Am I really still obsessing about Seeing Red?

[anaross]

You know, this meta on why the AR in SR (g) doesn't work really makes me think that good writing depends on avoiding the generic. ME didn't avoid the generic in Seeing Red. Yes, I know Marti was supposedly modeling this on something that she did herself, but that in itself shows that it's not based on SPIKE and Buffy and what has happened in their

Comments

[thedeadlyhook]

I agree. And I've never understood the critique that dealing directly with Spike's greyness as a non-souled character instead of giving him a patch in the form of a soul led to an unacceptable greying-up of Buffy and her mission, re: vampires. Because uh, is something wrong with that? If that's where the story's led, that's what I want to see it deal with - what if Buffy wasn't right, what if all the "bad" guys weren't so through-and-through bad that you could kill them without a flicker of conscience? What if Buffy had to use her own judgment in these matters rather than relying on the word of a controlling male authority figures - hey, call me crazy, but that sounds like an interesting story to me. (On the feminism front, it's always hard for me not to notice that in the post-"Seeing Red" continuity, we're made to understand Spike's feelings far more than Buffy's, and if we're really meant to take this seriously as a rape story, exactly what am I meant to find feminist in that particular treatment? Grr.)

[anaross]

Exactly-- if that's where the story leads, go with it. Have Buffy deal with the far more problematic nature of her mission. That would be interesting-- like in S7 when she has to kill the psych student who had just been counseling her... but actually show what that feels like. They'd been flirting with that issue since "Lie to Me," I think, when she killed Ford. But they never really make her deal with it, though the whole Spike S7 killing thing gets close-- she can't kill him even when he tells her to

[thedeadlyhook]

Yes, exactly. I have extremely huge problems with the way Buffy had to be made artificially weakened in order for this plot twist to even work. (An injury she doesn't even seem vaguely hampered by a few hours later, when she's facing down the nerd trio? Say what?)

I do think Spike's situation in S6 was a good analog for a lot of women's experiences in unhealthy relationships - which is why I think many women relate to him - but I'm far from confident that this was an intentional decision by the writers. Maybe it is like you said, more a case of writer identification rather than natural evolution for the character. Or put another way, maybe Spike seems like he has a more-or-less consistent arc, because of that writer identification, but Buffy's arc had to be twisted to fit it, because the writer identification wasn't there for her? (Obviously this is projecting a little hard into the heads of the creative staff, but...)

[thedeadlyhook]

Y'know, I'd personally agree - one of the weirdest effects of "Seeing Red" for me was that it actually convinced me that Buffy did love Spike after all, and I'd been far from sure previously. It's just that in context, that's a really squicky realization - it has an element of "she brought this on herself!" that I find hugely problematic. And the whole soul question just worsened the issue, because for whatever reason, Mutant Enemy seemed unwilling to tackle the question of whether or not Buffy could or did love Spike without a soul, so the AR comes off as a way to get that question completely off the table. Leaving them with arguably the even bigger question of whether or not she could forgive/love Spike even with a soul, post-event. But since we don't know - for certain - if she ever did in the first place... yeah. It gets complicated.

[anaross]

But sex, I think, is not what made their relationship unhealthy, IMO, and so the lack of sex in S7, or rather the lack of resuming sex eventually, seemed sort of puritan to me. That wasn't their problem. It was actually maybe a solution of sorts. I sort of wonder if it was too easy to look at that and say, "Oh, we should make sure Buffy never gets sex with Spike anymore!" Like there was something wrong with a young woman having sex. Sex with Angel= Angelus! Sex with Parker=humiliation. Sex with Riley=boring. Sex with Spike... oh, better not let it be too enjoyable too long!

I don't know about the Immortal! :)

Why shouldn't a slayer enjoy sex?

[kd0206]

When I read that about Marti the first (snarky) thing I wondered was if that meant she went out and got a soul. Was a soul a metaphor for therapy? Why trivialize an interesting aspect of the Jossverse?
Than again, why trivialize violence against women? He tries to rape her so she tries .....to drop her sister off with him so she can go find Willow in Villains. WTF?
I can work very very hard to make Season 6 make sense. But mostly I (still!) poke it with a stick, going Huh? Huh?