The Pain That I Feel...

[thedeadlyhook]

This grew out of a response I began writing to azdak on the previous post, as a continuation of the discussion there, but it got long. We'd begun talking about that final Spike/Buffy moment in "Chosen," the "I love you" moment, and the validity of how it was presented, and I had a number of emotional things to say there.

This was the original quotation that got me writing:

(azdak says)
There are a lot of things about Chosen that I dislike, but the Spike/Buffy moment isn't one of them. I'm sure it helps that I didn't feel jerked about by the relationship prior to that point (and I didn't feel that it was inconsistent in S6 either), so I didn't get that 'So now I'm supposed to believe she loves him?' reaction. It seems to me that prior to S7 Buffy's feelings for Spike were always stronger than she was prepared to admit (even to herself), that the AR obviously throws a huge wrench in the works, and that in S7 she does, indeed, care about him more than anyone else, without this necessarily implying that he's the one she wants to be with for the rest of her life. She loves him, but not in the way he wants, or not enough. She's incredibly proud of him, and she trusts him (beyond the point where she's entirely rational about it - see the whole unchaining him while he's still triggered argument), she believes he can truly become a good man, and all of that is love, plus there's sexual attraction in there as well; but if it came down to a straightforward choice between spending her life with Spike or with Angel, I don't think she'd choose Spike. Doesn't mean he isn't in her heart; it's perfectly possible to love two men, even if you love one more than the other. I do agree, though, that that goodbye is far more about Spike than it is about Buffy.


There's a large part of me, the soft, Spuffy part, that agrees with this. To be absolutely honest, I'd thought she was in love with him in S6. And I saw her do a lot of things in S7 that consistently supported that. But...

Given that reading, Buffy-in-love, even figuring in their horrible history and "Seeing Red" et al, I couldn't explain why she never said as much to him in the lead-up to the end. In "Touched," in "End of Days," she listens to a couple of the most heartbreaking speeches ever from him and just lets them go with the barest of comments. Then we have that confusing scene with Angel, then she's back with Spike, acting like she cares.

So while I can do the work myself to wrench this into a shape I can live with (she loves him but doesn't necessarily want to settle down with him, etc., as per above), I resent that I have to, that it wasn't explicitly spelled out for me, what she feels. Buffy's reactions in those last three episodes seemed to be more about setting up the plot arc for Spike, to establish that he's willing to die for this woman whether she loves him or not.

...and from his perspective, it really does look like not. She passes up moment after moment when she could have come clean and told him her feelings, whatever they were, and lets it go, all during a point in time where any of them could die the next day, the next moment. Spike lives through those days without holding back - he says what he feels and he stays on the track he set himself on in getting the soul and coming back to Buffy to make his amends.

Buffy, on the other hand, holds back. On the edge of the end, she doesn't say anything, doesn't share this feeling with him, even though it was him telling her such things in "Touched" that gave her the strength to go on. She doesn't share that strength - she asks him to go forward with nothing, alone, to be strong in ways that she herself can't be. She wants to be "just a girl"; she asks him to be superhuman.

So that moment of goodbye that they share, in "Chosen"... it's heartbreaking to me because even if they seem together, as one, for that instant, with the flaring of fire and two souls meeting... they're really still so far apart. Buffy in that moment saying "I love you" and meaning it and thinking this is the perfect time and thing to say for their final goodbye... and him with that sad smile that says everything to me about what she doesn't understand.

Because in that moment we are seeing Spike, dying, for love... and for him love has been all about living, something that you do every day, with and for the one you love - it is life. But for Buffy, apparently, love is something you put off until some future time when you are ready for it, when you're fully baked and feel like accepting or giving it - it's a present. When she's "done" someone will "enjoy" her. So we have this man that's been in her life for years, who actually had it right in "Wrecked" when he told her he was already in her life - although somehow that was pitched to be a bad thing - and who she's kept at arm's length until the very moment of his death to say so, and we're told that she, Buffy, never had it backwards about what love is or isn't. It breaks my heart, and I can't be happy with Buffy in that moment, because when she finally says it, it's like she's giving him a present, a going-away gift. He's been telling her he loves her for years, and showing her with actions that have literally on occasion turned him inside out, and what she gives him in return is this - a statement that he has to struggle against all logic to believe. I would have much rather heard her say something in that moment that felt real to them both, that had no doubts attached to it, that would have felt right - "you were my best friend" or "I forgive you."

