lirazel | Annoyance of the day:

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Annoyance of the day:

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?

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When Spike comes back, after the initial few months of flinching, ignoring, head kicking, and put downs, Buffy shows him extraordinary (non-sexual, non-romantic) caring behavior. But we (and Spike) don't see her dressing up to go patrolling with him, or big smiles just for showing up, or anything in that obvious romantic signals realm.

Well, I don't think you can expect her to be warm to him initially because the last time she saw him, he tried to rape her. She's extremely, extremely tentative with him at first, and understandably so. And then from "Never Leave Me" on, when she decides he's worth it, she does show that extraordinary caring that you mention.

I can understand why Spike (and some viewers) miss the dressing up and the big smiles, etc., but I honestly think the extreme honesty and vulnerability she shows with him (honestly, he's the only one she allows to see her be weak) are far more intimate than any of those things would be. I also think it would be...backtracking? for them to date and hold hands and give each other teddy bears that say "I wuv you berry much" (Logan Echolls is a genius, you know). Because they're so much more than that. They've gone so much further than that with emotions and with honesty and with understanding each other, that they aren't going to go to that place, and I wouldn't necessarily want them to. Not to say they can't be lighthearted and flirt (because that is adorable, though we see some of that in "Potential," for instance), but just that their relationship isn't going to look like a courtship because they're beyond that phase.

It's like how Buffy rejects calling Spike her boyfriend. I wouldn't describe him that way, either. He's more and other than that. He's her partner. But a label as common as "boyfriend" could never convey all they are to each other.

At least, that's how I see it.

100% agreed. We have an accord! (Except I think Spike would have been over the moon about the teddy, if Buffy gave him one.)

Yay!

(Oh, he certainly would. He's a sap, is our boy.)

I just don't like comparing Buffy's relationships, though it makes sense that Spike would. It doesn't work for me, though. :D

I don't mind comparing 'em, because Spike is the best boyfriend she ever had! Even if we're not calling him that.

Hahaha! Well, when you put it that way...

Well, I don't think you can expect her to be warm to him initially

But that's really not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that it's in how she views them as men, whether she considers them to be 'respectable partners' or whether she struggles with the idea that he's actually beneath her.

And, for me, yes, it takes words because so many terrible things had been said between them. And there had been such profound miscommunication. The air needed to be cleared with honest words and one's deathbed isn't always the most appropriate place for that...because in that instance there are other factors in play.

I think there is a huge difference between the shame and "he's beneath me" feelings of season 6, and season 7 though. You seem to be judging it on Buffy didn't have big smiles and jumping into Spike's arms, ergo she viewed him is not quite acceptable. But that generally wasn't Buffy in seasons 5-7, she wasn't beaming around her friends most of the time either. She had an OT response to Riley's return in season 6 when she was in the midst of depression and saw him as someone there to rescue her. Would that initial glow have continued if he had stuck around as a part of her life? (And this is the guy who left partly because Buffy was unable to cry and share things with him). Ditto with Angel when she gets carried away with nostalgia when she sees him again in End Of Days, but even after that she's sending him away and not prepared to open her life to him again. How can those brief reactions count as more meaningful more than her sharing her life from day to day with Spike, and opening up to him at her lowest points?

She never had that excited reaction to Spike carrying her away from her everyday life precisely because he was always there in her life. (And her response to his return in season 7 has to be judged in terms of the bathroom incident, but even then she does look notably sad in Villains and asks Clem when he will be back, in Lessons she is somewhat gentle with him and overwhelmed at seeing him again, seeks him out in Beneath You when she gets the job at the school.) Even her reaction to seeing Spike in her living room in BY is kind of big eyes/catch my breath, and well I don't know exactly how to put it :P But there's certainly no eyeroll or annoyance that he's back, it's just all very tanged up with their last encounter, not to mention her friends and sister all now knowing about the AR which makes things extra awkward. Considering that this is supposedly the man she was using for convienience only in season 6 though, her reaction in early season 7 does say a lot to me about feelings still being there, and having been there all along. Even after everything she is still almost prepared to accept that he has changed in BY without knowing about the soul, and looks disappointed when Spike snaps back in the bronze and claims that he was just playing her

If anything her reactions to Spike in season 7 became the opposite of shame with her prioritizing Spike above her friends much of the time, look at how she didn't hesitate to rush to Spike's side when Xander had been stabbed through with a sword, or how she unashamedly argued with Giles about giving Spike a chance with the chip. So much so that in LMPTM she's openly defying Giles in refusing to keep Spike chained up for safety.

