Because I can do better than the snotty post I made on Tumblr.

[eilowyn]

Today, I made this post on Tumblr in response to a confession on the Buffy Confessions blog. I often do this to confessions I have feelings about. This one started with the snarky response, "Isn't it nice how people disregard season 7 in order to self-righteously get their Spike/Spuffy hate on?" but I expanded it. That post on Tumblr came from the

Comments

[eilowyn]

See, I take the exact opposite view of the scene. Whether they were supposed to or not, many fans were sympathetic to Spike and were approaching the scene from his perspective, where he was in the middle of a mental breakdown and wasn't in his right mind. The fact that there's hardly any emotional fallout from the AR in season 7 also shows that they weren't taking it seriously - if they were, we would have seen some change in Buffy's behavior and interactions with Spike. I also have read several different readings of season 6, and many of them see Spike as almost too sympathetic, possibly because of James Marsters' acting. Several essays (look under the essays heading - I couldn't get a direct link) explored how ME failed to paint Spike as the Bad Guy they wanted the audience to see. David Fury even compared Spike's fans to the women who write to serial killers in prison - the writers (except for Jane Espenson, more than likely) wanted Spike to be seen as bad. Anything good he did was selfishly motivated, we were told time and again, because he wanted to get into Buffy's pants. Yes, it's made clear that there's no victim-blaming, but you could also say that Buffy had been giving Spike so many mixed signals throughout the season - saying 'no' then proceeding to have against-the-wall sex with him - so Spike didn't understand that no meant no in this case. It's because there are too many open questions that lead to sympathy for Spike that the AR bothers me - rape is about power, not love, but in this instance it was about love that "burns and consumes."