And I'm actually fucking tearing up writing this. God, I really am in a melancholy mood.

What got me, ulitmately, about the Buffy/Spike story, is that it ended up being one about despair. It wasn't about life-affirming nature of love - how could it be, when Buffy rejects love constantly with the idea that somehow this makes her a stronger fighter? It wasn't even about how how love can make you a better person - although that message is indeed in there, with Spike's remaking of himself, although he was required to turn into Jesus Christ before this was even faintly acknowledged. We see Buffy deny Spike's definition of real love as something "wild and passionate and dangerous," and yet the only times she sees fit to reward him for his love for her are in the aftermath of these sorts of moments, when he does something huge and painful and passionate for her, when he's broken and falling apart and dying. Then she can say it. Then we can see it in her eyes.

But for the guy who was willing to babysit her sister, fight alongside her every day, put up with her friends that he doesn't like, abide by her rules if she ever bothered to set them? She hasn't got a word for that man. That's the one she leaves waiting in her basement for when such time she deigns to visit, that she can forget about when she chooses to flirt around with others (whilst giving him the steely-eyed glare at the faintest suggestion him doing the same). She doesn't want to hear about how he could change for her, even while she insists that he does, that he go against his very nature constantly. She manages to be disappointed in him no matter what he does - act like a demon, act like a man, be good to her, be bad to her. She never figures out for herself what she does want from him, only punishes him for not being it, whatever it was.

I objected to that. I objected to the story of Buffy/Spike being one of hopeless surrender - that the only way he could prove his love for her was real was to give up every last thing about himself, do exactly as she told him, become a tame animal that jumped at her command. To Buffy, perhaps, this looked like love because it fit her life perfectly - he was there when she needed him, and didn't bother her when she didn't - but I think to every other human being in the world, it looked like what Buffy essentially wanted was a subservient wife, a First Lady, a "mission's boyfriend" that had no demands of his own. This is ultimately what broke up her relationship with Riley, her unwillingness to share the burdens and let him be part of her whole life (sue me, I'm one of those people who actually liked the Riley arc). In "As You Were," we saw Riley's "perfect" relationship as a team of equals. Buffy, we never saw reach for anything like that, although she surely could have. Because Spike was, or could have been, her equal - her adversary and opposite who'd changed from wanting to kill her to wanting to love her. There could have been a story there of how love transforms you and lifts you up, helps you see into places that used to be dark, but it ended up being being how-to manual on crushing spirits. Hers, because she couldn't quite figure out how to treat this one unusual vampire like a human being, his because that was his path, to be her sacrificial animal.

So even if she loved him the whole time, and there is a part of me that sort of believes that she did, I still can't take much comfort. She refused to share it, refused to give as well as receive. We saw him give to her, give everything, give the whole world for her, and whether she loved him or not had by that point become really irrelevant. We were given an ending in which Spike understood love and what it meant - giving to others - and Buffy sure as hell didn't.

God, I'm sad now. Pardon me while I go cry.

Comments

[nazlan.livejournal.com]

*sniffle*

Oh, Hook, I'm there with ya, sister. The more I think about Spike and Buffy, the sadder I am at the lost chances, the moments that slipped by, when a word or two different, said by either one of them, could changed everything. I was attracted to them first as a seeming study in opposites, who turn out to be far more alike than either of them is truly comfortable with.

As for the now-infamous "I love you" - for me, it read as Buffy *finally* taking her chance and saying *something*, even if it wasn't necessarily the truth. In three words, she had to get out, I'm sorry, I forgive you, I appreciate you, I wish things had been different, I wish I could change everything - all things more needed than just "I love you". So I suppose that ultimately, the love story of Buffy and Spike is a tragedy, full of misunderstanding, missed opportunities, things felt unsaid, and issues left unaddressed.

*sniffle*

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I was attracted to them first as a seeming study in opposites, who turn out to be far more alike than either of them is truly comfortable with.