I viewed Buffy's hesitation in season 7 as being about her romantic baggage for all men and, as gabrielleabelle says, she was exactly the same in season 4 with Riley. Her cookie dough speech to Angel, and her confused speech to Spike in First Date and in End Of Days are in line with that. And Spike was the only one of three who wasn't prepared to push for more at that stage and immediately backed away from their talk in EOD as opposed to Riley venting his frustration in Doomed when Buffy wasn't prepared to give it a chance (talking her into dating him) or Angel demanding to know if Spike is her boyfriend and if she ever still thinks of a future with him (getting his sometimes I still think of a future with you). Spike didn't get a speech like that with Buffy being able to express her feelings for him exactly because he was immediately (and understandably) backing away from it with a let's just forget it. I can understand thinking that Buffy should have given him more after everything, but that just wasn't Buffy. Her response to Angel in Chosen even is a huge contrast to all the teary forever's from earlier seasons. And yet it's generally only Spuffy that's compared to that early B/A romance, and the fact that Buffy wasn't even that sure of a future with Angel any more (HUGE contrast to her tears in The Prom) is brushed over

I think there is a huge difference between the shame and "he's beneath me" feelings of season 6, and season 7 though

And I'm not sure how we're supposed to know that. Where's this moment of demarkation being displayed in Buffy's reaction? It's not in "Beneath You." That's for sure.

There's no threshold visibly crossed anywhere. No place where we can actually point to and say the change happened here. It's all one timeline. One universe. One continuous sequence of events. So, I honestly do not know where that particular line was drawn or crossed in her eyes. And more often than not...Buffy wasn't saying.

Everyone says there aren't words and there don't need to be. Well, if I'm supposed to simply look at her and know... I don't. I just don't. Her nonverbal cues are so restrained that I simply do not know. I do know she's capable of giving words and gestures to others, so she isn't actually physically incapable. What that means, however, is up for interpretation. And interpretations abound. There are all sorts of implications being drawn by that fact, and they vary substantially depending who and which fan faction is drawing them. There are a plethora of interpreations of what Buffy may or may not have felt and why. And how it was expressed and why it wasn't. What that feeling was, and what file heading that feeling should be filed under. So, yeah, a little more verbal communication would have been helpful. Maybe then it wouldn't be a subject for incessant debate all these years later. But Joss wasn't going to be handing out that sort of clarification. He actually wasn't even interested in it.

And I'm not sure how we're supposed to know that. Where's this moment of demarkation being displayed in Buffy's reaction? It's not in "Beneath You." That's for sure.

Never Leave Me? That's the episode when she starts feeding Spike his blood bags by hand, and giving him speeches about believing that he has it in him to be a good man. Or even in Sleeper. She does have an unsure reaction towards souled Spike between BY-Sleeper granted, and doesn't quite know how to react around him. Once she saw how remorseful and suicidal he was in Sleeper, I think that marked her turning point from the rather brusque "you have to get out of this basement" running away Buffy from earlier in season 7. Buffy became so unashamedly wrapped up in Spike as the season went on that I never got any indication that she still viewed Spike as beneath her or Other. Once she'd had time to adjust, the soul really did make all the difference to her, hence the frequent mocking in fandom of "he has a soul now". If we're at a stage when other characters in the show are complaining about how openly wrapped up Buffy is in Spike, I find it hard to see how Buffy can be ashamed of that connction with him.

