Well, the obvious place to start is asking yourself what you consider reality to be. The fact is that whatever alterations have been made by various sources, reality is reality in the Buffyverse. Dawn exists. Connor has a new life. Jasmine came to be. That is how it is and that is reality now.
But if you are asking exactly what exists that should have existed then it's a matter of seperating changed reality from changed perception. Then, on top of that, you also have to take into account that some "altered reality" may in fact just be whatever was meant to be. Confused yet?
Ok, youre picking apart my point here. When I said "reality" I meant everything youve just described. Realitly be added to or taken away from. Fate being changed, whatever. Just putting it the way I did made it simpler and easier for me to make my point
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In the case of Dawn, reality was essentially added to, rather than changed. We have been lead to believe that everything we saw happen over the previous four seasons still happened, just with the gang now having added memory of Dawn being a superficial part of it. She clearly wasn't a part of the Scoobies proper even in the later seasons so it's easy to imagine that her "presence" in the gang's various memories alters very little. Just a case of now they remember that Buffy had an annoying little sister who didn't really get involved that much whilst they were fighting the likes of the Master, Angelus, the Mayor and Adam. From the start of season five though, reality actually was that Dawn was a human rather than a glowing ball of energy so from then on reality was what it was.
I can imagine Dawns presence (even if she wasnt part of the Scoobies) would have a large effect on things. I have a little brother and even though we never did anything together, if he hadnt have been there, things would be drastically different. In Buffys case, things like her dad leaving and telling her mum about her Slayerness would all be drastically different. This would have effected things a lot. So even if Dawn didnt spend so much time with Buffy, she still would have changed a lot. Another example is Buffy finding out about her mum and Dawns book club and the nickname Joyce had for Dawn. She felt jealous that her mum shared this with Dawn but not her. If Dawn hadnt existed she wouldnt have these feelings. It may have changed her attitude towards things and changed a lot of her life. You get what I mean?
With Connor it's more difficult to establish exactly how different things are in the minds of Angel's team but in fact this wasn't a case of reality changing at all. Purely that certain people's perception of what happened had been altered. The events of the previous two years clearly still occured but whatever part Connor had played in them was no longer true, at least as far as anyone remembered. There is a thread for this topic already so I won't dwell on it here as well.
This is kind of the same as the Dawn thing, but in reverse. If Connor wasnt there, things would have changed so much. What happened to Holtz? He came after Angel but if Connor wasnt there, why didnt he kill Angel? He was after revenge after all. What happened to Wes? If he didnt steal Connor, do they still have memories of him betraying them? that would have a major impact on their lives.
Jasmine didn't alter reality at all. She altered fate. She manipulated events to happen as she needed them to in order to be reborn but there was no alteration to reality. All she really changed was what was expected to happen. Or did she? Again, that is another thread that I'm going to start, hehe.
Altering fate has the same effects. If she hadnt, their lives would have taken different paths. We saw that in Birthday. So what would have happened if she didnt fiddle with things. What would their lives be like? Would they even know each other? It has a big effect on how thier lives were and what thier reality was.
The Normal Again thing, I honestly believe that Buffy was imagining the whole asylum thing. I realise that it was left a little open to opinion but at the end of the day either she was dreaming the asylum or everything else was made up, in which case every single thing we are discussing on this board, let alone this thread, is bogus reality, which kinda defeats the object. 😀
I believe she was too but for the sake of arguement I put it in here. After all, we dont know for certain
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The fact that witches can alter memories is actually no more reality altering than if a person gets hypnotized in real life. Again, that is perception being altered rather than reality.
Ok but think about this. They caught Willow changing their memories twice. Whats to say she hasnt done it more than those two times but they just never caught her? In which case things arent the way they thought they were.
What Anya did in The Wish is actually the truest example of reality altering that we have seen in Buffy or Angel. In that case a point in history actually was altered leading to a massive change in the events the followed. This wasn't just about how people saw reality, it really was a totally different world.
Yeah I know it was a different world but the point is, if they can do that, what else can they do?
Another example. Jonathan in Superstar. he changed reality in a big way! He got the spell from someone else so other people could have used the sasme spell. in fact people must have.