Oh, yes. God I loved that. They were actually painfully alike. The way Buffy behaves over Angel in early seasons, for example, has a lot in common with truly, madly, deeply in love Spike. But she had this other side, the weight of responsibility of being the Slayer, that he didn't understand, although there were glimmers that he was starting to get it, and in S7 he certainly did. So I didn't find them all that implausible as a couple, or even just as partners in her "mission," but the conversations that needed to happen just never did. She was so determined to see herself as all "alone," that no one could understand.

So much lost there. This still kills me. It hurts in my heart.

[zerographic.livejournal.com]

oh my god, i'm sitting at work right now trying not to sob.

i sometimes wish there was no such thing as fanfiction. 'cause then i wouldn't be presented with all these perfectly plausible reasons that buffy could have shaken the ice from her soul and allowed herself to love.

if this is the last season of angel :( i hope she does not appear (as it seems likely she will not). i do not want to hate her for whatever cold, calculating thing she says. i do not want to have to watch her break another person. at this point, i want angel and spike to turn to each other, gaze into each other's eyes, lean in for a kiss, and then a nice fade to black.

she needs to be cut from the picture completely. >:(

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

So, so agree. Let her go off to "bake." Let her figure out for herself that love isn't something you can pencil into your schedule, that you can put off until you have the perfect outfit or outlook. Sometimes it's just there in front of you and you have to deal with it right now or realize that you're letting go of something precious, something that will be lost forever... something that you never even bothered honor or appreciate at the time. I'd like to think Buffy's learned something from all this, but her showing up on AtS surely won't show me that. I hope to god they just let her go.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

So while I can do the work myself to wrench this into a shape I can live with (she loves him but doesn't necessarily want to settle down with him, etc., as per above), I resent that I have to, that it wasn't explicitly spelled out for me, what she feels. Buffy's reactions in those last three episodes seemed to be more about setting up the plot arc for Spike, to establish that he's willing to die for this woman whether she loves him or not.


I'm having a hard time sorting out my responses to this particular post, because while I found the Spike/Buffy relationship enthralling, I've never been any kind of shipper. I loved Spuffy because I loved where it took the characters, but I've never been invested in any particular ending for them (except that, since I have a sneaking fondness for angst, I'd sooner it didn't end up that they lived Happily Ever After). If I'm brutally honest, BtVS for me has always been Spike's story. I only got interested in it after he appeared, and I find his journey infinitely more nuanced and compelling than Buffy's (or indeed anyone else's). So it doesn't make me sad that Buffy couldn't open up to him at the end - it makes me feel for him, but I don't feel indignant on his behalf, or wish that it had ended differently. It's a bit like how I feel about Harmony - it's painfully obvious that she adores Spike, and always has done, but the story wouldn't feel right if Spike suddenly realised he's loved her all along. The Spike/Harmony story is about the agony of unrequited love, and for me at least, the Buffy/Spike story has always been about the pain of loving someone who can't love you the way you want. I think in S7 Buffy got as far as she could along the path of loving Spike, but she simply couldn't go all the way. I don't think she really knows herself what she feels - it makes her feel bad about herself that she doesn't love Spike as much as she 'ought to' (she says as much to Tara and to Holden Webster), and just as she could never really admit to herself that she didn't love Riley as much as she 'ought to', so she has a hard time articulating her feelings about Spike, especially once he's got his soul, and is on the way to becoming a good man, and is being so fantastically supportive. And I do think the problem is ultimately Angel, not because I have any kind of investment in that relationship (au contraire, I disliked Angel on Buffy) but I have no trouble believing that she measures all her subsequent relationships against what she experienced Angel, and finds them lacking. Riley she loved, but he didn't have that dangerous edge, he could never be her equal the way Angel was, and Spike - well, Spike is Spike, aggravating and immature and sexy and devoted but never her equal either. Even in S7 I do think she sees him, to put it in the nastiest possible way, as something of a pet project. He's done something amazing for her, and she wants to give him every chance to realise the potential he's shown, but she's always above him, always the one showing the way, reaching out the helping hand, until that final moment in the Hellmouth, when he catches up with her as he burns into nothing.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

while I found the Spike/Buffy relationship enthralling, I've never been any kind of shipper

Actually, neither was I, technically. I only define myself as one because I came to believe, through watching the show, that what was going on between them was a sort of love, and I've always come down on the side of wanting to see people happy. It struck me that they could have made each other happy. But from that POV, I could also say I was a Buffy/Angel shipper when they were together, or a Buffy/Riley shipper when it was them. I wanted to see Buffy figure out what she wanted, work it through, find her way to being happy. And I wanted to see the parade when she did. That's not what I got.