It was more the case of being stunted emotionally when it came to sorting out her romantic feelings and still feeling like cookie dough, not Spike being the one exception of the man that she couldn't bring herself to love and see as being on her level. This is the man that she spend her possible last night on earth with in Chosen. After sending a pouting Angel away no less. That's just not how you treat your back-up or your source of secret shame. That's how you treat the man in your life, and Buffy openly tells Angel (who is being dismissive of Spike in a way that doesn't embarass Buffy one bit) that that's what Spike is to her

On the other hand, she also cries out in "Selfless" that she loved Angel more than she would ever love anything else in this life. And she won't give her relationship with Spike a name nor anything really beyond the present. Meanwhile she does call back Angel with "Maybe... someday." And those were also set into place by the writers to keep that ship hanging on.

And there was a time when I was far more willing to concede that Chosen maked a change. That maybe she really, really meant it. And it resonated.

And now I have to reconcile that with the blatant slap in the face of Joss writing their reunion with her -- in the Joss-written-issue -- telling Angel point-blank that Spike was 'convenient' and with the Joss-dig of having Buffy assuring Angel that Spike was beneath him. Whatever Joss's motivations for writing that scene that way (honestly, the deliberate way the knife was twisted... I'm not sure that I don't consider it to be pure meaness), it left its mark. Heck, even people who hated Spuffy took a step back with "Whoa! That was harsh!" So what do I make of it all now? I honestly do not know.

On the other hand, she also cries out in "Selfless" that she loved Angel more than she would ever love anything else in this life.

In the context of a discussion about Buffy making the decision to kill Anya. I never understood why that moment was recalled as something swoonworthy and shippy, it was actually a very sad moment of how much the relationship with Angel had shaped Buffy into the person she is today. She's not remembering Angel in the context of a discussion with her friends about who was your great love, it's about remembering how much pain that love caused her. Her having an intense reaction to remembering killing Angel at the end of season 2 is understandable, and I don't think she ever will love again in the way that she did when she was 16/17 with her first love

But then even her feelings from Angel switch from the teary-eyed "I want my life to be with you" love. Most B/A shippers loved Chosen, but in their position man I would have been pissed that they didn't leave B/A as they were in IWRY. Because that Chosen encounter was so far removed from how a schoolgirl Buffy had once loved Angel, and couldn't imagine her life without him in it. Chosen pretty much destroyed the whole star-crossed lovers theme by having Angel wanting to believe that he could get back together with Buffy, and Buffy saying "maybe someday". I thought their tragedy was supposed to be that they would be together if they could, but fate or whatever wasn't making it possible...

I'm not familiar with the comics and view them as separate from the tv canon, but yeah that does sound odd if it was Joss writing that. It's a pretty far cry from "Love him when you say you love him, love her when you say you don't" and "I left B/A in the graveyard" (rough remembrance of those quotes). Has Joss ever been asked what he meant with his writing of Angel and Spike in the comics? Judging by Joss's episodes on the series itself (Who Are You sexy encounter even, Family with Spike coming to the rescue, The Gift "you treat me like a man", OMWF love song and first kiss, even Lesson's encounter, Chosen) I don't believe he would ever have written Spuffy like that for the actual tv series. It's funny because Marti and Jane often got "blamed" for the writing of romantic Spuffy, but I always thought that Joss's episodes made him come across as the biggest shipper of all. Practically all of his later season episodes featured some significant encounter for them, and there's been no Joss written Spuffy series from the tv series that I can recall really disliking. He was even the one that gave them their first somewhat cute interacton in Becoming "We're in a band"

In the context of a discussion about Buffy making the decision to kill Anya.

I know. And I understand. And I'm not even disputing. I'm just pointing out that for everything we can point at, there's something someone else can point at too. And for every way that we interpret a line and a scene there's an alternate interpretation of the same. And I can't then really say that there isn't ambiguity in it, because if it weren't people wouldn't be able to pull these things out. What weight we give them varies by individual.

but yeah that does sound odd if it was Joss writing that. It's a pretty far cry from "Love him when you say you love him, love her when you say you don't" and "I left B/A in the graveyard" (rough remembrance of those quotes). Has Joss ever been asked what he meant with his writing of Angel and Spike in the comics?

