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

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

So I started reading this post (and sifting through ALL THOSE COMMENTS - JEEZ LAUREN, HAVE A PARTY WITHOUT ME OR SOMETHING!) right before my rhetoric class, and it occurred to me - the answer is all about reading the different types of rhetoric Buffy uses. She's not only about the spoken language - SMG's physicality and acting see to that - but also about all those unspoken looks and gestures. That, too, is a type of rhetoric - unspoken language - and should be counted just as important as those dozens of I love yous she gave Angel way back when they were both so young. The abrupt change from how she looks at Spike - as if her entire soul were in her eyes - to how she looks at other characters speaks for itself. It's in this form of rhetoric that makes the scenes with Angel at the end of season 7 so off - suddenly this is a Buffy who's not Buffy, and she knows she's some devoluted version of herself around him, so she sends him away.