But I agree that, intentionally or not, BtVS ended up being, to a large degree, Spike's story. S7 was clearly about him, not her. Count the number of long solioquies in which he tells us exactly what he feels, compare them to hers. He's the main character of that season - he's the one who makes real progress.

Buffy is an unfinished person at the end of BtVS, and that disappointed me. She wasn't, in my eyes, a heroine. That everything was reduced to these abstract concepts of sin and punishment and what people deserve instead of what they need - that took her away from any real emotion I could understand. Giles has this line in S2, about forgivess being not about what people deserve but what they need, and she could have given him that, at any moment, without pledging her devoted love. I didn't demand that as a viewer, and neither did Spike, as a character, in S7.

I just wanted to see something heartfelt and real. Friendship would have been enough. That she strung him along - and she did, c'mon - was her being unsure, wanting him to be available even if she didn't ultimately want him. That was simply selfish, and sad, and not something I could respect. Of all the things he told her he loved about her, we didn't see her show them to him, not even as a friend. (But to be fair, she didn't show much to her friends either in S7.)

[tesla321.livejournal.com]

Jesus. You've convinced me. (see my tears?)

So, Hooky, I suppose that's why we write fanfic. We want to give Spike what he couldn't have. And Buffy presented us as such a life-draining egomaniac is why I don't want her to have my beloved Angel, either. I guess I want Spike to have Buffy because he wants her, but I'd prefer for him to have someone who loves him.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

God, am I bad for making people cry? Is it okay if I'm crying too? (trying to think of all this as cathartic)

I really don't want to see Buffy with either of them anymore, and I'd actually like to think that they'd both have the sense to not want to be with her either. She's an icon now, to both of them, a sort of Helen of Troy that launched a lot of pain and longing and searches for redemption, and after that, there's really not much hope of return back to a place where she could just be a woman. The best fanfics I've seen on sticking-with-canon reunion scenes always seem to hint at this, that Buffy is now too large a force, too powerful... that her men feel dwarfed by her, overwhelmed. I loved glassslipper's Valentine fic, as one example of a reunion scene, because it really used that image, of Spike seeing Buffy as this shining figure that's beyond him, that he can barely relate to anymore, that he can't even imagine feeling worthy of. Stories like this are fascinating because they make me feel sorry for Buffy as someone who's miscalculated the whole relationship thing into making men prove they're worthy of her, but that in doing so, she's placed herself on a pedastal and it's lonely up there.

[zerographic.livejournal.com]

I guess I want Spike to have Buffy because he wants her, but I'd prefer for him to have someone who loves him.

This absolutely, positively sums up my feeling on Spuffy right now. At the time, in the moment, I was so happy to hear her actually say it that I about melted.

But then I realized how fucked up it was that she got to wuss out and say it as he was dying for her. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

So yeah, I'd rather see Spike be happy with anyone else. ANYONE. But if it's Buffy he wants, then I think he's earned the "right."

[glassslipper.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you on so many of them -- especially, as you sum it up:

So even if she loved him the whole time, and there is a part of me that sort of believes that she did, I still can't take much comfort. She refused to share it, refused to give as well as receive. We saw him give to her, give everything, give the whole world for her, and whether she loved him or not had by that point become really irrelevant. We were given an ending in which Spike understood love and what it meant - giving to others - and Buffy sure as hell didn't.

It felt to me that the end (and many moments leading up to it) illustrated Buffy's immaturity relative to Spike. His love for her was intertwined, perhaps, with his age and experience, and she just hadn't reached that point yet. Not that I mean she wasn't "baked" enough, or that anything about the whole cookie speech was satisfying to me, but that she just hadn't figured it out yet, wasn't capable or willing to love more maturely.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

It felt to me that the end (and many moments leading up to it) illustrated Buffy's immaturity relative to Spike. His love for her was intertwined, perhaps, with his age and experience, and she just hadn't reached that point yet.

