Gwendolenau @gwendolenau - Tumblr Blog

10 years apart 😢🤎

I really appreciate the hints in season seven of all the little tidbits shared and conversations that happened between Spike and Buffy offscreen. like yeah, there’s the Billy Idol thing, but when Buffy talks about Andrew and Spike doesn’t recognize the name, she clarifies him as “Tucker’s brother” which rings a bell and he needs no further explanation. which means beyond silly little anecdotes, they must’ve talked about baddies that Buffy defeated in the past, when Spike wasn’t around, and that’s just so sweet to get another glimpse of the time they had together.

#btvs #spuffy

paternosters

Pluribus, intentionally or not, is the most post-2020-2023/COVID media I’ve seen since living through those years.

Something terrible starts to happen all around you, all over the world. So many people are infected so fast, and now suddenly the person you love most is infected, and she’s in distress, so you rush to get her help but not a single expert or authority figure around you has the capacity to tell you what to do. Your wife dies, right in front of you, and there are so many bodies everywhere that you’re seeing them on the street. You stay in your house because you have to hope your house is safe, but 800 million people just died and even if you don’t know that exact number just yet you can extrapolate from all the horror you’ve just witnessed in your own city.

And then, the next morning, it’s a bright sunny day and everyone (who lived) wakes up and tells you it’s over, we did it, so sorry for your loss. Yup, everything is okay, we lost a couple, but we’re good now. Would you like to go back to normal?

Even the other ‘unaffected’ people in the world look at you like you’re insane when you bring up how bad the situation was. Well, MY family is intact and I want to be happy, so let’s make peace with the world as it is. We just want to be happy again, and, look, everyone is ready to pretend with you.

Why are you so angry?

docileroamer

'We have Enough Dead Friends --- Lena Oleanderson' thank you @lena-oleanderson for making this poem, was a good read!

lena-oleanderson

also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.

#poetry

no-resolution

It's very interesting to me that they seemingly purposefully juxtapose Spike with other vampires several times in season 2 in ways that not only make him more human but also less evil. I don't just mean the Judge saying that he has humanity or his team-up with Buffy in "Becoming" (though those also contribute). He came to the hellmouth to help nurse his sick partner back to health. He allows several potential victims to be freed in order to save Drusilla from Buffy in "Lie to Me". He actively discourages it when Dru wants to torture one of their minions in "Surprise". He gifts Dru a necklace in "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered", juxtaposed to Angel's gift of a human heart. He pets the dog that Dru gives him as a snack instead of eating it in "Passion". He repeatedly tells Angel to stop toying with Buffy and seemingly thinks that psychologically torturing someone (rather than fighting them outright) is lame.

Some of this is obviously to show just how unbelievably evil soulless Angel is, but it also implicitly tells the audience that Spike is capable of acting selflessly for the people he cares about (Dru), he doesn't care much for torture, and can even do something that is ostensibly good (helping save the world) if he is given a reason to, which directly contradicts what we are told vampires are capable of. It fits very well with where they take him in future seasons but it is kind of crazy that they were doing this with a character that was initially only meant to appear in 5 episodes.

I'll never get over Spuffy as a ship. It's been like 25 years and there's still no proper equivalence for me. Who else has that much chemistry, while being the opposite side of the exact same coin, forcing the other to do the most uncomfortable shadow work purely because: all they see when they look at each other is what they consider 'the worst' within themselves? Who else does gender dynamic swap that effortlessly, while still keeping them so feminine and masculine respectively? WHO ELSE FUCKS DOWN A BUILDING OUT OF PURE HATE AND LUST? WHO, I ASK???

#btvs #spuffy

jojobaaaa

Fix-it week day 6 ☆ how they live after the war

HAPPY BEACH TIMES

#rogue one #rebelcaptain

goldfish-inhaler

everyone has thoughts about their sworn enemy's big pouty puppy dog eyes. it's NORMAL. and if Spike is good at anything, it's being normal :)

#btvs #spuffy

rapunzellovesbooks

Glamourous serial killers 🥰🥰🥰🥰🔪🔪🔪🔪🥰🥰🥰🥰

As always love a woman who is online posting about the actor she is paired with bc the dude is chronically offline (literally same vibe as Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton from BGT).

#andor #keero

immortalbeingz

maxdibert

I want to talk about this more once I’ve finished the series — or at least gotten further into it — but the fact that Buffy is the embodiment of the classical hero, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, and that she’s a woman, has everything to do with her relationship with Spike and the dynamic they develop in later seasons.

The classical hero has always been a male figure, and that comes with a whole set of expectations around how they handle social and romantic relationships. The classical hero’s mission is to save the world, pushing forward no matter what, but in the process, he gradually detaches from his humanity, becoming a symbol rather than a person. Buffy never does that. She is a weapon, yes, but she’s also a person. She’s a vessel and a subject. Buffy moves forward, but she also suffers, she cries, she feels: she experiences the hero’s journey while staying deeply connected to her emotional core.

That’s a rupture of the original archetype — a transgression — and her relationship with Spike is part of that transgression. Suddenly, the woman is the one saving the world, and the male partner becomes the supportive, nurturing figure traditionally coded as feminine. Buffy moves from Angel — who represents a more traditionally heteronormative archetype of stoic, emotionally repressed masculinity — to Spike, who embraces emotion and affection, who expresses his feelings openly, who doesn’t hesitate to take on the role of emotional support and care.

Spike doesn’t want to protect Buffy by locking her in a glass case or worshipping her from a distance. He wants to be her partner, someone she can lean on when things get tough, someone who’s there to carry part of the emotional weight. In that relationship, Buffy takes on a role traditionally assigned to men, and Spike takes on one traditionally assigned to women. He lets her be. He understands her duty and supports her in it. But more importantly, he embraces the politics of care — a burden that’s historically been placed on women. He understands his role as a consort. He knows that Buffy is the protagonist — and he’s happy to simply be her support system.

But again, I’m still working through my rewatch, when the really important moments come, I promise I’ll write a proper meta.

#btvs #spuffy meta

selkiemaidenfae

one thing i rlly want to see more of in spuffy fics (and it’s why i included it in come love me) is acknowledgment that just like angel fucked up buffy’s love map a bit, drusilla absolutely did the same to spike.

buffy starts a bdsm scene by tying spike up but then hears a scream outside, so she hurries off to investigate. she comes back riled up and ready to continue their fun from before, only to see spike’s spike’s whole body tense, his jaw clenched.

bc he genuinely thought she might forget about him and not come back.

a man approaches buffy in a bar and she absent-mindlessly starts talking to him while she waits for spike to come back, only to catch spike watching her from across the room, hands tight around their drinks, like he’s readying himself to fight for the right to take her home.

spike and buffy get sick/injured at the same time, and even though he’s arguably worse off, he’s running himself ragged trying to take care of her. buffy tries to tell him that he can rest, he can just let her exist and get better on her own, but how can he prove himself a worthy knight if she doesn’t let him take care of her??

just… spike took care of a woman who was pretty unwell, transitioned into a pseudo-caretaker when she was weakened by a mob, nursed her back to health, disabled himself in the process, got cheated on almost immediately afterwards, saved her life, got cheated on again, and then got dumped.

i feel like the trauma from that is wayyyyy understated while angel is like. the devil from the bible in spuffy fics.

#btvs #spuffy