The Problem With Dawn

A LOT of people strongly dislike Dawn. Why? Well, here's my take on it:

She's whiney, and would scream and cry whenever she didn't get her way.

She's incapable of taking care of herself, so she's always dragging characters we actually like into bad situations, as well as getting herself in trouble, which steals away valuable episode time.

Like the Potentials, she stole the attention away from the MAIN main characters. In the earlier seasons, the plots could be a lot more interesting and a lot less slow because they weren't stopping every five seconds to rescue Dawn and/or complain about Dawn.



So, basically, she was whiney and annoying. But, to be honest, what teen ISN'T? 😀 I think the real problem is that we look at how intricate, intelligent, cool, deep, and just plain amazing our main 3 were in High School, and then we look at Dawn, who is nothing short of an obnoxious brat, and go : erm : Even Xander, who many people like to associate with Dawn, was a much deeper and more detailed character in High School, like in the Zeppo.

I really can't explain it, but it's like we're trying to get Dawn to live up to The-Scoobies-In-High-School rep, and she's just failing miserable. 😀

Thoughts?

I think you summed up why I hate Dawn. lol
I mean, she's just an ungrateful little brat.
Even after Buffy killed herself and threatened to let everyone else die, for Dawn, she still was ungrateful towards her sister.

I'm probably one of the only people who still thought she was way annoying in season 7. I know alot of people say she grew up and matured alot, but really, I don't see it. The more I saw of her, the more I hated her 😛

I even like Connor more than her and that's pretty bad. :lmao:

Awww, I like Dawn. I don't think it's fair to necessarily compare her to Buffy, Willow, Xander or Cordelia in their high school years, because they're all different characters with different personalities. Dawn was whiney and she complained and she was ungrateful, but a LOT of girls are at that age, so I just saw her as real. But to be a little ironic after calling her 'real', people also forget that she wasn't a real girl her whole life... She used to be a Key. Maybe those Monks were out of touch with how a real girl would act, having grown up in Sunnydale, and made Dawn a little less mature than she would have been if she had REALLY grown up in Sunnydale. Just a theory! 🙂

I liked Dawn too, people are really on her. I thought the character was good, and Michelle's acting was great. Dawn gets such a bad rep, as does Connor, but I think they are both valuable and good characters 🙂.

HisMrs said:

She used to be a Key. Maybe those Monks were out of touch with how a real girl would act, having grown up in Sunnydale, and made Dawn a little less mature than she would have been if she had REALLY grown up in Sunnydale. Just a theory! 🙂

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haha, that's a brilliant theory.
Explains the fact that Dawn was written for a much younger acresses in an excellent way. 🙂

Also think that the whininess of Dawn is rather exagregated.
She has her moments I admit that. But it isn't that bad. And many times I can even understand her.

/SK

I'll defend Dawn until the day I die. Is she perfect? Not even close. Is she whiny at times? You probably have to be both deaf and blind not to notice that. But like sk I understand her most of the time. Which isn't the same as to say that it isn't annoying.

I dislike Dawn pretty much throughout the entire series, I can't relate to her or understand her at all, she just kind of makes me roll my eyes. I don't hate her and I think Michelle is a fine actor, but the character to me is just - gah, kinda wish she would've have gone away at the end of season 5.

Dawn S5 - Whined, yes, but was entirely justified in doing so, considering she just found out that she didn't exist until 6 months ago, her family aren't her real family, all her memories are fake and an insane hellgod is trying to kill her.
S6 - I hated her in All the Way and Older and Faraway, where she was very whiney and annoying, but I liked her for the rest of the season. Her whining was a consistent thing, for the majority of the season she was just looking for Buffy to act like she gave a crap, like a little abused puppy that nobody would take for walkies.
S7 - Whine-free. Showed some real bravery and initiative in "Lessons" and "Potential". Shame she didn't really have anything to do (seeing as S7 was the Buffy and Spike Show).

So no, I don't hate her at all, in fact I like her. AtW and OaFA make me want to smash her face in with a shovel, but these are isolated incidents. She's not one of my favourite characters, but she's not one of my least favourite either. Riley and Connor are much worse.

My hate on Dawn is connected with my personal life. In the beginning when Buffy couldn't stand her I shared that feelings, and after Buffy started to like her I kept on hating her. I don't know, in the beginning she just ruined my whole image on Buffy as a person, and after I couldn't stand her because of her caracter.

Why I dislike Dawn has nothing to do with whiny or anything else. Being ungrateful to her sister who has given her life(literally) for her, dropped out of college for her, got a job even if she hated the place she was working...and then her sister got kicked out of her own house by a 15-year-old brat... That destroyed the character of Dawn for me. Whiny or crying have nothing to do with me disliking her. Because we can all be whiny and crybabies at some point of our lives.

Also, I do believe Buffy, as a series, was better without Dawn. That is just my personal opinion.

It's wrong to compare Dawn to Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Cordelia because they were sixteen when the show started... Dawn was fourteen.

