#btvs 7x17

[charmedslayer]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1997-2003) “Lies My Parents Told Me”

[victorfreakenste1n]

2x03 School Hard / 7x17 Lies My Parents Told Me

[raggeddypond]

William Pratt in “Lies My Parents Told Me”

[i-want-chips]

Thoughts on Giles’ betrayal in 7x17 “Lies My Parents Told Me”

So, just to refresh everyone’s memory: Giles decided he’s had enough of Buffy being patient, forgiving and taking Spike’s part and defending him. So he teams up with Principal Wood and sets a trap for Spike so that Wood would get a chance to kill him while Giles is stalling Buffy.

We know Giles has a dark past and always wants to do what’s right for Buffy but this thing with trying to kill Spike is the one that takes me over the edge. He’s always done the hard things, like killing Ben to get Glory definitely out of the way. But that was something he had to do because nobody else would, nobody else should have had to do it and he took the burden. The killing Spike move is a whole other thing. It’s personal.

The thing is that he doesn’t have power and control over Buffy (or anybody else for that matter) anymore, he’s just a soldier now. He left so that Buffy could grow and become an actual leader, learn to trust herself and her instincts. She definitely did that, she’s the one in charge now and I guess Giles realises he doesn’t actually like that idea so much. Buffy doesn’t need him for decision-making anymore, she doesn’t listen to him and she goes explicitly against what he’s suggesting ALL THE TIME. Especially regarding Spike. Giles thinks Buffy’s biased towards Spike because of their history and doesn’t trust her reasoning when it somes to him. Add the fact that Giles hates Spike, he’s worried about him being The First’s bitch and pissed off because Buffy doesn’t follow him anymore and you get this awful betrayal. I hate him so much in this episode I can’t even describe it. It’s one of the ugliest and most hurtful betrayals I’ve seen on tv. I’m not even ashamed to say that I’ve truly felt this one.

[victorfreakenste1n]

Spike’s Vamp Face | 7x17 Lies My Parents Told Me

↓ higher saturated vers. under the cut

[victorfreakenste1n]

BtVS Thoughts now that I’ve finished the show spoilers for everything | all of this sounds more critical than it’s probably intended to

My Favourite EPs: Fool for Love, Hush, The Body, Once More With Feeling, Hell’s Bells, Superstar, Tabula Rasa

Episodes I Hated: Life Serial, Beer Bad, Where The Wild Things Are, Normal Again, Wild at Heart, Into the Woods

Normal Again is almost as effective as Hush as a horror episode, but the ableism and disruptions to the story it causes are heavy reasons for me to dislike it. Even the slight implication that the main story might not be real topples the foundation of the narrative itself—no message it has matters if none of it is real in-universe. This episode is an attempt at a horrific meta fake reality, but if taken seriously, it alters and destroys the meaning of the story. I think the ableism is self explanatory. (Scary schizophrenia trope) 

Anya’s character at first worried me, because her attraction to Xander and her naivety towards human culture gave me the impression that she’d be the “born-sexy-yesterday’ trope, but I ended up loving her in the end. I’m also so glad that she was essentially revealed to be canonically autistic, since her flashbacks showed that she still struggled with social cues, interpreted things literally, and had a distinct manner of speech before becoming a demon. 

Lies My Parents Told Me is an interesting episode which fails in many areas. It’s strengths lie in the uncomfortable bits: Robin seeming vengeance that will do nothing to change the past, Spike confronting the memory of his mother attempting to force herself on him, Giles becoming a person Buffy can no longer trust. The parent-child relationships within the episode are the bulk of its substance. It attempts to present a moral dilemma—Spike killed Robin’s mother, but he’s ‘good’ now, what can be done? Yet, instead of presenting an answer or an opening for the audience to question, it presents false black and white representations of the character’s morality. Robin is presented as wrong for wanting revenge, and Spike is presented as a separate individual from his past self. I am honestly unsure what they intended with Robin’s character. Even as an accessory to Spike’s redemption, he fails to contribute much except confusion. I wish he was integrated better into the story, and given chances for stronger characterization and narrative importance. 

