Hey, y'all!

[lirazel]

Get your Xander!hate on! eleusis_walks is doing his 30 Days of BtVS, and even though there are many, many topics I strongly disagree with him on, he is always thoughtful and awesome and interesting. And the things I do agree with him on? I agree violently.

Like our mutual hate for the ultimate Nice Guy Xander Harris. He basically lists every single hateful thing that Xander ever says/does and I am glorying in my hate. He also has a love-post devoted to Anya, which I haven't gotten to read yet, but I know is wonderful because anything involving Anya is wonderful. And eleusis_walks loves Dawn and Cordy and Jenny and basically a ton of awesome ladies, so I forgive him for not loving my boy and my girl enough. ;D

So join the hate fest! Or if you like Xander...well, I would like to hear why. Because it is beyond my understanding.

Comments

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

It's always so fascinating to me how we react to different people. No matter what character you're talking about, it's pretty much guaranteed that if you love them, someone else will hate them, and if you hate them, someone else will love them.

I don't really find him funny or find anything in him to relate to. Also, I just had a visceral reaction to his Nice Guyness from the first few seasons and never got over it. So it's very much an emotional reaction on my part and I'm not even going to pretend that it's balanced. He just hits all of my...what's the opposite of kinks? Squicks? He hits all of my squicks.

[shamoogity.livejournal.com]

But see, I don't think it's guaranteed that if you love one character, someone else will hate them. There are characters who are just poorly written and don't inspire any sort of feeling one way or another because they are not really characters, just plot devices. I think fandom for Joss's work is so huge because it's really easy to get passionate and riled up about his characters one way or another.

As for it being very much an emotional, visceral reaction for you, it totally is for me too. I tried to give you some sort of rational explanation, but a lot of it was just a feeling. I guess it's kind of like how we're all attracted to different people in real life as well. There always tends to be this huge inexplicable factor. And it's quite possible that if I had gotten into BtVS in my twenties, when I was more aware of feminist issues, etc., Xander wouldn't have been a favourite of mine. It's hard to separate my Xander love from who I was from the ages of 11-17 when I was watching the show for the first time.