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

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

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.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

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"

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

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.")