#watching buffy

[voyagerone-1]

just need everyone to know that I'm halfway through season 5 of buffy and i just watched that scene where she threatens the council and is really hot about it and she throws this motherfucking SWORD in a really really hot way and i think that may have changed me forever woah buffy summers you are so i mean you are soooo awesome

[artemideaddams]

I like Spike. I think he is a cool character. I like him as a villain, because he is fun. And because I Am a sucker for villains who are hopeless in love while still being very, very bad. I like him even more as a comic relief (season four my beloved) and I even like him as a morally dark and dangerous love interest; a *sexual* love interest that would let the heroine slap him sometimes, and makes her think she is in control, while luring her away from her morals and in her darkness (did I just made a Loumand/Spuffy parallelism? I am not ashamed btw. I just love when the toxic dangerous older part of the pairing has a sexually masochist side.)

I also like him an anti-hero, and as a sort-of-redeemed character who post-redemption has still mantained the sassy personality and some petty sides of when he was evil. (Former villains changing their whole personality and quirks when they switch morality is a pet peeve of mine, and I am happy that it didn’t happen with Spike.)

I can't STAND the way many in the fandom talk about Spike tho. It's something that goes deeper than "my little meow meow" (something that I also do sometimes and find funny) it's a full blown revisionism that goes "what if we analyze all btvs under the lens that Spike was good all along, and only that lens".

Aside from the fact that it always sounds too much as "awww, the poor misunderstood violent white man ♡" for my liking.... why, if you like Spike's canonical four seasons long arc of growth and changing and falling and redemption, would you do that? What's the value of this "overcoming your own evilness in the name of love" story, if the character wasn't even evil before? What power or message him fighting for his redemotion brings, if he wasn't dangerous all along?

If every evil act he did was never his fault to begin with, because he was either manipulated, misguided, misunderstood, or written out-of-character by malicious writers? Aside from everything, this interpretation is just boring. It creates a more boring and flat "misunderstood" character.

I do much prefer the canonical, awful, but still interesting and potentially reemedable and full of emotions, Spike, than his woobified fanon countrepart.

I think a big part of the extreme woobification of Spike is the fact that he is a man (or better, a male character) with lots of feelings, who isn't afraid of showing and expressing his emotions. A big part of people online- especially the one who grew up in Anglophone or Northern Europe countries/culture, where the tendency for men and boys is to be less open with theirs emotions- associate that openess with one emotions with a lack of toxic masculinity.

And sorry, but as someone who grew up around and with male figures who are VERY emotional and very open with theirs emotions (different cultures different time different expectation for masculinity etc) and still often have anger issues (because yes, anger is an emotion too! And not only men who are introvert and "cold" have anger issues, sometimes the extrovert charismatic ones- like Spike- have them too!) or perpetuate sometimes patriarchal or mysoginist ideas, I am SO SICK of this bullshit fandom idea that a man who is open emotionally and extrovert and charismatic= a man inherently less toxic and dangerous. I am SICK of the way it seems so many people that only the "stoic" introvert man can be toxic because he is repressed emotionally. Extrovert, charismatic and friendly men can be toxic dumpfire of anger issues and subtle patriarchal bullshit too.

Spike, like many others male characters in Buffy's story, bring with him and IN him a certain male entitlement, some deeply mysoginist moment. Yes, he usually hang out and talk with women better than with men, he is clearly a man raised by mostly women and it shows (look at his relationship with Joyce vs Giles), and he put the woman he loves always on a pedestal, adoring them. And I like this! I like to watch male characters like this in their romantic relationship! Worship that lady @boy!

But the other side of the coin of men putting some women on the pedestal is treating like trash the women who aren't considered worthy enough to be there (you can love and respect the women in your life A LOT and still be sometimes a mysoginist toward other women), or even worse the women who, in the man's mind, fell from it. "Momma's boy who adores the women in his family but his shitty to his new girlfriend" is a trope for a reason. Harmony, Spike's girlfriend not-on-the-pedestal, would have a lot to say about that regarding Spike.

