesitant and nervous to cause damage or turn homicidal again, or slip back into addiction, Willow is trying to cope with Tara's death and save the world at the same time. Sometimes that calls for magic. The final episode sees her awash in white magic – a first for her – as she calls to power every potential, untapped Slayer in the world, an unspeakably incredible act that will forever change the face of Buffyverse.
But that's dealt with in the post-series comics, and we don't talk about those, here.
Personality: The first and most noticeable thing about Willow is the way she speaks. She's very twentieth century American casual, but with SAT vocabulary peppered in there that reveals just how intelligent she is. Willow has a lot more going on beneath the surface than is apparent at first, and her dialogue is the best indicator of that. Like any Joss character, her speech is full of witty turns of phrase and irreverent mutilation of the English language. Her tone is almost always both empathetic and earnest, and it's only when she's truly at the end of her rope that the tenor of her voice turns flatter. She is expressive and wears her heart on her sleeve most of the time, and although she has moments of shyness and reservation, strong feeling will always overcome that and push her into being aggressive. She's a complex character, but she is very up front about all of her nuances.
And I just realized that's what I want to do. Fight evil, help people." (Willow)
Chief among Willow's strengths is her loyalty and selflessness. She was pulled into the fight against evil as a victim, but once she turned into a combatant, she never once looked back. We see Buffy fighting against her destiny and struggling with it on a regular basis, but Willow seems to have no self-doubt about it at all. It isn't her pre-ordained fate like it is for Buffy, true, but Willow made her own choice to stick with her friend, who doesn't have a choice. She gave up an acceptance to Oxford University and any hope of a safe, peaceful life in order to support her and help others. She has plenty of faults, but a lack of persistence is not one of them. From the first day we see her until seven years later, Willow is always loud and unflinching about defending what is really important to her.
Aside from her friends, her moral standards themselves are one of those things that she values. Morality is mostly very clear and obvious to her: murder is bad, hurting her friends is bad (even if they deserved it), refusing to make up for your mistakes is bad. She is fairly uncompromising about her lines here, but the interesting part is where she draws them. Willow defines what is right and wrong in terms of who it hurts, and whether the person committing the crime is sincerely regretful. She forgives very easily in a variety of situations, so long as she thinks they're trying to do better. At heart she is kind, and will even help those that have done her wrong in the past if they ask her.
She is slow to forget these judgements once she makes them, however. Willow is extremely biased. As I said, she defines morality in terms of who it hurts-- and if it hurts someone she dislikes, well, she's not going to be much bothered by it. Someone that she's decided is a friend will always be defended, even against valid criticism. She is dependable in the sense that once she says something, she sticks to it, and it takes her a long time to reverse it. It takes her years to truly be comfortable around Cordelia, who in high school treated her disdainfully as the popular girl to the outcast nerd. In contrast she never hesitates to trust Angel or Spike while they have their souls, despite all the violence she's seen them commit in the past, both against innocents and against her and her friends. Her initial opinions about people are ones she clings to.
Willow's most glaring fault is how self-righteous she can be. She's had low self-esteem her whole life, not just an outcast but someone that never tried not to be an outcast, and when she was younger it made her prohibitively awkward in social interactions. She stumbled over her words, went completely silent when too embarrassed, and apologized just for existing. As time went on and she got to know Buffy better and fought demons over the years, Willow's self-confidence grew, and she's quite sassy and self-assured now at times. Yet that is by and large masking her still underlying negative view of herself, as we see starkly when she turns evil and says the above quote.
This hidden, intrinsic self-loathing leads her to emotional extremes in order to justify herself to herself. Willow makes countless selfish decisions, and is bull-headed and stubborn when her friends try to tell her what she's doing wrong. It's hard for her to accept when she's being selfish and is in over her head because that validates those inner feelings of worthlessness, something she struggles hard to avoid. She has a vested interest in being right and justified, as being presented with her faults hits her so hard. Willow has abandonment issues from her parents ignoring her, and was a stellar student in school for years to gain the attention and approval of teachers, her other authority figures. Ordinarily she's meticulous and terrified to break the rules, but when she loses control of herself and sinks into her own, protective self-interest, that all goes out the window, and she rejects any kind of authoritative influence (Giles, Tara, and even Buffy).