No doubt someone has asked. Whether anyone got an answer that they could actually understand and which wasn't immediately contradicted by another answer is an entirely different scenario. People have come up with all sorts of explanations for the comics, but honestly? The things make virtually no sense. Other than they seem to have a lot of underlying aggression in them. But, yeah, it was Joss himself who wrote the scene where Buffy and Spike met up for the first time since Chosen and it amounted to "I knew you were alive, but I was too busy ~~robbing banks~~ to call. You dying was studly (yes. His incinerating death was 'studly') now shut up, give me the keys to your ~~car~~ space ship, and don't talk." If you were looking for a meaningful reunion penned by Joss, we weren't getting it. But the real damage had been done in Joss's previous scene. Buffy announced that Angel was the guy she'd 'choose to spend her life with.' And when Angel acts jealous, Buffy tells him not to be because Spike is beneath him. Then Joss writes her saying that Spike was/is just convenient. Of course Joss also stipulated in the art direction of the offensive three-way dream waaay back at the begining, that Buffy lean into Angel because she "loves Angel more" and Joss also stipulated that in the mock "Twilight" cover that Spike had to be Jacob in it because Bella loved Edward. All any Spike fan can actually cling to out of the comics is that while Angel tried to desstroy the world (but isn't really responsible for any of it) and murdered Giles (but he's not really responsible for that either) and while Buffy robs banks (gotta finance that military grade weaponry and castles somehow), Spike actually doesn't do anything awful and actually tries to help. But... that's all I've got. The comics are insane. But, depressingly it's true that Joss himself wrote the scene where Buffy dismissed Spike as both "beneath" and "convenient" and unless he undoes it in issue 40, I really don't have much more to say about it. (Other than privately thinking "Joss, please go the hell away! I enjoyed your 'verse better when you weren't ~~destroying~~ monkeying with it.")

Edited 2010-12-15 18:17 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I know we're bound to disagree on this, but some of your arguments confuse me.

There's no threshold visibly crossed anywhere. No place where we can actually point to and say the change happened here. It's all one timeline. One universe. One continuous sequence of events. So, I honestly do not know where that particular line was drawn or crossed in her eyes. And more often than not...Buffy wasn't saying.

Characters' relationships often develop and change without explicit verbiage stating as such. We didn't have a moment in S6 where Buffy says, "I'm so angry at Willow for bringing me back," but she demonstratively is. Willow spends a large part of the later seasons (excluding S7) feeling bitter towards Buffy, but that's not really explicitly stated until the Dark Willow arc. Much like Buffy's developed feelings for Spike aren't explicitly stated until, you know, Chosen.

Character changes rarely come with a line of demarcation. That's not how people work.

But people are saying "That was season 6 and this is season 7 and things are different now" and I'm asking how exactly are they different... because I do think that it's one sequence of events. It's all in one continuum.

So, exactly, there is no line of demarcation.

That's the point I'm trying to make.

People keep insisting "but that was season 6 and this is season 7." I'm asking that if it really matters what season it's in, point to me where--on screen within the 'verse-- the seasonal difference is matters. What distinguishes it? What marks some upending of Buffy's estimation of Spike's status relative to herself? We can't assume a radically different mindset in 7 than 6 based on "well it's a different season now." [I'm not, BTW, arguing that she doesn't say that he's better than he was. She does in fact state that quite clearly. But that statement doesn't necessarily mean that she thinks he's on the same playing field as herself. It's possible to think he's changed and grown... and to still think "beneath me") But people say "but that was Season 6 and this was Season 7" and I want to understand what makes that demarcation important within the 'verse to the characters as opposed to the DVD packagers? I'd argue... it doesn't.

