I was fascinated by your Buffy POV in this story and agree that she didn’t resolve her issues in the least. I don’t think she could have in the circumstances or within the allotted time frame.
Concurrently with reading your story, I happened to be reading the clinical description of posttraumatic stress disorder and it was startling how closely the symptoms described season 6 Buffy, especially these: numbing of general responsiveness, markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities, feeling of detachment or estrangement from others, restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings), sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span), persistent symptoms of increased arousal, irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating.
In this description, it’s presupposed that the person has been removed from the situation, but Buffy hasn’t been removed. She’s on the front line of an ongoing war from which she can’t escape, even by dying. She’s carried unimaginable responsibility since she was a child and, now that she’s chronologically an adult, she’s way too grownup in some ways and not grownup enough in others. It’s not surprising that she wants to escape from her situation and that she holds the idea of a normal life and a normal boyfriend who can shop with her at the mall as a kind of nirvana that she can never hope to reach. She’s damaged, possibly beyond fixing.
By season 7, there’s no reason to think that she’s in a different place – if anything, it’s worse than before. Her responsibilities are greater, she’s lost her privacy, her friends are still estranged from her, she has no down time at all. I think that’s a sufficient explanation for the way that she keeps engaging with Spike and then backing away; she’s drawn to him, as always, but he has too much baggage and she can’t take on any more. Agreeing with all you’ve said about the problems of canon Buffy, I do see a way for her to reconcile with Spike eventually – after a couple years of therapy and a chance to get her fill of dating, partying and shopping for shoes. :)
no subject
Concurrently with reading your story, I happened to be reading the clinical description of posttraumatic stress disorder and it was startling how closely the symptoms described season 6 Buffy, especially these: numbing of general responsiveness, markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities, feeling of detachment or estrangement from others, restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings), sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span), persistent symptoms of increased arousal, irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating.
In this description, it’s presupposed that the person has been removed from the situation, but Buffy hasn’t been removed. She’s on the front line of an ongoing war from which she can’t escape, even by dying. She’s carried unimaginable responsibility since she was a child and, now that she’s chronologically an adult, she’s way too grownup in some ways and not grownup enough in others. It’s not surprising that she wants to escape from her situation and that she holds the idea of a normal life and a normal boyfriend who can shop with her at the mall as a kind of nirvana that she can never hope to reach. She’s damaged, possibly beyond fixing.
By season 7, there’s no reason to think that she’s in a different place – if anything, it’s worse than before. Her responsibilities are greater, she’s lost her privacy, her friends are still estranged from her, she has no down time at all. I think that’s a sufficient explanation for the way that she keeps engaging with Spike and then backing away; she’s drawn to him, as always, but he has too much baggage and she can’t take on any more. Agreeing with all you’ve said about the problems of canon Buffy, I do see a way for her to reconcile with Spike eventually – after a couple years of therapy and a chance to get her fill of dating, partying and shopping for shoes. :)