Why have I never seen anyone mention the fact that Spike’s mother accused him of being sexually attracted to her then tried to sexually assault him 

The inherent incestuousness of vampirism ? (Working on something about this) 

Riley isn’t necessarily poorly written, he’s just a representation of the American-Raised Nuclear Family Ideal Man Masculine Hetero Dream, which makes him boring on a surface level. (I have more thoughts on this, which I’m working on building into an analysis)

I wish they went more into Xander’s childhood trauma, especially considering it was instrumental in his breakup with Anya. I also wish he was haunted more by Jesse’s death, since he staked him himself. 

The writers don’t understand what sexual violence is, or how it affects its victims. In the earlier seasons, sexual violence can happen on screen without ever being addressed as such; the violent and sexual natures are made obvious, but the two aspects are divorced from eachother so that sexual violence won’t ever need to be discussed. It is also framed as something that only happens to the weak. Xander attempts it on Buffy and she stops him, Faith attempts it on Xander and Angel stops her, Spike attempts it on Buffy and she stops him, Warren attempts it on Katrina and he kills her. There is an implicit message that if you’re strong enough, you won’t be assaulted. (“I didn’t—“ “Because I stopped you.”) In the later seasons, sexual violence is treated like a crime that can simply be tacked onto any character to make them more evil. Xander and Faith’s attempts were not treated as sexual violence, sexual AND violent, but not sexual violence—because they were not intended to frame those characters as evil. However, Warren and Spike’s attempts are added with the explicit purpose of making them more evil. This is evil, this is what an evil person does. And yes, it does make them appear more evil, but it’s also insensitive. We (as the audience) are meant to be disgusted, but we are not asked to show understanding or sympathy for the victims. It’s always about how vile the act itself is, and never about how it affects the victim. (Also, any message you do have about sexual violence is instantly voided when you attempt to accomplish it by forcing your actors into a scene that causes them lifelong trauma and sends one of the to therapy.) 

I tried so hard to like Faith, but I ran out of straws eventually.

So much pedophilia and misogyny (cough cough Xander)

While I view the event(s) leading up to it as dubious at best, I like how they handled Spike retrieving his soul. The angle of his new awareness of morality going both ways was something I had not considered—but having him see both the wrongs he's done, and the ways he's been wronged is interesting. Without his soul, he doesn't care how Buffy treats him as long as she stays. With his soul, he begins to realize that he doesn’t want to just be used for sex, and flinches away and panics when she tries to touch his wounds because he immediately assumes she wants something sexual. It’s an interesting angle, but I do wish they had him confront more of the harm he’s undergone and how it affects him now. 

Did I mention that writing an attempted rape scene between your endgame couple is one of the worst writing decisions I could imagine 

A house is a building that carries themes 

Cordelia and Buffy should’ve kissed. 🙏

Strangely enough, one of my criticisms is that they treat human life as too valuable in comparison to other life. For the characters, it makes sense, because they’ve been taught to view human life as the most valuable. However, the audience has seen from Anya, Halfrek, and Clem that demons are not intrinsically evil or incapable of change. They are people. The audience also sees from Harmony and Spike that vampires are the same people they were before their death—Tabula Rasa even indicates that the “violent instincts” supposedly innate to vampires, are not present in memory-less Spike. Notably, Harmony also doesn’t express uncomfortable violent impulses. (Btw I think what the Council said about vampires being demons imitating their human self was complete BS made up to control the Slayers.) It’s understandable why they wouldn’t address this, it’s hard to address the fact that your hero has been killing people, but I do wish it was interrogated in some deeper capacity. 

I don’t like what they did with Jonathan. While the incel pipeline is unfortunately realistic for a teen boy in his position, I wish they had went more in depth on his motivations. I have so many questions about what they intended with him. Was he still suicidal during his time in the Trio? Why would someone who previously didn’t want to hurt anybody (ex. when he was planning to kill himself but Buffy thought he was going for mass murder, when he sacrificed his “special” status in Superstar so the demon he created accidentally could be killed) join a pursuit (taking over Sunnydale) that is guaranteed to cause harm? What sort of relationship did Jonathan have with Warren and Jonathan? 

The ending felt rushed and messy, especially with the magical trinket appearing the SAME episode it was used in, with very little build up. The trinket itself also renders basically all of their preparation useless. Who cares if the slayers got activated if a magical trinket can close the Hellmouth and destroy Sunnydale?

