Buffy/Tara
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| Pairing | |
|---|---|
| Pairing: | Buffy Summers/Tara Maclay |
| Alternative name(s): | Tara/Buffy, Taffy |
| Gender category: | femslash |
| Fandom: | Buffy the Vampire Slayer |
| Canonical?: | no |
| Prevalence: | |
| Archives: | |
| Other: | |
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Buffy/Tara is an unconventional femslash pairing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom between Buffy Summers and Tara Maclay.
Canon
Fandom
Buffy/Tara is a rarepair in the Buffy fandom. Of the 42,000 Buffy the Vampire Slayer works on Archive of Our Own, just 167 are tagged with the Buffy/Tara pairing. Meanwhile on Fanfiction.net there are 161 works with Buffy and Tara as tagged characters, however the majority of those do not have them as a pairing.
That said, a significant proportion of fan activity for Buffy the Vampire Slayer pre-dates Archive of Our Own; many of the Buffy/Tara fanworks hosted on individual fan sites or archives were never migrated to AO3. While they did not become a common pairing, Buffy/Tara fics could be found in Buffy rarepair sites and archives or were requested in bigger femslash events or challenges.
While Buffy and Tara did not have a lot of interactions in the show between just the two of them, of the ones they did there were a number which happened in emotionally charged situations — particularly in season six — and fans incorporated these as part of their shipping fuel.
Part of the appeal for the pairing was also in how non-judgmental Tara was, especially of what Buffy was experiencing after she was brought back from the dead. After Tara's death, there was a story-line where Buffy was ousted by the rest of Scooby Gang and the potentials, and wondering how this story-line would have played out had Tara been alive has been a discussion point many times across platforms.
Common Tropes or Fanon
- Canon Divergence AU - Rewriting the show's arc to avoid Tara's canonical death is a common route fanworks for this pairing take; alternatively, but less commonly, Tara can sometimes be brought back after her death.
Fanworks
Fanfiction
- What If...? by KineticKid - A popular canon divergent fic on AO3, based on a number of 'What ifs?', the most notable for the Buffy/Tara pairing being 'What if Willow had gone to a different college?'
Tumblr
Archives
- Buffy/Tara at The Mystic Muse
- Buffy/Tara works at Archive of Our Own.
- Buffy/Tara work recs at Buffy femslash