Glad you are still enjoying, despite all the issues. And strangely enough, I don't think we're actually all that far off in viewpoint - I hated what was done to Buffy in Season 7, the cold, hard commander arc, and didn't see any value in it. To me, that was a refutation of everything the series had previously been about, gaining strength through friendships and emotional ties and love. Buffy as Sergeant Rock - what did that prove? It made her no different than any WWII-style cigar-chomping commander. C'mon you buttercups, you wanna live forever? Etc., etc. And yeah, I get the idea of what Season 6 was supposed to be about, but I do think the execution was flawed in that it depended so heavily on turning all the likable Scoobies into severely unlikable people to work, and that the Spike-needs-a-soul-to-be-good point could have been made much better had not it revolved around a crime that humans commit, and thus could not have honestly been said to be fixed by adding a soul.
So I guess you could say my approach to Spuffy (and to all the Scoobies, actually, in some of my other stories) comes down to the fact that I don't think we saw them really learn anything from their trip to the darkside. Not yet. Season 7 was in many ways no better than Season 6 - it was still about emotional distance and exploitation, and I wasn't any more convinced of Buffy's "healing" at its end than I was in "Grave." But in post-series fic, I can toy with the sorts of levers she needs to finally get there that we never saw, and then just... go there. And that's where I find her interesting, where I find the continuing challenge of Spuffy interesting. And no, it's not easy. It's hard. The urge is always there to have Spike walk away, because he enjoys life the way she doesn't, or at least used to. But then again she used to as well... and now he's got the guilt... they keep crashing back into each other, no matter how hard I try. They still have things to work out. And I don't think either one of them has it in them to completely walk away.
Thanks for all the commentage, by the way. Talking it out like this really helps me to get my own thoughts straight.
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Date: 2005-02-16 01:31 pm (UTC)So I guess you could say my approach to Spuffy (and to all the Scoobies, actually, in some of my other stories) comes down to the fact that I don't think we saw them really learn anything from their trip to the darkside. Not yet. Season 7 was in many ways no better than Season 6 - it was still about emotional distance and exploitation, and I wasn't any more convinced of Buffy's "healing" at its end than I was in "Grave." But in post-series fic, I can toy with the sorts of levers she needs to finally get there that we never saw, and then just... go there. And that's where I find her interesting, where I find the continuing challenge of Spuffy interesting. And no, it's not easy. It's hard. The urge is always there to have Spike walk away, because he enjoys life the way she doesn't, or at least used to. But then again she used to as well... and now he's got the guilt... they keep crashing back into each other, no matter how hard I try. They still have things to work out. And I don't think either one of them has it in them to completely walk away.
Thanks for all the commentage, by the way. Talking it out like this really helps me to get my own thoughts straight.