[victorfreakenste1n]

maylancholy 2026 prompt: May 1, Dreams and Nightmares event by @may-lancholy | crossposted on AO3

Spike is haunted by the memory of his mother trying to sexually assault him, and his nightmares cause him to question his past with her and his past with Drusilla.

spoilers for Lies My Parents Told Me + builds off flashbacks shown in that ep Tags: Mentioned Spike/Drusilla(BtVS), Mentioned Spike & his mother, Spike Whump, Discussions of Incest, Implied/Mentioned Sexual Abuse, Mommy Issues, Dreams and Nightmares, Ensouled Spike, Spike’s Struggle with Love, Introspection,  Character Study, Hurt No Comfort 

He dreamed of her, of her admonitions and her attempt. Of the words she spat at him like venom, of the way she had tried to sink her stained desires into his heart. Her words were half true, he loved her, he wanted her—but not in the manner she insisted. Young William loved his mother with every cell in his fragile heart, with every syllable in his laughable poetry. She was the woman he held upon the highest pedestal in his heart, the woman who he esteemed above all else. His dearest mother, and his only tie to the world. Drusilla had not changed that, nor had his vampirism. Into his adulthood, he desired nothing more than to remain with her forever; mother and son, eternally. 

Drusilla had gifted him the opportunity of eternal life, of a well of ever-flowing pleasure until the world’s end. Yet, that altered nothing in his love for his mother. The two women were different, but he could love them both. Drusilla sunk her teeth into him—not only on the night of his rebirth, but on near every night after that. William’s neck grew red and purple with bruises and bites. His skin was forever wounded. While he sought to care for her, she sought to hurt him, and like a moth to flame, he followed. Spike drowned in Drusilla’s fire and let him devour her. For he loved her, and to be loved was to be consumed. 

William had been an innocent fledgling when his mother accused him—fresh from the cocoon of the grave, born anew through the loss of life itself. His puerile heart ached with each step of his metamorphosis. He stood akin to a plant just breaking from the ground, a root that had barely grazed the surface and struggled not to hide away from the light. That is not who he became when Drusilla’s fingers sunk into his coldened heart. The more she touched him, the more stained his soul became. 

Drusilla loved to mock and jeer, not out of contempt, but out of sadism. As Angel had to her, she relished her harm on the young William. Ripening him, coaxing from the hidden caverns of his heart the complexities and shadows within. He found himself the subject of her degradations often, and just as he had taken her touch, he took her words. He placed her upon the same pedestal as his mother, and loved her just as much. From her tortures emerged his shadow, and from it grew his self. Her praises and punishments drifted together over time, melding into one another until he could not decipher when she intended hurt and when she intended pleasure. Often it was both, Spike assumed. Her darkened heart could not differentiate one high from another, to her, all was the same. He loved her regardless. 

Once more, his mother’s words were true. He could not touch his beloved without feeling her, nor could she agonize him without his mother’s presence echoing through to torment him. 

“Spike has been a naughty boy,” Drusilla once told Angel, and he recalled unwittingly the night of his mother’s turning.

 “Who’s my dark little prince?” 

And within himself, he knew, she had been right. 

The memory oft caused him to jolt, a deep physical ache welling from the harsh memory. His mother and Drusilla saw the same potential within him, their eyes having opened to the nature of the darkness within him. If he had not then, when she had propositioned him, he certainly possessed a blackened soul now. The taint within him seemed to struggle against the bounds of his heart, burning and aching and begging to be released. The false purity of his mother’s love in youth had only concealed that filth, not contained it. They had seen the perversion of his heart, and found it within themselves to pull it free. His mother gave him the seed. Drusilla sprouted it. Something harsh brewed in him from birth, and Drusilla’s bite made that dark bud bloom into a blossoming flower, sprouting leaves and thorns of its own. Together, the two formed the tree of his soul. 

Spike’s dreams came in snippets, vague figures and vague dialogues. Sometimes it was her, disparaging his poetry before forcing her hands upon him. Sometimes it was her, human again—sometimes healthy, sometimes not—cupping his cheek in her hand and humming their song. Sometimes it was Drusilla, whispering to him, biting him, touching him. Her cold hand coming to lift his chin, her darkened eyes boring into his. Sometimes he was innocent, wide-eyed and human, like a fledgling emerging from its nest. Sometimes he was not. Many times, the images merged together, as though the fragments of his memory and self melted together into a singular scene. He was both William and Spike, both innocent and dirty. On the pedestal was both his mother and Drusilla, the figures rotating and shifting eternally. It could be anyone, as long as they burn him. His mother speaks to him. Drusilla touches him. It’s gentle. She touches him again. It’s no longer gentle. The pattern repeats, various moments and symbols occurring eternally until his dream grows indecipherable. 

