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I have read #37!
And here are some initial thoughts! I may have more later. We shall see.
Thoughts About Buffy and Spike Because Who Am I
- Buffy fantasizing about Spike cracked me up a lot. Mostly because the idea of Buffy going all googly-eyed over Spike while he’s too busy taking care of business to notice is the most hysterical thing ever. And yes, I think it’s significant that after the OTT spacefrakking, she’s imagining something sweet and tender and passionate with Spike—his hand on her cheek while they make love in her mind is beautiful.
- I absolutely adored Buffy calling Spike her dark place. That’s such a huge realization for her—that she needs a dark place and that that’s okay. It reminds me of her telling him in “After Life” that the world is too hard and bright and how in the early part of that season, she kept running to him in the night and having these very soft moments (before everything went to hell, that is). Also, what is S7 but one long sustained scene of Buffy having huge responsibilities and horrible amounts of stress and then her retreating back to Spike so that she can be alone and weak? As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laeria says, having just started S7 for the first time (I hope it's okay to quote you, hon, but you are eloquent and awesome and I can't resist):
YES. Spike is the one she’s never afraid to tell everything. "But you were the guy I told things I wasn’t supposed to tell." YES YES YES YES. He is her confidant, the one she can tell anything, because he will never judge her. Because he really has seen the best and the worst of her and he still accepts her, still gives her that place to rest. Where do the strong go when they need to be weak? Buffy goes to Spike, where she’s safe to be herself and to rest. I LOVE IT.
- I can’t believe that other people really haven’t figured out WHY the fantasizing scenes happen when they do. I see people complaining about when she zones out—“But I want to know what the plan is!” Well, duh. Of course you do. We all do. But it’s just like in the show where they would say, “Here’s the plan” and immediately end the scene so that we don’t hear about the plan before it unfolds. That would be boring. We have to see it when it happens. So it makes total sense that that’s the moment where she zones out.
- Did the fantasizing scenes feel like fan service? Well, yeah, they actually did. I honestly think it was Joss balancing out the two ships, as he did in the last few episodes of the show. And I’m okay with that. I think we all know that he’s never going to come down for one ship or the other—he can’t, without causing a huge backlash. I know some people are saying that they think the point of this is to run all of the ships into the ground to try to wrestle back control of his narrative, and yeah, I can kind of see that. But if Joss thinks he can actually accomplish that, he knows nothing about fandom at all. Shippers are gonna ship, y’all. It’s what we do. The only “end game” relationship I could see Joss writing for Buffy would be having her end up with Xander (which I DO NOT want to happen for various reasons ranging from me not thinking he’s nearly good enough for her to him always being the one to put her on a pedestal and that not being healthy in a relationship to it feeling like a reward for the Nice Guy. But most importantly, it would mean stealing him from Dawn—which would piss me off to no end—or mean that Dawn’s dead—which would piss me off to no end) and I don’t think that’ll happen. So Buffy will never end the series settled into a relationship. Not gonna happen, and I don’t think most of us particularly care whether that happens in canon—that’s what we’ve got fic for. As long as our ship’s respected, we don’t care, right? And Joss is taking care to give us enough hope that there’s no backlash. And yes, it’s kind of sad that in trying to please everyone he ends up pissing off everybody, but that’s the nature of things. So it’s all good.
- They are wearing the same colors. I LOVE when they do that. Like in OMWF where they look so good in red together. Hells yes.
- But honestly, the best parts of the Buffy and Spike-ness are the realistic scenes. The two of them BANTERING YES YES YES and finishing each others’ sentences and teasing each other and carrying on! They’re so very comfortable and casual with each other—Spike laying back with his hands behind his head, Buffy leaning her chin on her folded arms on the back of the chair. I could watch them like this forever.
- “Not alone you don’t!” OH SPIKE. I’m gonna quote Emmie for a little bit because she is a genius, okay?
- “Spike’s touching my butt.” TOO FUNNY, especially when contrasted with the words she thinks right before and the super serious look on her face. Why are these two so hilarious? I do not understand. But I love it.
- FIGHTING SIDE BY SIDE. YES YES YES YES YES YES. That is what I ALWAYS want for my ship and I will take it over OTT and OOC pronouncements of “bestest day ever!”s any day.
- “My hero.” Apparently, Scott Allie wrote that line. Mr. Allie, I take back every mean thing I ever said about you. LOOK AT YOU, EMBRACING THE GENDER REVERSALS. There are absolutely no words to describe how much I absolutely flat-out adore the gender reversals these two do. NO WORDS. And that “My hero”? Where Spike’s the impressed girlfriend? GREATEST THING EVER OKAY?
