So as I'm rewatching episodes of Buffy and have been seeing videos of people in the fandom, I've noticed something. I've noticed that whenever Buffy makes a mistake or betrays someone's trust, so many people gives her the benefit of the doubt because she is the slayer, has been through a lot and in the early seasons was a teenager, and whenever other characters makes mistakes, especially the male characters or the adults, people always brings up those mistakes as a reason to hate on those characters.
For example, every little mistake Xander does, so many people puts him on blast for it. Yes, he makes a lot of mistakes and makes stupid comments a lot, but he's literally a 90s teenage boy and 90s teenage boys are not known for their maturity and intelligence. I see so many people expecting him to be more like Oz. Oz is not an average teenage boy. He's a guitarist in a band, hes alternative and he's a werewolf. He's on a completely different spectrum than Xander. Xander is a loser type who's been bullied all his life and (insinuated) abused by his father. Its also insinuated that his father was abusive towards his mother as well and that the rest of his family is just as toxic. The dude has trauma and spent his whole life being raised in toxicity so imo he's not nearly as toxic as he could have been. He could have been much worse. All the times he's fucked up (not including times he's possessed) he's running on pure emotion and doing things that he thought was normal based on how he was raised. The whole thing with Cordy and Willow was based entirely off of emotion. Again, teenage boy in the 90s, gonna do stupid shit. Yes I do think he's the worst of the main characters and the most toxic, but I also look at it all from his perspective.
Another example is Giles. I love Giles. He's my favorite character. I've noticed that so many people were practically expecting him to be a perfect robot so whenever he makes mistakes, they put him on blast for it. In the episode Helpless, he betrayed Buffy's trust, but he didn't have much of a choice on the matter. He clearly detested the whole thing from the beginning but he thought that the people he trusted knew best and it would be better for him to do it instead of someone else to do it who didn't actually care about her and wouldn't care if she died., but it wasn't until after he found that Kralik escaped, that he realized that he was entirely wrong in trusting The Council. They were people that he grew up around because of his father and had reason to believe that they always knew best even after he went through so much trauma while at the academy, the after he left the academy and everything that went down with Eyghon, he felt even more like he had to trust in the Council and face his destiny to become a watcher. He absolutely hated himself for his actions of what he did to Buffy, which is why he told her and tried to call off the whole thing and when he found out that it was still on, he went straight into the danger to save Buffy, and Buffy saw that. She then hears that he has a father's love for her and that he was fired for that and his rescue of her, which is why she forgave him. In the beginning of season 4, Buffy was going off to college and he was unemployed, so he thought that she shouldn't need him anymore and that she needed to be more independent but then realized that she's still just a kid and she still needs help. In Season 6, she was literally dead, and he thought it would be best for him to just retire and imo since he never really healed from all of his trauma of his life including the trauma of what Angelus did to him and the loss of someone he felt a father's love for. When she came back of course he had to come back to see her again but then he realized, she was too dependent on him and that it wasn't good for her if he stayed and (again imo) he still had a lot of shit to deal with internally and coming back wasn't good for him either. Coming back the second time and seeing that everything has gone to hell made him blame himself for leaving in the first place even though he needed to. He's made mistakes because he's human. And every mistake he's made he's regretted. Just because someone is older doesn't mean they stop making mistakes. And a lot of his actions were out of pure emotion. In Revelations when he confronts Buffy, he was angry and hurt and he had every right to be angry and hurt. She lied to him and kept Angel a secret while knowing that Angel hurt Giles in so many different ways when he didn't have his soul. I see a lot of people saying "well he should have known that Angel was different with his soul" but that doesn't matter. He has PTSD because of Angel and just knowing that Angel was alive was triggering and the fact that Buffy lied to him about it all was very painful. He felt like she didn't respect him and his job enough to tell him the truth from the beginning which he still would have been triggered by it but he wouldn't be betrayed by her and would try and work with her.
I've seen so many fans hate on other characters for their mistakes, but when it comes to Buffy, suddenly she gets a pass. She's made a lot of mistakes. She betrayed Giles trust, she betrayed and lied to her team on multiple occasions, in Season 7 she refused to listen to anyone telling her that going into "the belly of the beast" with half trained teenagers was a bad idea which lead to people getting hurt or killed (I don't think they should have kicked her out of her own house but they did have every reason to be upset with her) and yet people give her the benefit of the doubt but doesn't give the same treatment for other characters. Don't get me wrong, I love Buffy. I think she's a great character, but I don't understand why she gets special treatment and everyone else doesn't.
I think the thing that makes me really not understand is that with her, people give her the benefit of the doubt as the main character and yet in The Rookie, so many people don't give Nolan the benefit of the doubt as the main character. I know it's two completely different fandoms but for Nolan, people keep using the excuse that he is the main character for why they don't give him the benefit of the doubt and ignore/ overlook his trauma and yet Buffy is the main character and gets a very different treatment. It's like they are opposites. People hate on Nolan but gives other characters (mostly Tim and Lucy) the benefit of the doubt and then people give Buffy the benefit of the doubt but hates on other characters. It's just so confusing to me why this happens. Its not like it's bad acting or bad characters. They're good characters and great acting. I don't really understand it. Anyways, that's my rant. Not gonna tag this because I'm not trying to call people out, I just want to voice frustrations.
