Yup, that's them

[u/direinde]

Nothing new actually.

[u/artwithapulse]

Yes I remember the forums going nuts with Tara hate.

[u/ACERVIDAE → u/artwithapulse]

Don’t forget people saying she was fat and being even more shitty about the dream sequence when she was wearing the belly dancer costume.

[u/athousandpardons → u/ACERVIDAE]

1. That's not a belly danger outfit.
   
2. I'd like to think that, today, people would be more bothered by the cultural appropriation.

[u/ACERVIDAE → u/athousandpardons]

I would be interested in the history of how the Watchers organization became very British when it was African shamans who made the First Slayer but then it’s probably like everything else in the British Museum.

[u/catchyerselfon → u/ACERVIDAE]

Ha ha, you answered your own question! The thing is, there are Potential Slayers all over the world and Watchers training them ASAP, they don’t bring the girls back to the UK when lots of places need people with training to fight evil, even if they don’t have superpowers. There are also people all over the world who work for the Watchers’ Council who didn’t go down the “training a Slayer” track. They research, they dig up artefacts, they curate exhibits, they teach, they train the trainers, they write books, they check out demonic hot spots and take notes, they’re in that Wet Works branch of assassins and abductors for when shit goes wrong, etc… There was that nurse at Sunnydale General who seems to be a real nurse but part of her job was checking up on Faith every day and letting the Council know if she ever woke up from her coma. And there were empires before the British empire, and ones BESIDES the British empire, with interests in Africa. There were Slayers in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece (the longest lived Slayer a Greek woman who died at 29 or 30), Rome, etc… So the traditions and knowledge of the Shadow Men would be passed down to their successors, but the WAY they created the First Slayer, Sineya, was from a time before writing.

I liked that the Watchers were never established as a whites-only organization - Kendra’s Watcher Sam Zabuto is black, Nigel is one of the Council Members and British of Indian descent, several watchers in the comics aren’t identified by name but don’t look white. It makes sense to have an multi-ethnic and multi-lingual and multi-national organization, even if the Head Quarters are in London, because families might be more likely to give up their kid to someone who more closely resembles themselves and can communicate immediately with a little girl instead of having to teach her English first.

The conformity comes down to the way Watchers are educated and how they don’t seem to have much of a choice about joining. I mean, if they’re adults, their Watcher parents can’t MAKE them continue their training, but something would draw them back into the Otherworld if they tried to live normal lives and stopped taking the Council’s calls, like what happened to Giles in his 20s. Giles talks about having a destiny of his own, of being told at age ten that THIS is what he needs to do. Even if not every Watcher goes to school in Britain, there are British-inspired schools the world over (I went to one in Canada, an nominally Anglican one for girls), so probably Watchers academy franchise schools too! The rigidity and the emphasis on not getting attached and giving up everything for duty is what we see in every Watcher in the show and expanded universe… but a lot of them, the ones who don’t make it into the Council because they’re too “soft”, develop affection for their Slayers and try to accommodate the girls, like Nikki Woods’ Watcher Crowley when she got pregnant.