thedeadlyhook (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thedeadlyhook) wrote2004-04-06 11:01 am
thedeadlyhook) wrote2004-04-06 11:01 am
The Pain That I Feel...
This grew out of a response I began writing to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
no subject
There's definitely an element of truth in that, although I see it more as a function of the overwehlming situation they were faced with in S7 rather than an inherent negativity about life itself. Part of the problem with S7 is that the First is talked up to be a much more powerful evil than it is actually is (both because the storytelling is definitely - how shall I put this? - uneven when it comes to the First, and because that seems to be the ultimate point of the First, not to be half as terrible as everyone thought once they stood up to it. I don't need to complain about all the opportunities for psycho-terror that the First missed out on, because plenty of other people have already done that, and Joss himself has admitted that the Turok-Han were all big build-up but no real substance). Now, if the First had been more convincing as the worst enemy Buffy's ever faced, all the emotional freezing over, all the constant nagging of everyone else, would have seemed much more like a response to a temporary situation than a form of character development. It's not just the fact that the First becomes increasingly ineffectual that undermines the atmosphere of terror that should pervade Buffy's war effort, it's also that the heroes really don't seem equipped to fight this thing, if it's really as powerful as everyone says. When characters are talking about all-out war and how serious this all is, and then we cut to the 'army' and it consists of about 15 people, then it doesn't make me think 'Gosh, they're brave', but 'Can't be as bad as all that.' Or when Giles says how they need more people on their side (yup, like ideally several hundred) and Buffy pipes up 'That's why we've got to find Spike.' Um, yes. Because one vampire is going to make such a difference, right? Similarly Buffy's 'everybody sucks but me speech' comes over so badly because at that point it's unjustified - we needed to have seen Willow fail to help out when she could have done, to have seen Spike wimping out of fights. Get It Done could have been a genuinely powerful episode like LMPTM, where the audience is confronted with a tough dilemma in which they sympathise with all the characters, but as it is it takes a lot of thought to understand where Buffy's coming from and why she's actually right. I honestly do think that the negativity in S7 is a product of Buffy's situation, but because it's precisely the areas of the scripts that deal with plot that are worst handled, the situation simply doesn't seem threatening enough, and so the negativity seems to be a response to the universal human condition rather a specific but temporary threat.
I think that's what the creators thought we were meant to think, but I didn't make that leap all the way, it seemed like Spike the character didn't either - why should he assume she's forgiven him completely if she hasn't said so?
We'll just have to chalk this up to different tastes. I was entirely happy with Buffy's statement that she believed in him, and I would have been wary of an explicit statment on a subject that
both found difficult to talk about ('Can't say I'm sorry, can't say forgive me'). I don't think Spike ever forgave himself for the AR, butI do think that in NLM Buffy told him that she understood he'd become a different person, one she trusted and had faith in. If she had added an explicit 'I forgive you,' it would have made me cringe with embarrassment (that's Brits for you, though - that sort of thing makes a lot of us uncomfortable;-))
To be continued in next comment...
no subject
But love does make you vulnerable. If you live in a dangerous world of monsters and demons, or just the emotional minefield of daily life, it's losing the people you love that hurts most. I don't think that love in the Buffyverse is generically destructive. It wasn't loving Tara that pushed Willow over the edge, it was losing her, and she wasn't being punished for loving her, she was the victim of a random act of violence. S6 Spuffy was destructive, in a fascinatingly awful way, but it wasn't purely destructive. It provided Buffy with something she desperately needed at that point in her life, and it gave Spike something too. The AR didn't feel like a punishment imposed by some deus ex machina, but (for me, at least) arose organically out of the relationship we'd seen. Wes/Fred I can't really argue with, though, because I did think it was cheap to bring them together solely for the purpose of heightening Wes's angst. And I guess Oz would support yout thesis as well, since in the end it was loving Willow that made it impossible for him to defeat his 'beast'.
That's the sort of thing that makes me wonder why anyone would bother with love at all
Hormones! We don't have much choice in the matter, I guess.