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

[miss-mishi.livejournal.com]

I mean she outright says to Holden in Conversations with Dead People that she believes she's superior to everyone and not capable of loving them because she's different and she's better and she's the slayer. I think that's one of the only truly honest conversations Buffy has about love in the entire series. She's talking to someone she's going to kill, he won't tell anyone, and he psych tricked her into opening up. I just don't see that changing. Even after there are thousands of slayers (or hundred I don't remember), they will never know the pressure she knew when she was the only one.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

That's not about being incapable of love, though, but more she's become so weary over the years. And her expression of love, which she attributes to the Slayer lifestyle, it's challenged by so much more trauma than slaying and her inferiority complex about her superiority complex.

Her sometimes feeling better than them means she doesn't always feel an affinity with her friends; that doesn't mean she loves them less, but that she herself feels unlovable for feeling that way.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I just went back and read the transcript, and she actually doesn't say that she's not capable of love at all. She says she has trouble connecting and that there's a distance between her and other people because they don't know what it's like to be the Slayer. But she doesn't say she can't love.

I mean, I understand how you get there. But it's easy to have a completely different interpretation, too.

[blackfrancine.livejournal.com]

I mean she outright says to Holden in Conversations with Dead People that she believes she's superior to everyone and not capable of loving them because she's different and she's better and she's the slayer.

Huh. That's not at all how I read that conversation. Here's what the transcript says:

BUFFY
I feel like I'm worse than anyone. Honestly, I'm beneath them. My friends, my boyfriends. I feel like I'm not worthy of their love. 'Cause even though they love me, it doesn't mean anything 'cause their opinions don't matter. They don't know. They haven't been through what I've been through. They're not the slayer. I am. Sometimes I feel—(sighs) this is awful—I feel like I'm better than them. Superior.

HOLDEN
Until you can't win. And I thought I was diabolical—or, at least I plan to be. You do have a superiority complex. And you've got an inferiority complex about it. (laughs) Kudos.

BUFFY
It doesn't make any sense.

HOLDEN
(sits forward) Oh, it makes every kind of sense. And it all adds up to you feeling alone. But, Buffy, everybody feels alone. Everybody is, until you die.

I think Holden sums it up nicely--she feels alone. Buffy doesn't feel like she can't love her friends or boyfriends--she feels like their love isn't the comfort her that it should be because their experiences are too different from hers. But that has nothing to do with Buffy's ability to feel love for others.

And she feels ashamed that she's allowed a distance to grow between herself and them. I think that's sort of a sign that she does love them (both friends and boyfriends)--because if she didn't love them, why would she feel so guilty?