#watcher of buffy

[artemideaddams]

Buffy’s Mother in the hospital and her Captain America Wannabe Boyfriend and her creepy pathetic vampire stalker are having a piss macho context in her own house… men really are an embarassing species.

[artemideaddams]

I do love Buffy and I am more critical of some fan wanting to justify everything Faith did because of her having traumas (I think it's an explanation, I think this makes her symphatetic, but I think it can be considered an excuse to not be held accountable, etc etc) but-

I just read something I didn't agree with. The context was about how Faith is costantly wrong in saying and thinking that Buffy has such this perfect life (I agree, things in Buffy's life are often way less smoothly than Faith seems to think) because Buffy and Faith are equally traumatized. And that I don't agree with.

Saying that Buffy and Faith are equally traumatized is just false. Buffy go through a lot of trauma in the serie and this obviously affects her, but trauma literally affects you in a different ways depending on how early/late in life you went through certain thing.

This is not the Trauma Olypmics amongst fictional characters, but I think it's important to recoignize that, while Faith's image of how perfect Buffy's life must be is absolutely false, Buffy and Faith's early development in lives before becoming Slayers were very different and this affects theirs behaviours, temperaments, and reactions to events!

Like Buffy as an adult will have to deal for years, I think, with all the trauma she went through as a teenager, after becoming a Slayer; but before that she has kind of a normal life. Her parents fight and get divorced, ok...but that's still pretty normal. That's not a perfect life, but that's a pretty average life, not an incredibly traumatic life. And even her parents marriage is implied to go definitely downhill after her becoming a Slayer and having to do Slayer things and find ways to cover for it (not saying that it was Buffy's fault, because obviously it wasn't, but I think it is a good metaphor for how long marriage can end when two parents have two different ideas on how to deal with the "rebellious" or "difficult" phase of theirs teens kids). So for Buffy every trauma is almost always connected to being the Slayer.

In fact, Buffy being a "normal girl" and having had a "normal life" prior to becoming a Slayer is a theme that return frequentely in the first two or three seasons. Especially in season one.

Faith on the other hand when she was called as the Slayer was already orphaned, dropped out of High School for unknown reason, she was poor and apparently already leaving in a hotel, and her mother, prior to dying, was an addicted (or just alcholic? I don't remember but it doesn't change a lot) who frequently hit Faith, her father is never talked about so he was either worse or not there at all. *Of course* she takes the novelty of becoming a Slayer (aka having suddenly super strenght and the ability to fight monsters) in a different way than Buffy.

For Buffy it was a tragedy, or what lead to her normal life becoming a tragedy or at least a costant fight against the horrors. For Faith it was an opportunity to have something that makes her feel less powerless. Of course Buffy doesn't understand how Faith can be so open about how fun Slaying is when they first meet, Buffy has lots her regrets and trauma from everything that happened in her life after becoming a Slayer, something she never wanted or asked for.

For Buffy, being a Slayer will become part of her identity and something to be proud of later, sure, but it’s also something that makes her life more difficult than it used to be before. She will be able to accept/conceptualize this role Fate has given by becoming a Protector of everyone else- the struggles of being a Slayer will be worth something if she can save her world and her friends and all her loved ones, etc.

For Faith instead the horrors were already part of her life.

Becoming a Slayer is almost an improvement for her because she gets to hit people without them managing to kick her back, she can punch first now everytime she feels treathened/scared.

Differently than Buffy, she doesn't need to find an higher purpose or a noble scope in her calling because it's honestly the most funny and most useful thing that has happened in her life for a while. She is reckless as she is in season three because doesn't need to conceptualize or accept or finding a higher purpose in being a Slayer. And (until the time she spent in Buffy's body) she doesn't even care that much about the saving the world thing, it's just a bonus of becoming a "hot chick with superpower."

Buffy is failed by her role model in many ways many times, but Faith has apparently had literally ZERO role models in all her life since the beginning, so it makes sense that Buffy tries to become a better role model (better than the one she had, too, I'd say) for others people while Faith straight up doesn’t believe in role models. She just use her powers as a Slayer as an "out-of-jail" cards for every situation and she just think of herself because no one has ever taken care or helped her, so she doesn't trust others and doesn't thank that the world work in a way that people take care of each others!

