I know for me and many viewers/fans, Dawn as younger-sister is really hard to shake, even though she's almost an adult by series end and can be aged up regardless, she feels like a younger-sister to me.
Interesting. I never particularly identified with any of the Scooby Gang (Willow if I had to, but she was way more genius than I ever was, plus way prettier) but both Tara and Dawn both pinged me very much as "Oh, she's so very much like me." So I in fact tend to think of them (Dawn in particular) as their own entities rather than in connection to the primary characters. And I never think of Dawn as little sister. I sometimes use the problematic of her being Buffy's sister when I'm ficcing (in Dawn/Spike, for example) but I mostly just think of her as another character and she is very much one of my primary objects of identification/desire.
I was I think in elementary school when I read BSC, and I thought of the characters as being So Much Older Than Me, with that distant awe kids have for older kids. I now think of them (when I think of canon) as annoyingly existing in a younger than me 'verse that doesn't make a whole lot of reality sense; and when I think of fic I generally think of them as college age (since it makes for easy sexualizing while still maintaining a lot of the canon dynamics, plus I'm sure the fact that college still feels like the default norm for me after four years there).
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Interesting. I never particularly identified with any of the Scooby Gang (Willow if I had to, but she was way more genius than I ever was, plus way prettier) but both Tara and Dawn both pinged me very much as "Oh, she's so very much like me." So I in fact tend to think of them (Dawn in particular) as their own entities rather than in connection to the primary characters. And I never think of Dawn as little sister. I sometimes use the problematic of her being Buffy's sister when I'm ficcing (in Dawn/Spike, for example) but I mostly just think of her as another character and she is very much one of my primary objects of identification/desire.
I was I think in elementary school when I read BSC, and I thought of the characters as being So Much Older Than Me, with that distant awe kids have for older kids. I now think of them (when I think of canon) as annoyingly existing in a younger than me 'verse that doesn't make a whole lot of reality sense; and when I think of fic I generally think of them as college age (since it makes for easy sexualizing while still maintaining a lot of the canon dynamics, plus I'm sure the fact that college still feels like the default norm for me after four years there).