i feel like i talk about it soo much but maybe not on this blog (or maybe i do) or maybe its just confined to my own thoughts but i think about buffy + masochism like so much like a Lot and it usually crops up when i start thinking about s6. and there is definitely some bleeding happening there because i identify so strongly with s6 buffy but thats basically half the drive for all analyses of media. but god i love how much she seeks that pain. she cant die no matter how much she'd like to, and dying means peace, and if she cant have peace, she must have done something wrong, and if she's done something wrong, if shes wrong, then she needs to be punished for it. and the way she goes about it, it's half in pursuit of absolution, but its also inherently selfish. she's focused on the peace she used to have and the half-drive to get there. pain = death = peace.
on the OTHER hand, because btvs is nothing without its dichotomies, i feel as the other coinflip of pain is presented in tandem. the flipside of death is life. it is textual, we see this happening the way buffy grows more lively and more in touch with life after she starts her relationship with spike, who has multiple times been connected with the imagery of death. he is the slayer of slayers, he'll make her neck his chalice, he's the one who first brings up the inherent death drive of the slayer and how he took pleasure in killing them. and YETTT. buffy begins her relationship with spike/death that is filled with roughness and bruises and blood and episode-by-episode, we watch her become more connected with her friends and family again. maybe another person has a different reading of this, but i have always viewed that it was this relationship with spike, which was supposed to be that death knell/this unconscious action to get her closer to oblivion, that was instead the feeling (once more, with feeling) given back to her tryst after tryst to bring her back to herself. and she ends their relationship once she's well and truly alive again. i wont discredit the scoobies, her relationship to them is extremely important, but i feel like it really was spike and their affair that led buffy to switch her tracks from death to life.
if pain = death, it is also true that pain = life. if death is calming and forever, life is not. life is furious, fleeting, and feeling. i keep talking about this because this is the crux of buffy in s6 to me. buffy goes from wanting to die to wanting to live, and throughout it we are watching her navigate this labyrinth of pain. first it was inflicted on her, the immediate pain of being brought back with terrible sounds, scents, & sights, clawing her way from the grave bloodied, and its horrible. and then she starts seeking it out with spike. i dont mean to say spike represents pain, but so much of their s6 relationship is actually about buffys relationship to herself, her death, and her newfound life, that spike becomes yet again a mirror held up to buffys darkest. and she goes back to him over and over to look at herself in the mirror. she doesnt have to. but she seeks it out.