Both Buffy and Faith are heavily traumatized, and that’s both why they clicked together and why they never managed to really comprehend each others. But saying Buffy and Faith are equally traumatized, or traumatized in the same ways, just undermine not only Faith's character (who is costantly in a flight-and-fight, but mostly fight-and-then-flight mode, and it's very difficult to not read this as a trauma reaction) but also the whole point of her character in relationship to Buffy- if Kendra is the Perfect Slayer Who arrive when Buffy is torn between her Slayer duties and her feeling, the girl whose death makes Buffy understand that she has to do her duty and save the world even if it means killing her love, then Faith is the Slayer who is way more impulsive than Buffy and had a way rougher life than Buffy and arrives in town when Buffy feel at her lowest. Ironically, Faith redenta Buffy for being “too perfect”, but one of the reason why Buffy becomes more responsable and careful in season three is exactly Faith’s entry- now Faith is the “problem child”, the difficult one, and Buffy start to improve herself and sees herself as the “good one” for the sake of both of them.

Saying that Buffy had an early life as difficult as the one heavily implied (and in some episodes explicited) Faith had undermine also Buffy's season one arc, which is all about how before becoming a Slayer Buffy was a pretty typical teenager with a pretty typical life who now have to adjust to living a double life that involve fighting everyday and even risking or losing her life at sixteen, and she accepts this only by realizing that all the pain and struggles and battle she goes through have a pratical effect on protecting and saving others people.

Basically:

Buffy's whole thing is that being a Slayer ruin her life in many ways, but allows her to save the lives of others- and it's a costantly balance between these two feelings, the sense of doom because that's who she is and she can't change it, she can't choose to change it, not without dooming others people by leaving them without a protector, and the pride of who she is and what she does, the bittersweet but morally rewarding joy of being a protector.

Faith whole thing as a character is that her life was already pretty shitty before her becoming a Slayer and that's affected her and create in her a serie of trauma reactions that negatively impacted her behaviours as a Slayer, because she was given super strenght and the ability to kill before having the time or the occasions to heal her past and her inner demons.

So it makes perfectly sense that Faith would see Buffy as having this "perfect" life that was denied to her, even if us as the audience know that Buffy's life is far from perfect and maybe it never even was in the first place. Just like it makes sense that there is a whole part of Buffy's life, a whole lots of Buffy's mundane problems, that Faith can't see or with which she can't emphatize with because she had always lived in survival mode even before being a Slayer and she doesn't see where the big deal is.

[artemideaddams]

on faith, and compassion, and its limits.

Faith is one of the character like Spike that I would enjoy more and more freely if I read less takes on her on Tumblr.

They are both funny, symphatetic (for an antagonist on Buffy, at least), charismatic, have an interesting dynamic with Buffy and a good chemistry with her... and the fandom think it's a moral failing of every others characters when those two are not treated by everyone in the story as poor little meows meows.

They both DID not act in a way that would make people around them treating them as poor meows meows makes sense. The actions of both of these characters, regardless of theirs deep motivations (well. Of Faith's deep motivations. Spike's motivations are just that he is a vampire and he really likes blood lmao), would make people want to stay the fuck away from them becayse those fuckers are dangerous no matter theirs tragic backstories.

And that's true!

I love Faith as a character, I really do, and I do consider her more symphatetic and justifiable than Spike or even Angelus, but ...

But man I am so tired of the idea that since a character's actions are motivated by trauma or mistakes, the others characters in the story, that are directly affected by said actions, should have for said character the same unconditional compassion that us, the audience, feel.

It's percectely normal to feel empathy for a deeply sympathetic traumatized character who mess up and fucks up. It's also perfectely normal not being so sympatethic when someone from your life who is not a fictional character commit actions that deeply hurts you, no matter what justification or which traumatic reason motivated theirs actions.

So I feel like it's perfectly possible to symphatize with both a character in a story who mess things up due to trauma informed reasons, and to the characters who didn't forgive or forget this character and theirs actions even if they were motivated by trauma or pain or others realistic motivations.

What makes me start this rant is a post I read where it was written that Buffy, while being in Faith's body, should have learned to feel compassion for her.

What does it mean that being in Faith's body should have taught Buffy to have compassion for Faith.

Buffy had ALREADY compassion for Faith where no one else had ("she had it rough; could have been me" etc) and dare I'd say....Faith didn't deserved it lol. Like, she deserved compassion because she was a messed up girl making a serie of wrong choices in terrible circumstances, but since those choices mostly affected Buffy or the people she cared about, Buffy herself didn't *owe* Faith compassion or anything. Compassion is a wonderful thing and gift but is never owed to the one who hurt you, especially if they were close to you first. And yet Buffy felt it for Faith. She *chose* to feel it for Faith, even when everything and everyone else was telling her not to.

Even when Faith woke up from the coma, after everything, Giles and Xander were worried about Faith hurting all of them, Willow was feeling vindicative toward Faith, but Buffy, despite being scared of what Faith might have done next, was thinking also about how scared Faith must have felt and how alone.