Some Thoughts About the Other, Less Important Things
- People keep getting confused about the “I speak Fyarl.” I don’t get why they’re confused. Spike’s clearly explaining that he speaks demon languages, he hears what’s going on in the demon world. Plus, it’s a great throwback to “A New Man,” where he’s the only one who understands what Fyarl!Giles is saying. I love those sorts of tie-ins.
- Xander/Dawn is cuteish but a little too sappy for me. Besides, I still think Dawn can do better. But I’m pretty whatever about it.
- Faith and Giles. Faith seems really down, understandably. I like this Faith, though I’m still angry that she and Buffy aren’t friends. I really want that for them. Also Giles has some sort of plan, clearly. He and Faith will team up to do something. We’ll see.
- Angel is just a ginormous mess, and I feel so sorry for his fans and so glad that Elyssa isn’t reading the comics because it would hurt you so bad, babe. There’s really nothing good here. He makes messes, he gets discouraged, he’s being manipulated by the universe. None of it is good, and he’s not in character at all, and it does not make me happy. Not to mention that I’m still pissed that there’s still be no mention of Connor or Cordy or any of the people who have been his life for years. It’s very discouraging, and I hope he comes back from it in S9, but it’ll be too late for the writers to claim that he’s in character at all.
- The Master being back still seems random and weird to me. I'm sure there's a big metaphorical point behind it, but I haven't seen any evidence in the text to explain what it is yet. I'm sure Maggie and Emmie will explain it to me later, though. Probably it's just tied to the "back to the beginning" stuff, but is that what S7 was supposed to be about? Whatever.
- The plot is still silly and unwieldy to me. I feel like it’s all meta and that doesn’t necessarily make for a good story. Meh. I’m just here to make sure my boy and my girl aren’t ruined beyond all recognition and also to make sure Dawn doesn’t die. Those are the things I care about because who I am I but a huge stan for the Summers girls and Mr. the Bloody.
Thoughts About Buffy and Spike Because Who Am I
- Buffy fantasizing about Spike cracked me up a lot. Mostly because the idea of Buffy going all googly-eyed over Spike while he’s too busy taking care of business to notice is the most hysterical thing ever. And yes, I think it’s significant that after the OTT spacefrakking, she’s imagining something sweet and tender and passionate with Spike—his hand on her cheek while they make love in her mind is beautiful.
- I absolutely adored Buffy calling Spike her dark place. That’s such a huge realization for her—that she needs a dark place and that that’s okay. It reminds me of her telling him in “After Life” that the world is too hard and bright and how in the early part of that season, she kept running to him in the night and having these very soft moments (before everything went to hell, that is). Also, what is S7 but one long sustained scene of Buffy having huge responsibilities and horrible amounts of stress and then her retreating back to Spike so that she can be alone and weak? As
laeria says, having just started S7 for the first time (I hope it's okay to quote you, hon, but you are eloquent and awesome and I can't resist):The last few eps [Showtime - Killer in Me] have basically been saying "Look how bleak and awful and frayed everything is. See? Now have five to ten minutes of perfectly organic and love-filled oasis of calm, fun, natural Buffy/Spike togetherness. Now black to the soulless desert of joyless suffering that is everybody else!" and I love this. The Scoobies deserve to feel hopeless and helpless and useless after what they've put Buffy through last season; Buffy certainly deserves having a Special Corner of Giddy Serenity, and Spike deserves being that corner. It's all fair.
And what I love most is how Buffy ~likes~ Spike now, it's what I always craved and never quite got, because, yeah, she used to trust him, use him, confide in him, lose herself in him, find herself in him and liberate his kittens - but, while she probably sometimes did like him, she never let herself show it until now, and it's so relaxing. Rewarding. The likingness.
YES. Spike is the one she’s never afraid to tell everything. "But you were the guy I told things I wasn’t supposed to tell." YES YES YES YES. He is her confidant, the one she can tell anything, because he will never judge her. Because he really has seen the best and the worst of her and he still accepts her, still gives her that place to rest. Where do the strong go when they need to be weak? Buffy goes to Spike, where she’s safe to be herself and to rest. I LOVE IT.