“But I’ve figured it out, my mother actually loved me!”

When he awoke, those words always haunted him. Despite the idyllic years of childhood he remembered, the more he recalled of her, the less wonderful his mother appeared. Fragments of his youth made him question if her proposition following her turning had been anything new at all, or if the undead release of morality simply unleashed something present within her. Perhaps she had bloomed just as he had, her taboo desires burgeoning into a raging flame. Some things had happened when he was a boy—strange, but not purely unusual for a mother and son. Perhaps they had never been innocent, perhaps he never had. Yet, when he considered the prospect that her love had been impure or unreal, his chest tightened. She loved him, surely. Because he wanted to love her, because he still possessed within his heart and soul that blazing desire to love and be loved. As surely as the sun rose in the morning, she must have  loved him.

Despite it all, he couldn’t afford himself the opportunity to believe anything else. 

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[victorfreakenste1n]

maylancholy 2026 prompt: May 10, "It’s not too bad". event by @may-lancholy | crossposted on AO3

Spike can’t bring himself to believe his mother harmed him.

spoilers for Lies My Parents Told Me + builds off flashbacks shown in that ep Tags: Mentioned Spike & his mother, Spike Whump, Hurt No Comfort Discussions of Incest, Implied/Mentioned Sexual Abuse, Mommy Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Ensouled Spike, Introspection, Character Study

Sometimes, on a quiet and dim night, Spike would remember his mother’s words—and more than her words, he’d remember her actions. Her hand on his cheek, her words in front of the fire. He remembered the warmth of the flame and the chill of her undead hand. Her dark whispers, slithering into his ears like vile snakes. He trembled with the frailty of a fallen leaf. The unknown, yet so familiar tint in her voice echoed in the back of his mind. 

It was not too bad, he often told himself. His mother’s actions had been an attempt, not an assault. She had not touched him, not felt him, not abused him in the way many others had. The world was rife with victims of much more wretched crimes. It was his fault that he became dismal from a crime so benign. Moreso, it was merely the thought of what she could have done that plagued him. His suffering was not as strong, he insisted to himself, because his pain came from possibility rather than past. She had wanted to hurt him, she had tried to hurt him, but she had not—his mother had not laid a hand upon him. 

The possibility lingered in his mind, and cold bile rose in his throat at the thought. 

And yet, even knowing it was an attempt and not a “true assault,” he could not believe those were the actions of his beloved mother. He could not bring himself to blame her, not the mother that raised him until she could no further—that was not his mother, but the demon then within her, he told himself. The woman who had loved him would not have inflicted such terror on him, not have attempted to taint his soul with such blackened filth. A demon, just as he was, had laid its claws upon his heart. 

In the dark, he hid within himself; curling into a ball beneath his ratty blanket, hands over his eyes like a terrified child. Phantoms called for him from the clouded night, shadows twisting outside the safety of his bundle. His mother called for him, but the crypt was empty, only filled by dust illuminated in the moon’s light. In the black shadow of his blanket, nothing could hurt him but the memories he harbored. And yet, those were enough to harm him substantially. 

He heard her, she spoke to him. She wanted her son back, she told him. Her son was gone, he told her, nearly choking on the taste of his fear. But I hear him, she said back. Spike fell silent. That same dance repeated nightly. 

Truthfully, he missed her. Not the mother from his visions, but the one who cared for him every day and night of his childhood. William was a good boy, but Anne was an even better mom. She had held him to her breast and raised him from cocoon to adolescence, from youth to burgeoning adulthood. She had nearly lived long enough to raise him into a respectable adult, with a wonderful wife. Just as she had dreamed. He loved her dearly, and when her tainted voice echoed through the mouth of that demon, the strings of his heart pulled taught. I’ve always loved you, she would say. His eyes would burn. And he would want to say I know, I know you have. He desired to pull her warmth into his arms and never release her from the protection of his grasp, to take hold of his mother’s nurturing hand and never release her. Every night which he did not tugged the strings of his heart taughter. Like a violin’s strings pulled too tight, the strings within his heart creaked and groaned, ready to snap beneath the pressure. Yet, he understood that the phantasms which visited were not her. Even his last vision of her, was not her. His mother was gone. She was dead, and he had killed her.

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