Annoyance of the day:

[lirazel]

People who flat-out say that Buffy didn't love Spike despite the fact that she said she did.

She said she did. The only reason we have to believe that she didn't is one thing Spike said, and since when do people believe anything that comes out of Spike's mouth? Boy can speak the truth that no one else will, but he also says a ton of b.s., and everyone knows it.

I just hatehatehatehatehatehate all of these people sitting around telling a woman (and it would be a woman--if a man said, it I think a lot less people would disagree with her) who finds it nearly impossible to say the words "I love you" even to people she regards as family (remember "Intervention"? That's canon) that she doesn't love someone when she said she did.

I don't have a problem with people quibbling over the nature of her love. You can argue that she didn't love him romantically or as much as she did Angel or whatever (I would disagree with the first one and re: the second, I would remind you that, as the_royal_anna says, we don't love in amounts. We love in ways). That's legit. But to say, flat-out, that she didn't love him even though she says she did takes agency away from Buffy in a way that I am entirely uncomfortable with and that DRIVES ME CRAZY, OKAY. If she had said she loved Riley (she didn't, did she?), I would be pissed at people saying she didn't love him, either. Uuuugh why does this annoy me so much?

Comments

[laeria.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm glad you meant Joss! I'm not with the coherence today (too many differential equations), so I was trying to find a nice, non-point-and-grunty way to disagree with the idea of Spike equating love with tragedy and pain. (He... I mean, I suppose he does equate love with pain some of the time, but I figure that's more a vampire thing. He doesn't have Angel's apparent need to have epic doomed romances with tiny blondes who're fond of scenery.)

Also, so agreed on the ultimatum. Especially since I think Buffy really, really did love Riley and the whole debacle was because she was expected to behave a certain (gender-dependent) way that wouldn't have reflected her current mindset and personality. So, basically, that relationship was killed by societal expectations. (Also by Joss and his murky love affair with tragic love, obviously.)

[boot-the-grime.livejournal.com]

Well, I think that Briley was doomed from the start because Riley was such a traditional, conventional "John Wayne" guy and expected those gender-dependent things from Buffy.

[laeria.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, he was, but I think he had also initially been willing to change this. And then the Initiative fell apart and he was left kinda directionless, and maybe he started relying more heavily on external conventions from that point onwards.