Buffy has always had compassion of Faith, because Faith was the part of Buffy who never had her (sometimes wacky, but still very present) support system and didn't know how to save herself after being told she was doomed to save the world. Faith is the part of Buffy that never came back home after "Anne" or that leaves again after "Dead Man Party". She is the Buffy that get abandoned by both her parents after becoming a Slayer and not just by one. She is the Buffy from the Wishverse, the one tgat never came to Sunnydale, and not only didn't meet her friends but accepted with cinic fatalism that vampires just take over a whole town while she was away and there is nothing she can do to save people here, and she'll just slay the monsters for the fun of it and to get an outlet to her frustration. Faith is the Buffy who is exhausted and didn't know about it, because she never admitted it. Faith is who Buffy would be if she was not able to costantly save herself first so she could save others people too.

Buffy has always had compassion from Faith, and not just because Buffy is a compassionate person (she is; but not always toward abuse victim or people who reminds her of herself) but because having compassion for Faith meaning having compassion for the hurt part of herself, nurturing them and healing them so she'll not allow them to take over all her personality and story.

Being in Faith's body didn't teach Buffy anything new about Faith (or anything Buffy didn't already imagine or had guessed) because as Buffy said "Faith had it rough" was barely a secret. "The Watchers Council are assholes"= also not a secret, Buffy had literally fired them, they gad ordered her to drug her and strip her of her power previously; we went through all that in season three.

If there is anyone who had to learn from the other, is Faith. Faith who the moment she start moving in Buffy's body, start speaking about Faith with contempt, and is met by everyone with weird eyes because Buffy herself NEVER spoke about Faith with such disregard about her pain, not even when she was trying to capture her or when she hated her or when she was scared of her or when she thought she was going to kill her.

Faith who think who Buffy is a self-righteous good girl who knows no fun, when Buffy actually struggled a lot with the whole being called to save the world instead of being the old selfish spoiled teenager self she wanted to be and sometimes miss, when she wanted to go to dance instead than slaying vampire, where there is nothing that Buffy loves more than a good pun, where Buffy would love fun as much as anyone else if not more- if she was not cosmically punished by the narrative everytime she tries to have it.

Buffy CAN be self-righteous, but her battle between self-righteousness and empathy is actually more complex than how people like Faith makes it to be, because more often than not Buffy IS feeling empathy but she thinks is not what she should feel as the hero so she repress it in favour of self-righteous anger, because that's a sentiment that help slaying better. It is not easy feeling sympathy for who is in the wrong when your cosmic and magical job is to establish the right order of the world every night.

And yet Buffy never really get over her unwilling sympathy for Faith, until the body swatch moment.

We don't follow a lot of Buffy in Faith's body in this episode; we follow Faith in Buffy.

Because it's not Buffy who had to learn a lesson; it was Faith.

What Faith learns is that Buffy hates Faith way less than how much Faith hates herself. But it's too late now, because the way through which Faith understands it is by crossing a line that will make difficult even for Buffy to not hate her that much.

Evsn Buffy's compassion and understanding for Faith, even if it's strong, can have its limits.

[artemideaddams]

i hate when an episode of Buffy hassuch a racist premise/execution but also so many fun interactions between the characters that I enjoyed most of it.

[artemideaddams]

i don't like this chad-ified version of Angel in Thanksgiving...

I like him better when he's wet and pathetic and problematic.

When the writers try to make him objectively cool and macho I side with his haters.

Buffy's older vamp creeps/love interests need to be a bit like Rochester in Jane Eyre to work, in sense that the narrative need to make clear that they are very pathetic and lame and everyone knows it to not make infuriating the fact that our heroine fall for them.

[artemideaddams]

I actually liked the werewolves episode on Buffy... I heard bad things about it, but-

I do like that Oz, a character who was more or less a blanket whose only purpose was to be Willow's perfect and understanding boyfriend, has finally showed a bit of flaws and moral conflict. I chose to think that his finallly giving up on trying to live a normal life was less about the cheating and Willow (even if it was a part of it) and more about the fact that he did kill a person (his worst fear), even if in his wolf form and to defend Willow. I would have liked Veruca to be a bit more fleshed out because like, she has some points.

I don't understand the critics that are like "Willow had cheated on Oz before so she shouldn't being upset when she discovers is being cheated on" because like... that's not how human work. That's how humans would would work if we were completely rational and emotionless beings, but we aren't.

[artemideaddams]

when you are Buffy’s brunette narrative foil of the season and you haven’t tried to hook up with Angel in a hot minute.

[artemideaddams]

graduation day part 2 was PERFECT