Notes on Buffy 3.16: Doppelgangland

[2maggie2]

Standard disclaimer: I'll often speak of foreshadowing, but that doesn't mean I'm at all committing to the idea that there was some fixed design from the word go -- it's a short hand for talking about the resonances that end up in the text as it unspools.

Standard spoiler warning: The notes are written for folks who have seen all of BtVS and AtS.

Comments

[local_max]

For real. I know some people have made some interesting arguments about Willow being "coded masculine" (despite being Not Large With The Butch), and I love that in the 'verse this comes with all the yuck of that.

Hm, I agree that Willow is coded masculine in some ways (especially later on in the series), but I'm not sure if I see her that way in the Innocence scene -- despite the comparison to Xander. Hm...how do I put this. I think the actual sentiment, that "people I'm attracted to go out with people worse than I am," is not all that gendered. The male coding is more, "they go out with jerks who treat them badly," and the female coding is more, "they go out with skanky hos" or sometimes bitches. (Personal anecdote: I had an ex girlfriend who maintained that guys always preferred going out with bitches who mistreated them, but was also critical of the Nice Guy phenomenon of guys claiming that girls like to go out with guys who mistreated them. Then again, I guess I could see my ex being described as male-coded if she were a fictional character, even though she's one of my emotional touchstones for the formation of my view of adult femininity, so there you go.)