Spike's treatement of Harmony, his "Bloody Women" in both School Hard and Crush, his inability to accept rejection without pushing or lashing out (him and early seasons Xander SHOULD open a club in this regard), his habit of always blaming his current romantic obsession for all his behaviours... those are all traits of a man who yes, often idolize women and get along well with them if they are being nice to him, but resort to mysoginistic language amd behaviours once he feel wronged by them. And those are all traits that, in a more benign form, were very likely present already in his human, Victorian life. He was a man of his time and we know he tries to push a bit when he was being rejecting by Cecily, accepting defeat only when she was being openly rude to him.

Being a vampire just made them present themselves in a more aggressive way.

(After pondering a bit, I choose to not put in this list of mysoginist actions his stalking habits because I think THOSE are a vampire's characteristic, not a particular Spike's one. Angelus, for example, had them worse, and mantain some- lots- of them even as Angel. This obviously doesn't justify always Spike's actions- "X did it worse" is a kindergarden justification anyway- but the fact that Spike's stalking behaviours, like the sketches, are a clear, watered down, version of Angelus's infamous ones does make me think that those are more of a generic "vampire obsessively in love" trait, and less of a specific Spike's personality trait that was there even, in a less aggressive form, pre-turning, in a way his inability to accept rejection is for example I think it is.)

But even if all toxic traits of Spike WERE 100% an effect of him being a vampire, and none of them were already there in human William Pratt...I still wouldn't care when analyzing Spike, because the character I know lot about and like with all his toxicity is Spike, not William Pratt who apparead on screen for less than ten minutes. The character I find interesting in Spike, the vampire, and I do find uninteresting analyzing him while calling all of his less flattering characteristics "not really who he is" because William Pratt the Victorian Poet probably didn't have them (yet.) (Probably.)

And me liking that Spike is a vampire is another reason why I can't stand his extreme woobification.

Spike brings with him vampirism and the inherent danger of being a predator who has to bite and steal blood to survive, and for which- as for every vampire- violence and pleasure are incredibly interwined. Vampires are always about sexual danger, and yes, as much as it makes people uncomfortable, they often, since the creation of their mythology, symbolize both the inner sexual desires that the heroine (or hero) repress AND the danger of violation/rape. And say what you want about Spike in season six, but he embodies this dichotomy perfectly.

And like, as much as we could discuss how the male characters' mysoginy in this show is influenced by the creator's own mysoginy, I do think there is value in analyzing these male characters for how they are (mysoginy included) and how they interact with Buffy and what does this mean for her; and not for how you'd WANT them to be.

I like Spike and find him interesting, more interesting than the woobified "poor misunderstood white man of the fandom" version of him, not ONLY for his toxicity, but ALSO for it; and for how these toxic tendencies of him influence or complete or contraddict or explain others characters' traits of him. I do find not useful to analyze a character, esp a character with a long arc that include yes redemption but also lots of more morally questionable moments, like Spike's arc is, to divide all his traits into "bad" or "good" traits. I think some of Spike's characters traits that allow him to grow into a better person stems from the same insecurities that are also the cause of his worst flaws. And that's super interesting.

For example: Spike has a lot of capacity to make sacrifices and compromises in the name of love, with or without a soul. His love without a soul might not be pure or selfless, because he is a vampire, but doing extreme and sometimes self-descructive things in the name of love, or of the woman he loves, has always been a fundamental part of his character, even when he was a full-blown villain. And it's a tragic and symphatetic characteristic!

But, due to how much importance he put on "love"- which, again is a reedeming characteristic of him- he is also incredibly triggered by feeling unloved; and this means he is not able to deal with rejection without becoming dangerous! He is love's martyr but often with women who doesn't want or need him to be, and he takes their reclutance in accepting his borderline obsessive idea of love as a rejection of him and who he is as a whole, etc.

Because both his ability to sacrifice himself for any woman he loves AND his inability to accept rejection without becoming violent stem from the same source; the old insecurities of not being loved and appreciated by his mother as much as he loved her, which was a lot.

Similarly, his impulsivity and love for adrenaline is what makes him a dangerous treath at the beginning. But it's also the reason why initially, once he is chipped and can't hurt humans anymore, joined Buffy's side of the battle by killing demons.

Most of Spike's actions are feeling-induced, even when he is acting in a machiavellian or manipulatory way he is doing it with the goal of feeling a certain thing, or having a certain feeling being reciprocated.