And I'm unsure how that sequence of the debate gets lost in translation. It's liking telling someone playing tennis and saying "You take the north court. I'll take the south" then asking them "why are you on the north side of the court?" If the argument is that a character's views have changed because of which season they're in, I'm wondering what makes that distinction. What makes them separate? If Buffy's estimation of Spike's status relative to herself (as opposed to himself) is radically different based on "that was Season 6 and this is Season 7" where was that tipping point? What distinguishes this transition and when did it change to the opposite of what it previously was. If it's the seasonal distinction, how do we know that? If not, then there is no distinction based on season. And if we're saying "Well she changed this view and does see him on the same social/moral level of herself," what tipped her into the view quite opposite of the one she'd had only months (I'm not arguing that she doesn't recognize a change relative to himself. I'd say that "Never Leave Me" supports that quite well." it's relative to herself that I wonder about. If she really changed her view that much when was the tipping point and how could we tell?)

Crap. That was me. Why does my home computer insist on doing that? (Posting me as anonymous when I've been signed on) Grr!

But people are saying "That was season 6 and this is season 7 and things are different now" and I'm asking how exactly are they different... because I do think that it's one sequence of events. It's all in one continuum.

...if people are saying that, it's a shorthand way of referring to the changes in Buffy's behavior towards Spike as shown between S6 and S7.

Buffy's behavior towards Spike does show a substantial difference between the two seasons. People have listed out the many, many actions she takes on his behalf in these comments. She never would have done any of that for him in S6.

The change is there. The seasons give us an easy way to reference them. It's like saying Buffy was much more emotionally open and innocent in S1 and S2 than in S7. Of course everything is one sequence of events on a continuum, but when we're discussing the show, we rely on reference points in order to clarify what we're talking about. This means making references to seasons and/or episode titles.

For an in-season change, we could look at Spike's development within S5. Since it's all in the same season, we have to reference different episodes (FFL, Crush, Intervention, The Gift) in our discussions about his arc.

The change in Buffy's attitude towards Spike happens to occur between the two seasons, thus we reference S6 and S7 when discussing it.

I don't know that we're ever really going to get anywhere in this because, to be really honest, it's not that I really want to believe my position or that I don't happily going along with yes, there's a change. And it's better and more open. And there's a reason to write post-Chosen and post-NFA fanfic. So most of my energy -- outside of debate -- isn't directed in needing or having to claim that no, she didn't change how she thought of him relative to himself. That debate position only arises out of feeling the need to play devil's advocate when being told that it's all very clear and obvious, when I think that it's less than perfectly clear or so many people wouldn't see it and it wouldn't still be something in question and debate so very many years later. That and it's trying to put what was shown in the comic (where she distinctly does say "beneath") in some sort of context where it makes some sort of sense. (Though I also think that the comics are crap and when they're over I have every intention of ignoring them. Still, much like the need to pick at scabs, I find myself needing to understand why in the frell Joss would write a scene that has Buffy describing Spike as being both beneath Angel and 'only convenient' and the fact that he wrote it makes me wonder what he intended by the stuff that happened in Season 7.) None of that really though matters to me on a day to day fannish sense where, as stated, I generally do and will continue to ignore it. Otherwise I'd have to completely stop writing Spuffy.

Okay.

As I've said many, many times, I'm not trying to change your opinion on anything. I just found your argument about lines of demarcation very odd and so poked it to try to suss it out. I get now that the root of the argument is that you aren't perceiving a significant change in Buffy's behavior, but I think your argument that people are arbitrarily separating S6 from S7 is faulty.

Honestly, I'm tired. It's fiction. We all believe what we believe, saw what we saw, and feel what we feel. It's all okay. Nothing real actually depends on any of it.

Ah...I wasn't arguing about beliefs but about your choice of argumentative rhetoric...

But okey-dokey. Get some rest.

Next time I'll follow my own advice and stay out of it because waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back at the beginning of all this I said that if I elaborated it would only cause trouble.

But on the plus side, cookies. :)

How can those brief reactions count as more meaningful more than her sharing her life from day to day with Spike, and opening up to him at her lowest points?

She never had that excited reaction to Spike carrying her away from her everyday life precisely because he was always there in her life.

THANK YOU. This is truth.

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