- I can’t believe that other people really haven’t figured out WHY the fantasizing scenes happen when they do. I see people complaining about when she zones out—“But I want to know what the plan is!” Well, duh. Of course you do. We all do. But it’s just like in the show where they would say, “Here’s the plan” and immediately end the scene so that we don’t hear about the plan before it unfolds. That would be boring. We have to see it when it happens. So it makes total sense that that’s the moment where she zones out.
- Did the fantasizing scenes feel like fan service? Well, yeah, they actually did. I honestly think it was Joss balancing out the two ships, as he did in the last few episodes of the show. And I’m okay with that. I think we all know that he’s never going to come down for one ship or the other—he can’t, without causing a huge backlash. I know some people are saying that they think the point of this is to run all of the ships into the ground to try to wrestle back control of his narrative, and yeah, I can kind of see that. But if Joss thinks he can actually accomplish that, he knows nothing about fandom at all. Shippers are gonna ship, y’all. It’s what we do. The only “end game” relationship I could see Joss writing for Buffy would be having her end up with Xander (which I DO NOT want to happen for various reasons ranging from me not thinking he’s nearly good enough for her to him always being the one to put her on a pedestal and that not being healthy in a relationship to it feeling like a reward for the Nice Guy. But most importantly, it would mean stealing him from Dawn—which would piss me off to no end—or mean that Dawn’s dead—which would piss me off to no end) and I don’t think that’ll happen. So Buffy will never end the series settled into a relationship. Not gonna happen, and I don’t think most of us particularly care whether that happens in canon—that’s what we’ve got fic for. As long as our ship’s respected, we don’t care, right? And Joss is taking care to give us enough hope that there’s no backlash. And yes, it’s kind of sad that in trying to please everyone he ends up pissing off everybody, but that’s the nature of things. So it’s all good.
- They are wearing the same colors. I LOVE when they do that. Like in OMWF where they look so good in red together. Hells yes.
- But honestly, the best parts of the Buffy and Spike-ness are the realistic scenes. The two of them BANTERING YES YES YES and finishing each others’ sentences and teasing each other and carrying on! They’re so very comfortable and casual with each other—Spike laying back with his hands behind his head, Buffy leaning her chin on her folded arms on the back of the chair. I could watch them like this forever.
- “Not alone you don’t!” OH SPIKE. I’m gonna quote Emmie for a little bit because she is a genius, okay?
One of the reasons I love them together is that Buffy doesn't hide her dark side from him, isn't afraid to let him see all of her. Spike's seen the best and the worse of her, literally, and he knows with perfect clarity exactly what she is: one hell of a woman. And Buffy knows this. That intimacy that was established in Touched? That is unique to Spike and Buffy. No one knows her that way, no one has followed her into the dark place and loved her so unconditionally.
This isn't to say that Xander couldn't love her like that. It's just that when Buffy retreats, Xander doesn't follow. This happened in A Beautiful Sunset. Xander will tell Buffy he's worried about her spending too much time alone, but he's not going to jump on Buffy's back when she tries to fly off and say, "Not alone, you don't!" Buffy is a character who is constantly retreating and going it alone. Spike's good for her because she'll walk off into the shadows and he'll follow her--heh, it's the good kind of stalking. And I understand why Buffy does this--she emotionally retreats, she goes off alone and tells others to not follow her, but the last thing she wants is to be alone. So it's a gift when she tells others to stay back, but that they come to her anyways. But hey, Xander does demand to be taken along in this issue, too. It's just not as personally connected to Buffy as the way Spike does it. Spike is closer to Buffy because he refused to respect her boundaries and had to learn how to pull back, to not be so close to her, skin to skin, shadow to shadow. With Xander, he would need to learn when to not respect her boundaries so unfailingly--to get in her face and not let her be alone when she's bent on it. But then, I don't think Xander is going to be knocking on that boundary door anytime soon because he's with Dawn....
Buffy can't walk out into the light metaphorically. This isn't about walking away from her darkness and into the light. The darkness is inside her. And I'm not talking about the Slayer darkness. I'm talking about the human darkness inside all of us. The pettiness, the resentment, the anger, the rage, the selfishness, the frustration, the hate, the lust--all the human darkness. Buffy can't walk away from the dark inside her because it's not something to be excised, to be drowned in light, but something to be embraced. She's ashamed of her darkness and she's afraid to show it to Xander and Willow.
That dark place? That's the last wall of intimacy for Buffy....Spike's already in the dark place...
- “Spike’s touching my butt.” TOO FUNNY, especially when contrasted with the words she thinks right before and the super serious look on her face. Why are these two so hilarious? I do not understand. But I love it.