But again, this in itself is a morally neutral characteristic: Spike protected Dawn because he acts on his feelings rather than on an abstract set of rules or moral code (evil or good) but he also raped Buffy because he thought of his feelings as the most important thing in the world (to him), and so when he feels rejected nothing else to him matters and is as valid as making someone pay for this feeling of rejection, or "fix" the situation creating another one in which he cannot anymore be rejected. (And in doing so he ignore the agency of the person who is rejecting him, and their ability and right to say no to him.)

So, yeah, I find more interesting to analyze Spike's insecurities and personality traits from a neutral stance and study how the same characteristic of him enables him to be evil sometimes and good some others times. Instead of treating him as someone inherently "better" than others vampires due to his supposed "softness" (aka his ability to feel things and the fact that most of his actions are feeling-induced) in the way so many people in this fandom do. Feelings are a neutral things, acting on them (and always and only on them) is either good or bad depending on the situation, and thus having lots of them and being so much influenced by them doesn't make Spike inherenly better or worse than anyone else. (Even if it makes him a more interesting characters than many others- male- vampire characters in the Buffyverse.)

Willow, another of my fave flawed characters, is also someone who put a lot of importance on her own feelings and this is often the cause of her morally worst actions: yet the fandom seems to understand that, while it's not a bad thing that Willow is very sensible, it IS a bad thing when she is so absorbed in her own feelings that she doesn't see how immediately acting on them might hurt others. And it's SO frustrating, as someone who like both Spike and Willow (maybe Willow more- I am always more attached to my fave female characters than to the males ones), and who recoignize the flaws of both of them and find them fascinating, reading how people in this fandom write long paragraph to prove how Willow is INHERENTLY, since her isolated girl teenage years, a bad person, for always being so absorbed own feelings (rather than a person who BECOMES bad when she ACTS upon those feelings with no issues of hurting others with her actions) while Spike is, and was as William Pratt, INHERENTLY a good, special person (someone that, in the fandom version of him that goes directly against canon, is even SO much of a saint that not even vampirism can fully corrupt him) because he is a man with lots of feelings that doesn't hide them and on the contrary base all of his actions and decisions on them. Uhm.

[lostgirla]

I’ve been putting off ending season 7 of Buffy. Not because it’s bad or anything, just because I am scared that there is an end.

I’ve grown so attracted to Spike as a character, that I can’t finish it. And I know what happens, I spoiled myself…and I am not mad about it…yeah, that’s the post.

[gayjoealwyn]

there are jugheads in tv shows everywhere for those with eyes to see

[spreadthosepages90]

Just watching Buffy

[orallech]

[theinheriteddutchess]

Anyway buffy 1.03

And I'm just kind of surprised how non scared I am because I see myself as a scaredy cat, and I was definitely often scared in the past watching buffy and Angel, but it's a little camp and the way the camera moves feels so different. And you notice they haven't really found their way yet. Witches were a little different later on. Here they talk about a special place to practice and a special book. We later get different witchcraft.

And I love Xander being let down constantly lol and trying to take credit at the end😭

And Amy, sweet Amy... While it lasts👀

It's just really becoming clear that buffy can't do what she wants because being the slayer interferes with her life. And this is only the beginning.

And Joyce, sorry I never really liked her. I'm not saying she has no qualities, but I get annoyed at her. Sure buffy is a teenager and at times a difficult one, but you notice she doesn't really pay attention or show interest in her daughter. The thing she does do are sneers. And it's just annoying me.

She didn't have to be a perfect mom, and she had her own life and they are just starting over, but it's so obvious that Joyce is a bit of an oblivious or distant mom. She doesn't really talk to her daughter, before something happens. And buffy can't talk to her, not really, but I don't see her mom try.

She's absent minded, and then makes those underhanded comments about buffy messing up.

Anyway. I remember the statue at the end and I wasn't wrong, and what a good karma for amy's mom 😏 it must be awful for her.

[thatrandomfandom]

when she was bad. okay so shes dancing with Xander and just blew off angel and was mean to cordelia. Is this like some soulless Sam thing from supernatural? (ik supernatural came after don't come at me)