Yes! Wonderfully put.

[queenofattolia.livejournal.com]

In "As You Were," we saw Riley's "perfect" relationship as a team of equals. Buffy, we never saw reach for anything like that, although she surely could have. Because Spike was, or could have been, her equal - her adversary and opposite who'd changed from wanting to kill her to wanting to love her. There could have been a story there of how love transforms you and lifts you up, helps you see into places that used to be dark, but it ended up being being how-to manual on crushing spirits. Hers, because she couldn't quite figure out how to treat this one unusual vampire like a human being, his because that was his path, to be her sacrificial animal.

Thank you for writing this particular passage, because it sums up why the ultimate story made no sense and was so bone-rattlingly disappointing. I'm over it; I started resolutely on that path after the last frame of "As You Were," and fortunately, I was a concurrent fan of Crichton and Aeryn on "Farscape." Their story perfectly exemplifies the kind of transformative love you describe. I hope you watched that show -- their relationship was the perfect balm and antidote to B/S.

Lovely, Lovely Farscape

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, I loved Farscape. I never managed to catch it regularly for some reason, so there's huge chunks of plot I haven't seen, but I've been starting to get caught up recently and just love it to bits. It was such a funny, witty, intense show that probably wouldn't have been half of what it was without the sparkle of Ben Browder, but yeah - Crichton/Aeyrn. That was teh hot. I remember thinking at the time they had a lot in common with Buffy/Spike, and at times the show would bog into these ridiculous cycles of no-I-don't-love-you and breast-beating and her being frosty and him being all wounded and snarky, but it always came back to the truth of the fact that they really cared about each other. Just goes to show that it's possible to do angst and yet not have it be an exercise in soul-crushing misery. Sigh...

Man! Me too!

[tesla321.livejournal.com]

I have bought up to 3.1 of Farscape and I love that show---I started seriously watching the Buffyverse at that point, and have felt helplessly hijacked into this fandom. And the transformative love isn't only of Crichton/Aeryn---so many other characters go through transformative journeys.

I'm going to have to go home and watch me some Crichton, now.

A B/A perspective...

[chrisleeoctaves.livejournal.com]

I don't mean to be an interloper, but I read your thoughts with great interest. I am one of those really odd B/A shippers who found the B/S relationship utterly fascinating.

I often wonder how many of my opinions are skewed by my B/A leanings. For example, if you watch those early eppies, back when Spike was a thorn in Buffy's side, I think you can see the beginnings of an unusual relationship. Why does she turn to him at the beginning of season 6? I think she has no choice and from there begins a deepening relationship. To say that she used him, though, is to ignore the fact that he used her and on many occasions, I believe, tried to isolate her even more than she already was. Did he love her? Yes, I believe he did. Unselfishly? No. Did she love him? Yes, I believe she did. But why didn't she ever tell him? He gave her plenty of opportunities and she never took them.

I don't believe Spike went to Africa for a soul. Regardless, he stormed off because he was stymied;Buffy wouldn't give him what he wanted. I believe what she wanted was Angel. (Naturally, that's what I am gonna believe, right?) I think B/S shippers must have been horribly disappointed by "Chosen." But when I watched it again I felt that there was a certain truth to what transpired. (I, personally, hated the whole cookie thing, btw.)Even Spike knew and accepted that Buffy didn't love him the way he *wanted* to be loved. After all, he saw what we saw: Buffy's reaction to Angel in the crypt.

No one but Spike could have ever understood what Buffy had gone through post "The Gift." Her sexual relationship with him was deliberate. So was her withholding the thing he most wanted to hear: 'I love you.' One of the saddest moments in the whole series was the bit in "The Gift," when Buffy and Spike return to her house for weapons and he thanks her for treating him like a man; that was genuine. But I am not sure what came after was...and certainly there was nothing particularly "loving" about their relationship as it unfolded. Doesn't mean it wasn't potent or honest, I just think that it ever had the makings of a healthy relationship.

Yes, again, I realize that I am a B/A chick speaking to mostly B/Sers...but I found the B/S relationship infinitely fascinating. Still do.

