Part of the appeal of imaginative literature lies in the pleasure of experiencing secondary worlds. J. R. R. Tolkien notes that we enjoy the "arresting strangeness" of fantasy, provided it possesses "the inner consistency of reality" ("On Fairy Stories"). Similarly, Darko Suvin accounts for the appeal of science fiction by positing the "interaction of estrangement and cognition" (Metamorphoses of Science Fiction), the perception of difference between our primary world and the secondary world of the fictional text. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is perhaps unique among television series in its creative exploitation of this tension between the real and the unreal; series creator Joss Whedon himself noted that one of his goals for BtVS was "to create a fantasy that was emotionally completely realistic" (Fresh Air interview, 9 May 2000). This tension between the real and the unreal is nowhere more brilliantly depicted than in the musical episode from Season Six, "Once More, with Feeling" (episode 6.7). Drawing upon M. M. Bakhtin’s theories of incorporated genres (as well as relevant BtVS scholarship), this paper will explore the episode’s deployment of the stylized genre of the musical, the way its own dialectic of fantasy and reality is analogous to the dialectic between the Buffyverse and our own world, and contributes to the Season Six story arc.