As seen in flashbacks, Buffy was EXACTLY like Dawn in her pre-Sunnydale days, and she was fifteen then. Dawn matured each season, and in Season Seven she acts just like the Scoobies did in Season One, when they were her age.

Plus, she has a lot to whine and complain about... her family is not her family, she is barely a human, her mother just died, her friend just died, etc.

Willow-Tree said:

As seen in flashbacks, Buffy was EXACTLY like Dawn in her pre-Sunnydale days, and she was fifteen then.

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And Dawn is made from Buffy so...

S5 - Dawn was a whiny brat, but had good reason to be. I am indifferent.
S6 - Still a whiny brat, but with less good reason. She gets on my nerves.
S7 - She's a Scooby. She kicks ass. I love her.

TheVoid68 said:

Dawn S5 - Whined, yes, but was entirely justified in doing so, considering she just found out that she didn't exist until 6 months ago, her family aren't her real family, all her memories are fake and an insane hellgod is trying to kill her.
S6 - I hated her in All the Way and Older and Faraway, where she was very whiney and annoying, but I liked her for the rest of the season. Her whining was not a consistent thing, for the majority of the season she was just looking for Buffy to act like she gave a crap, like a little abused puppy that nobody would take for walkies.
S7 - Whine-free. Showed some real bravery and initiative in "Lessons" and "Potential". Shame she didn't really have anything to do (seeing as S7 was the Buffy and Spike Show).

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I just realised I made a typo that completely changed the meaning of that sentence. It's too late to edit, so correction is in bold.

I like Dawn. I didn't really have any strong feelings towards her character in terms of liking her/hating her when I was watching the show, but I do admit that fandom has coloured my viewing of her in retrospect.

I read a lot of fic, and it tends to be Spuffy and a lot of that has a side of Spike-Dawn friendship. The writers in the fics make Dawn more sympathetic than her character was ever portrayed on screen. So then when I go back to watching the episodes, fanon has kind of tinted my viewing of canon.

So yeah, I don't mind Dawn. Is she annoying at times? Yes. And as Spike said (oh, so eloquently 😀)...

She's not just a blob of energy, she's also a fourteen-year-old hormone bomb. Which one's screwing her up more right now, spin the bloody wheel.

Finding out you didn't exist for fourteen years has gotta be hard...

Willow-Tree said:

As seen in flashbacks, Buffy was EXACTLY like Dawn in her pre-Sunnydale days, and she was fifteen then. Dawn matured each season, and in Season Seven she acts just like the Scoobies did in Season One, when they were her age.

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Very good point, Daniel!! 🙂

I noticed that Dawn is one of those characters that I like more than I did when I first watched them. Maybe because I have been through that stage like she went through, and I am out of it so I can see her journey better. She went through the typical teenage stuff, get angry, wining, and thinking her problems were bigger than anything. But unlike most of us, she had to presented with the fact on a regular basis that her problems weren't the best thing (except the key thing, lol). So she had to deal with feeling like her problems were huge, feeling bad that she felt that way, losing her mom, and being alone a lot because everyone had their own thing going on. I know a lot of girls her age that act like she did (Season 5 & 6) who don't have to deal with nearly the amount of shit that Dawn did. I feel bad that a lot of people hate her. Because she dealt with what she had to the best way she could, like everyone else in the show.

I thought Buffy and Dawn's relationship in S5 was very touching. As a character in herself, I quite liked Dawn, but I can see why she annoys a lot of people. She does whine a lot, which is something I have a high tolerance for (and it's not as though she doesn't have good reasons for it), but I can understand why it gets on people's nerves.

She's also pretty immature, but I think that's understandable - based on the events of Real Me, it seems pretty clear that Buffy and Joyce don't want her exposed to the world of vampires/demons/etc. and are overprotective of her as a results.

I think they did take the immaturity too far at first, though - in her first few episodes, some of the things she does are clearly the behaviour of a younger child - but by about No Place Like Home it's under control.

The above is only referring to S5, of course, but in S6 she's more or less the same. I still quite like her, but as has been pointed out, she doesn't get the same level of character development as Buffy, Willow, Xander and even Cordelia did when they were in high school.

In S7 she stops whining, and then promptly gets sidelined along with every other character that isn't Buffy or Spike (or Andrew).

With Dawn i think she got better as time went by. In season 5 she didn't really contribute anything positive to the series in my view. By series 7 she had grown into a better character yet she still lacked a really good storyline in that series for me. She seemed a bit out of place and in fairness the writers couldn't really do that much with her. I didn't hate the character by any means but she wasn't one of my favourites.

I think Xander is by far a more integral character then Dawn. Ok so he didn't have any powers but he brought light hearted comedy which i think brought a lot to the show. He'd come into a scene much like Spike and out of nowhere make you laugh which was a crucial element in regard to the show. His chemistry as friends with Willow and Buffy was a massive part of the show in the early days and i couldn't imagine him not being in the show, whereas with Dawn i could.

There was a problem with Dawn? I never noticed. I was actually surprised at how much hate she got from fans. She's one of my favourite characters.