In practice it can seem that she whips wildly from the meek, mousy girl in the fuzzy sweater to a wrathful, unrelenting witch of unimaginable power. But there is a method and a reason to these changes and apparent mood swings. Willow doesn't do anything without an underlying cause-- she is not capricious, but rather passionate. Sometimes she acts out of pure loyalty and devotion, and sometimes it's out of selfish defensiveness, but she is not truly cruel. It's just that she has a self-righteous justification on hand for everything that she does, ready to lash out with it should she, and her self-worth, be questioned. She feels she is owed certain things for all the effort she puts in, particularly in regards to what she thinks she's owed in relationships, and she's not afraid to reach out and grab it if someone isn't giving it to her.
However, she is trying to change that. The car accident with Dawn, even before Tara's death, and then going after the Trio and fighting Buffy afterward all convinced her that she needed to seriously re-examine herself. Willow doesn't want to hurt anyone, even for her own benefit, and while her dark magic addiction can pull her into a dangerous undercurrent, under her normal mental faculties she would never want to go that far. She feels her guilt heavily, and is slowly changing.
This is a long, hard road she's been on, first as a shy nerd, then an addiction-riddled force of nature, and now a more balanced, fair-minded woman in her early twenties. Willow is determined to make it, to learn where that line is and how the balancing act works, because she knows without it not only could she destroy the world, but she'd lose her friends. Being more or less without family support her whole life means that she is hugely reliant on her friends, and their opinion of her. They are what shore up her self-esteem and make her cheerful and positive as she usually is, instead of depressed and reckless as she might be otherwise. Even aside from them, once her eyes were opened to what she was doing, Willow could no longer conveniently not apply her morals to herself. She realizes what she's done, is horrified, and can't really live with herself unless she changes.
Overall she is a good, kind person, but the lure of her magic can prove too much for her sometimes. Magic makes her special, it makes her unique, useful, and amazing. It makes her feel like a goddess instead of part of the wallpaper. Although Willow on her own, without magic, is as I mentioned gradually becoming more stable and self-confident, with magic she feels a thousand times better. No one could truly be immune to limitless power, and with her innate talent, intellect, and access to Giles' books and supplies, that's effectively what she has. There are several limitations, but for the most part Willow's abilities border on terrifying. Feeling that for herself, that absolute surety and that guarantee that no one can go against her, is by no coincidence addicting.
After spending time with the coven in Devon to learn how to grip her magic more effectively, and not let it ride her, she's becoming more even-handed about it. She no longer uses it for anything that could be done manually without it, and she does spells the longer, slower way if possible, with rituals instead of waving her hand. She stops and thinks, she uses her rational mind and applies her morals to herself instead of just everyone else, and she's learned how to embrace the white, healing side of magic, as Tara did. Yet this is still, and probably always will be, an ongoing battle for her at least in part. It is a slippery slope, and with her loved ones constantly in danger and needing her help, it's almost impossible for Willow to completely give up black magic. It's simply too powerful to ignore in her circumstances, so she's trying to find a way to use it without letting it use her.
Willow is in many ways defined by her relationships. Her friends are her support and her direction in life; they are, metaphorically speaking, her compass. They guide her back to the right path when she strays from it, and if she sometimes (in fact, more often than not) resists that, well, it doesn't mean she appreciates them any less for it. She is convinced that on her own she is a worthless, weak person, but with her friends she is strong and capable. Willow's efforts to be independent always lead to heartbreak and regret for her. She needs others in order to remain stable.
