Cless VS Spuffy Relationship Analysis
drivenbats-blog:
I just read this essay about the Tess Mercer/Clark Luthor relationship in Smallville.
She discusses how the physical abuse of Tess Mercer by Clark Luthor is not something she finds sexy, and instead finds it problematic.
She compares it to the Buffy/Spike relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and explains that while Buffy is able to defend herself against Spike, Tess is not.
And I completely agree. Even if you are into the rough stuff (like Buffy/Spike) Tess/CL goes way beyond rough. Clark has the power to crush her windpipe with a pinch of two fingers. He has the ability to burn to death with his heat vision, or freeze her with his super-breath. He has the ability to catch her wherever she runs. She will never be able to run fast enough. I highly doubt a sociopath like CL would go easy on her. So not only is it problematic, it’s just ridiculous.
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Wow, this is the stuff I have been saying word for word for years. How much of a relief to know there are others besides myself and our VERY small group who feel the same!
When Clark Luthor threatens to kill her….he is a very, very powerful man threatening to kill a mortal woman who CANNOT defend herself.
Yes! I understand that when you’ve been as isolated as Tess had been, that receiving such personal attention from a strikingly handsome man would be extremely powerful. But I think even in her mind she was sitting there across from him at dinner thinking, “Wow, another really powerful man telling me he’s going to kill me if I don’t do exactly what he says. How unusual.” 💤💤💤 She was inwardly (and outwardly) rolling her eyes during the entire dinner.
Tess’s fascination with power had in a way, come and gone. She wasn’t nearly as seduced as she once was now that she’d experienced the betrayal and deceit that came along with these “offers”. She now cared about being a PART of something meaningful and having close relationships. In the past, power had always been great as long as there was some form of deep, exceptional love that came along with it. With Oliver, he was the love of her life, Lex was her mentor, and Clark (Kent) was a restoration of her faith. And TESS herself is powerful, so of course she’s going to be attracted to others with power of their own. However, when that power comes with abuse, it gets old REALLY fast. To say NOTHING of the fact that Clark Luthor was sort of substituting Tess Mercer for Tess Luthor. You know if it talks like her, looks like her, and has BEWBS like her, then he’ll suffer through sleeping with her. Dude, really? Niiiiiiiiiiice.
She’s [Tess] written as a pathetic victim desperate for affection who is willing to take physical abuse if it means she can be with the man she is obsessed with.
A minor quibble, but I’m bothered by this description of Tess. I don’t think Tess Luthor was weak at all. She was a little less mature, a little less sure of herself, a little “younger” in her behavior, but hey, being raised by Lionel definitely infringes on your ability to develop into a regular person. Tess Luthor still walked away from Lionel’s empire and managed to hang onto hope for Clark and try to help him. That’s a lot.
But Tess Mercer? A pathetic victim desperate for affection? WTF was she supposed to do? She had JUST promised Lois and Emil that she would do anything to keep Clark Luthor distracted while they fixed the…the transportation thingy (?) that teleports people from one world to another, and that’s exactly what she was doing when she went to dinner with him at the Ace of Clubs. I give her such props for managing to neither have sex with him nor kill anyone since that’s pretty much ALL he was interested in doing! I think she deserves a round of applause, personally.
I like my ships to be EQUALS. Power plays are one thing. And they are fine as long as they’re not done in a degrading way, but more like a “dance”. (GREAT DESCRIPTION SPIKE) Going back to Spuffy for a minute, Buffy wasn’t a normal woman. She had super powers to match Spike’s. When they fought, they fought as equals. Technically she was a little stronger than he was, but he was more experienced. So I’m going with “equals”.
It is the same with Tess and Oliver. Oliver wouldn’t ENJOY bugging Tess so much if she didn’t have a fantastic chance of winning. There’s actually a line in this Tollie fan fiction that states Oliver’s POV perfectly. “Their game isn’t over and he loves taking control, only to have it taken out from under him. He’ll take it back, of course-that’s the dance."