Sorry that this is horribly inarticulate. And possibly unwelcome.

Re: A B/A perspective...

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Yes, again, I realize that I am a B/A chick speaking to mostly B/Sers...but I found the B/S relationship infinitely fascinating. Still do.
Sorry that this is horribly inarticulate. And possibly unwelcome.

No, this is terribly interesting because you seem to share a lot of the same thoughts I'd been having about how the relationship actually came across. As broadcast, you definitely get the impression that Angel is "it" for Buffy, that what she went through with Spike, "not pretty" and real as it was, was only a sideline to her main event, which is and always will be Angel. I'd actually been thinking about this as the basis for another long piece I've got in the works, about the evolving nature of Buffy/Angel and Buffy/Spike throughout the series, but the key thing to me seems to be this - that Buffy could not bring herself to "risk the pain" for anyone but Angel, no matter what else she might feel. This is something none of the men in her life have never been able to understand, the shadow of her ex being really that long, and it's especially poignant in Spike's case, because he's been in Angel's shadow before, of course, with Drusilla.

My main complaint with that, however, was that it made Buffy look immature, as if she hadn't ever moved in her mindset from some sort of swoony teenage dreamboat phase, That's insulting thing to suggest both about her and every man in her life - the "cookies" thing played extremely teenybopper. So my main issue was not so much that she didn't get together with Spike, although I found it sad because their rapport was so natural and I have issues with Buffy apparently not learning anything from the "using him" phase, but that she wasn't shown as having evolved, as looking at Angel through a woman's eyes and saying "you're really the one I want" instead of playing the two of them off each other like a spoiled high school girl. I'd like to think that even if she ended up with Angel someday, it would involve some growing up on her part... and the way she parted with Spike... I really didn't see that happening. Right now, Angel's too adult for her.

Thanks so much for coming by to comment! : )

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

There could have been a story there of how love transforms you and lifts you up, helps you see into places that used to be dark, but it ended up being being how-to manual on crushing spirits.

Excellent post. I'm right there with you. (Well, except not so much crying as fantasizing about a brutal, bloody, extremely painful death for Buffy, and then Spike moving on with Angel...)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Aha ha ha ha ha ha.... that's lovely. I admit myself to having a very mean fantasy in which Buffy's heart gets done broken into a gajillion pieces by discovering that very Spike/Angel scenario. Boy, would that make my day. ; )

[http://users.livejournal.com/automatedalice_/]

i came to this post through someone else's link. & you've got me almost crying at work. i too, am a sucker for spike, and feel passionately that his story was a lot more interesting & a lot closer to to the message that ME thought it was giving with buffy.

as clunky as the cookie-dough metaphor was, it's really important. but i think ME handled it in the wrong way. the focus for ME has always seemed to be doneness. for me, and for so many viewers (particularly rabid spike fans), it's about process rather than product. it's about the baking. the things that you go through while you're baking, how you get baked (no pun intended), etc. are much more important than the warm & delicious cookie you that comes out in the end. i couldn't care less about the cookie. process is why spike is fascninating, why buffy was fascinating when she was struggling with herself & admitting to struggle (rather than playing little general). it's why faith is such a good character.

the more that i look at buffy & look at S6 & S7, the more i say "damn, that girl could use some therapy." because no one is ever done. she'll never be done, especially if she holds herself back from loving, because love is part of the process. & spike's love, whether she admits it or not, is something that buoyed buffy through several seasons & eventually helped her get her shit sort of together.

and even though i think that she meant the "i love you" in her own way as a quick (& pretty right) way to sum up all her feelings about spike, i think that she admitted it because it was the end for him. he was "done," which meant that buffy could make her statement. and i think that kind of ending or doneness makes someone worthy in ME's eyes.

i've always found ME's concept of feminism pretty troubling & i find their concept of growing up troubling as well. growing & changing never stops. if you let your monsters become human (& buffy's a monster as well, in her own way), you have to let them continue to grow & change, which means they need to be able to love. in not allowing this for spike, & not really allowing it for buffy, ME failed their own characters and their audience. both buffy & spike deserved better than that, whether they were together or not.

pt. 2

[http://users.livejournal.com/automatedalice_/]

but with spike's arc from S2 - S7, we actually see someone grow & change & embrace their difference & their sameness & their relationships to other people. from a therapeutic point of view (yeah, i'm in therapy), this is really healthy. one of ME's purported messages was "be what you are, challenge our demons, take things head on, be in command of your own ship," etc. spike does this. ME always thought they were doing it with buffy, showing her as a flawed heroine, etc., but what we see in the end is buffy pantomiming this message while she's still choosing "doneness" & denying the process that will get her there. spike embraces the process, keeps growing & changing, & recognizes at some point that at any given time, he's "done" for that time. what's "done" today may be process for tomorrow, & that's OK.