Being separated from her canon relationships is very hard on her, and in a game setting she usually immediately reaches out to make new connections. It's not something she does lightly, despite the eagerness with which she approaches it-- anyone that she disapproves of will be met with summary rejection. But Willow instinctively will seek out other people and can't really exist without them. In a situation without castmates, this is exacerbated, as she has no preexisting relationships from which to draw stability. It is unhealthy and somewhat dependent, but Willow always returns everything she's given, and is a stalwart, devoted, and unconditionally supportive friend in turn. Given her lack of family in her life, and her current struggle to be in any sort of romantic relationship after Tara's death, her friends become the world to her, and 'friendship' is far from a trivial word in her view.
In short, it's no coincidence that Willow's darkest moment, her worst grief, was assuaged with nothing more than a heartfelt confession of love from her oldest friend. It's the single most defining example of her character.
In regards to her reaction to arrival, Willow is pretty jaded to wacky happenings by now. She'll be fussed, because this is beyond even her realm of experience, and there'll be some delayed freak outs as it sinks in that she really is stuck here and God knows what is happening to her friends-- but overall, she's genre savvy and will mostly answer arrival with quips and an outgoing, proactive attitude. She'll need to make some friends before she starts to unload her distress onto people. Willow's kind of a sensitive soul, and will take her separation from home hard as time goes on. To start out with, though, she'll think this is all a merry, and very temporary, jaunt, not too far removed from standard Hellmouth antics. That attitude will change depending on the CR she forms.
Appearance: She is played by Alyson Hannigan.
Abilities: At the end of the series, Willow is capable of flight, telekinesis, regeneration, superhuman strength, teleportation, resurrection, telepathy, force field projection, energy manipulation, invisibility, pyrokinesis, sonic scream, electrokinesis, clairvoyance, precognition, portal creation, absorbing life from others, locating people and objects at a distance (even when theoretically protected from such spells), being impervious to physical damage, memory manipulation, and mind control. This mind control even extends to demons that are immune to mind controlling magics.
This list is taken directly from the Buffy wikia, and actually, it's not in the least complete. Willow is more or less one big giant plot device. She tends to be capable of doing exactly what the plot needs her to, and no more. At the moment she's fairly well balanced and stable in terms of her magic use-- she has previously struggled with addiction and falling to the dark side, but her experiences near the end of the series have lead her to be more confident without slipping over the edge. In general, she will not do anything unprovoked, and right now is disinclined to use her power for anything that she could do herself without it.
It is actually canon that it's absurd how much power she has: she's considered the most powerful witch in the world. I try to be very conscientious and mindful of not stepping on toes with how admittedly godmode-y she is, and am totally open to any mod-imposed limitations if you'd like to place any. She does have several canon limitations as well, and I try to play those up when I can, and wherever necessary.
Practically speaking, she is an exceptional, dedicated student and has some measure of computer proficiency, including extensive hacking and maintenance of advanced robotics. Willow is not in any way world class with this, but she is the go to tech person in the series. Her knowledge of gods, goddesses, demons, and other occult subjects is moderate but not encyclopedic like Giles.
Inventory: The clothes on her back and a plain navy messenger bag with a cutesy floral design on it. In the bag is basic spell supplies and one spellbook, Witchcraft, which we see in Giles's library several times. The spell ingredients are nothing special and include things like lavender, rose quartz, an earthenware bowl, matches, etc.
Suite: Earth, one or two floors. She has a whole thing in canon about connecting to the Mother Earth Goddess, and more generally just feeling the energy of the Earth. She uses it as a strongly grounding influence and relies on it for stability at this canon point, and to keep her on the right path. It's not necessarily a good fit for her personality, but it is the kind of influence she's trying to find.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person: (Taken from my time playing her at
towerofanimus. Coming to terms with Tara's death.)From the outside, it doesn't look like she's doing much. Willow carefully wobbles her way out far enough to have an approximation of privacy, so that she's visible but inaudible to him. There's certain things she needs to say that aren't meant for anyone else.
There's no grave here, so this will have to do. She slowly sinks down onto her knees, hands out to stabilize her on the ground, trying not to tear her injuries open. The grass is long and yellow, picturesque, and it and the breeze are warm on her skin. It's strange and comforting and so much like Earth. It's not hard, to picture Tara out here. To imagine her loving this place. It's why Willow's been drawn here since the first day it appeared.
