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

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking just about going in. I'm talking about her running after Riley in "Into the Woods" or climbing like a bean-pole in "As You Were."

But that's very much after she'd been in a relationship with him. Buffy and Spike never reached that point. If anything, their interaction in S7 is not unlike the mid-S4 Buffy/Riley lead-up (Just if Riley had died before consummation). Comparisons between already-relationshipped Buffy/Riley and not-really-relationshipped Buffy/Spike aren't equivalent.

And, as I pointed out, comparing not-really-relationshipped Buffy/Spike with Buffy's previous not-really-relationships shows a distinct similarity in pattern.

In your initial comment I replied to, you described Buffy in this way: "And I say it taking into account the way that Buffy has behaved in the past, leaping onto Riley the moment he arrives, eager to date Robin, giggling and smiling like a school-girl the moment that Angel arrives in town."

I read that as you characterizing her as someone who enthusiastically and without reservation jumps into romantic relationships or situations. Was I wrong in my understanding of what you were arguing?

But I also have this whole world of doubt about how Joss intended it and how what he writes shades what I did see.

I feel like we're talking at cross-purposes. I've emphasized previously: I'm not trying to persuade you to like what happened in canon. I'm disagreeing with some of your assertions about what happened.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

But that's very much after she'd been in a relationship with him. Buffy and Spike never reached that point.

I honestly think we're talking at cross-purposes. And that's okay. We're basing it all on a lot of things and the way that we view things. I think, however, that there's enough differences in what we each feel that we saw that we're really not speaking quite the same language. I'm not sure how to overcome that other than wish we could see things the way that the other person sees. We probably aren't going to reach that point. We've had too much time to let our own views settle and become comfortable and, as close as anything in subjective fiction can be, our own personal version of fact. And our starting points are both distant and close enough that our language is just distant enough to cause confusion by dialect. It's a bit like how people say that the American's and the British are separated by their common language. We say one thing thinking one thing and the other person hears it just enough differently that we miscommunicate.

For example: I read that as you characterizing her as someone who enthusiastically and without reservation jumps into romantic relationships or situations

That isn't what I thought I said and it isn't what I meant. I meant that she viewed those men in a different light than Spike and that different light influences her expectations of how she thinks she should feel. And that that thought process isn't inconsequential.