& if ME had admitted this, or let buffy really go in this direction, rather than hemming & hawwing about cookie-dough, essentially saying that she's still not good enough for anything or anyone, ME would have succeeded in their mission. spike's journey is a lot more about girl-power than buffy's ever was, even though it's a journey of terrible brutality & sacrifice.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Damn. You're spot on!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jems_/]

Came here from a link in drinkthepoisonx's journal.

You've articulated so many things I've thought - about season 7 in particular - that I've never really been able to sort out (mainly because of bitterness issues). I still love Buffy, but I know I never want to be like her and I almost wish I could send her this post to get her to realize that life doesn't have to involve striving for happiness in the future, just grab it whenever you find it.

I'm putting this post in my memories and adding you to my friends list.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Thank you for friending me... I can't promise something like this all the time, but there will be more... I still have a lot of issues on this whole thing to sort out.

killing Angel

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

I have so enjoyed reading these posts - another one directed hear by drinkthepoisonx. I agree with most of it - Buffy has become incredibly selfish in her relationships - the kindest thing she could have done to Spike was, if she didn't want the goods, don't muck 'em about, which I think is a good rule to live by! I believe what really did for her was having to kill Angel - her love life was blighted after that, not so much because she was afraid to love and lose, but becaue she was afraid that she would again have to kill the one she loved. (A bit of a twisted parallel curse to Angel's really - he can't love in case it makes him kill the one he loves.)
But that's a reason, not an excuse for her. The last time I really felt sympathy for her - and this always makes me cry - was her speech to her mother in "Becoming II" where she says "but I have to save the world....again."

Re: killing Angel

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I felt sympathy for her a lot later than that because I'd been holding out hope that she'd end up in a more positive place after all this... but no. She flirts with him half the season like she's undecided - heck, she's still doing it in "Chosen." She should have said it outright, I'm not ready, instead of trying to leave her options open with crap like "I'm not ready for you to not be here."

And I get that killing Angel left a huge scar on her, but the unspoken show rule about almost never mentioning Angel really took a bite out of how much we were meant to draw comparisons there. Wasn't that the point of "Selflesss," that doing for Angel is something she's made herself ready to do if she must at any time? In retropsect, this could be read to mean that she actually really, really loves Spike way more than she'll admit, since she can't bring herself to kill him, but still, if this is what Buffy's love looks like, that frost distance that's all about taking and not giving, I think I could do without.

[kassto.livejournal.com]

Completely agree with your very astute, and sad, post. Don't worry about making people cry, since all those feelings were there anyway!

The way I look at it though, just for my own relationship with Buffy, is to blame the writers and not the character. Ever since about halfway through season 6, I've sort of switched off canon. I can't even bear to think about a lot of season 7 and feel sure I'll never play it again. Never ever want to hear Buffy's ``does it have to mean anything'' speech again. But the writers did this to her, and did it deliberately. They ruined their own heroine and sent a message that seems to me the opposite of girl power -- that having power and strength and the ability to fight ``monsters'' will turn you into a closed-off, emotionally stunted bitch who can't work with or relate to anyone, who endlessly uses the creature who loves her most, and can't be happy until she's left all her responsibilities behind.

And I don't buy that she was like that because of Angel. The show certainly didn't say that to me. They had nothing in common at all in the crossovers and I thought that scene in the season 4 episode where they come to an understanding in the hall outside her dorm was a real signing off on her relationship with him. I thought him turning up in Forever seemed really jarring and off and I didn't buy her supposed desire for him to stick around.

[tlace.livejournal.com]

What an amazing insight! Thank you for saying what I couldn't :)