"Hey, sweetie," she says softly, hardly more than a whisper. A smile comes over her face, and a few tears leak from her eyes, but she doesn't move to wipe them away. "I wanted to talk to you. I... I miss you. I'm sure you know that-- you probably look down at me and wonder what I'm doing, wasting all this time thinking about you when I have so much else. You always wanted me to be strong.
"I... haven't been doing so good at that. I've hurt people." Silence for a few long moments. "Hurt them like I promised I wouldn't, ever again. I don't know who I am, whether it's that awkward, weak girl who met Buffy, or the woman who almost got Dawnie killed. Who took away your memory whenever I wanted to. Who tortured Warren." She lists off her sins, and as she says them, she releases them into the air. Lets them drift into the sky, this implausible, fake sky.
Willow closes her eyes against the tower, and imagines her there with her.
"I'm not either of them. I'm just me. And I miss you-- I do, I miss you so much." Her voice starts to choke, caught on a suppressed sob. "I miss the way you'd smile at me, and sing for me, and tell me when I was wrong. I even miss the stupid things like your hair and getting to order your tea for you. I love you every day, will love you every day, until I die and after that and-- and forever. But I don't need to just be strong for you, do I? It's funny how long it's taken me to see this.
"You want me to be strong for me. You always have."
She takes a long breath in, and holds it. Feels her blood thrum in her ears, and slowly, still crying, lets it out. "I'm saying goodbye. You've been waiting for me to say goodbye all this time. Waiting to rest. It's okay, baby, I'm okay now. I can take care of myself. You can go."
She doesn't need magic, she doesn't need Tara, she doesn't need anyone but herself. She can trust herself, finally, and though it's precious and tenuous, a bird resting on her finger about to fly off with the wrong breath, Willow can see it there. It's all come together for her in the last day, inexplicably. But she can't be graceful about all of it, she just can't; she starts to cry in earnest, ugly and cathartic, and repeats, "You can go."
Her hand raises, outstretched as if to touch, and very faintly it starts to glow gold. Her magic comes back, in that moment where she remembers how to trust herself, and the relief and joy counterpoints her loss. It's a balance, it's everything Tara had tried to teach her, and Willow is ready to see it for herself. She stays there like that for several minutes, letting the light grow stronger, inhale by inhale. Her roiling emotions gradually seep away. It's like the world is leveling out beneath her.
Eventually when she's exhausted, it fades again, and she climbs to her feet, and walks back. Tear-streaked and empty and calm.
Network: So I got here just in time for the party, huh? [Willow looks, if anything, tired and exasperated rather than freaked out. She's done her research, she's poked around. She's tried a teleportation spell, a rather reckless one, out of desperation-- to no avail.
Seems like she has to meet people, as the only option left to her. Willow doesn't mind that, not at all, given how social she is, it's just that the people she's left behind are foremost on her mind and she's fretting about them more and more. The knowledge that time stops and they're clones or whatever else she's learned from backreading the network, and the kedan around her, isn't really soothing that. Those are her friends, and their town just fell into a sinkhole and Anya and Spike had died, and she--
She needed to be there.
Worrying at her lip with her teeth, Willow gets herself together, focuses.] Is this, um, normal? Do our... interdimensional kidnappers throw Roman festivals for us a lot? Cause, I gotta say, this isn't usually how kidnapping goes for me. There tends to be more, crying into my sweater.
[She falters. Oh Goddess, this is hard. Meeting new people has always stymied her, made her nervous, but she tries to hold onto the memory of all the good she'd done, the white magic washing over her. With that in mind, Willow finds a smile.] I guess if anyone wants an awkward wallflower to go to the party with, I'm game? I sort of left my, everything, at home. Friends included.
And anyone who knows magic, I'm game for that, too! [This part she gains some momentum on.] I'm not sure how it all works here, and I'd really like to find out before I blow something up with a misplaced hand gesture. ... Which is maybe more likely than you'd think.