- FIGHTING SIDE BY SIDE. YES YES YES YES YES YES. That is what I ALWAYS want for my ship and I will take it over OTT and OOC pronouncements of “bestest day ever!”s any day.
- “My hero.” Apparently, Scott Allie wrote that line. Mr. Allie, I take back every mean thing I ever said about you. LOOK AT YOU, EMBRACING THE GENDER REVERSALS. There are absolutely no words to describe how much I absolutely flat-out adore the gender reversals these two do. NO WORDS. And that “My hero”? Where Spike’s the impressed girlfriend? GREATEST THING EVER OKAY?
Some Thoughts About the Other, Less Important Things
- People keep getting confused about the “I speak Fyarl.” I don’t get why they’re confused. Spike’s clearly explaining that he speaks demon languages, he hears what’s going on in the demon world. Plus, it’s a great throwback to “A New Man,” where he’s the only one who understands what Fyarl!Giles is saying. I love those sorts of tie-ins.
- Xander/Dawn is cuteish but a little too sappy for me. Besides, I still think Dawn can do better. But I’m pretty whatever about it.
- Faith and Giles. Faith seems really down, understandably. I like this Faith, though I’m still angry that she and Buffy aren’t friends. I really want that for them. Also Giles has some sort of plan, clearly. He and Faith will team up to do something. We’ll see.
- Angel is just a ginormous mess, and I feel so sorry for his fans and so glad that Elyssa isn’t reading the comics because it would hurt you so bad, babe. There’s really nothing good here. He makes messes, he gets discouraged, he’s being manipulated by the universe. None of it is good, and he’s not in character at all, and it does not make me happy. Not to mention that I’m still pissed that there’s still be no mention of Connor or Cordy or any of the people who have been his life for years. It’s very discouraging, and I hope he comes back from it in S9, but it’ll be too late for the writers to claim that he’s in character at all.
- The Master being back still seems random and weird to me. I'm sure there's a big metaphorical point behind it, but I haven't seen any evidence in the text to explain what it is yet. I'm sure Maggie and Emmie will explain it to me later, though. Probably it's just tied to the "back to the beginning" stuff, but is that what S7 was supposed to be about? Whatever.
- The plot is still silly and unwieldy to me. I feel like it’s all meta and that doesn’t necessarily make for a good story. Meh. I’m just here to make sure my boy and my girl aren’t ruined beyond all recognition and also to make sure Dawn doesn’t die. Those are the things I care about because who I am I but a huge stan for the Summers girls and Mr. the Bloody.
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I loved that "dark place" line, I found it very intimate and comforting, but I'm not 100% sure she said it out loud! When I first read through it, I figured the kiss panel was the only part that was a fantasy, and I based that on the light being all glowy and the decor disappearing. But
(See, this is why I get annoyed by dream sequences!)
I'm so glad we got such an awesome Spuffy fix this month, because it'll counter-balance all the fretting I'm about to do about Joss possibly killing off Dawn. *wobbly lip*
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EXACTLY! The fantasies were the least of it.
but I'm not 100% sure she said it out loud!
I think she probably didn't. Still, it reveals something important about where she's at mentally. And it's hard to figure out just where the fantasies begin and end.
because it'll counter-balance all the fretting I'm about to do about Joss possibly killing off Dawn. *wobbly lip*
I WILL BE SO UPSET. But I think maybe it's too obvious? Like, everyone thinks she's going to bite it so maybe she won't? Or she'll be brought back? I AM SO NERVOUS!
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I agree that what matters most is that Buffy thought those words at all, but I really wish Spike had heard them. Grrrr. Then again, I figure he knows, by now. No speeches necessary. :)
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I will never stop laughing at this!
I also bounce back and forth between thinking Spike knows and words aren't necessary and wishing she'd just SAY IT ALREADY. These kids!
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She's sitting in the chair with the towel around her neck as she natters on about spakking. Where she reaches out to Spike and apologizes, she's standing and the towel is in her hand. Same w/ kiss, etc.
When she snaps back to reality she's sitting with the towel around her neck.
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So, possibly she never got up in the first place.
I kind of think the fantasy starts when her eyes skirt off to the side in the close on the page before. I don't know.
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I think they played it straight; Buffy's fantasy started when the panel turned yellow, and was triggered by them standing with their faces close together, just as her next fantasy was triggered by him saying "Why don't we get you into bed?"
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