Comments | rebcake: Poll Time! What's it all about, Buffy? redux

rebcake

Poll Time! What's it all about, Buffy? redux

Jul 25, 2012 11:36

Perhaps I'm beating a dead horse, but here goes.

I was fascinated by the huge differences in how people perceive the way Buffy and Spike start their "relationship". I'm trying to find the crux of the divergence, and here is one possibility that came to mind:

Poll I give up! (The Buffy Edition)
Yes, yes, we know it was a combination of factors. But which was the primary motivator for ( Read more... )

poll, btvs

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shapinglight July 25 2012, 19:05:23 UTC

That was trickier than you might think. I do think Buffy's primary motivation was giving in to her own desires, but I don't think those desires were specifically for Spike, or to do with just sex, if you see what I mean. He was a means to an end - the most immediate way to make herself feel again. It helped that she didn't have any real respect for him left so using him to make herself feel better didn't give her the moral qualms doing the same to a human would have ( ... )

beer_good_foamy July 25 2012, 19:10:51 UTC

aycheb July 25 2012, 19:28:21 UTC

Me three although I did pick neither.

Buffy's still harbouring a death wish in Gone. Launching herself at Spike isn't so different from launching herself from Sweet's stage. She still wants to burn. Spike won't give her the big death so she'll take the little one. That and she needs him to stop talking, she needs to shut him up. There I do think there's something that could be framed as his pressurising her although I think that misses the point. But if Spike had backed off and more particularly hadn't thrown the whole "you came back wrong" thing in her face again and again she might have been able to return to the numb but semi-functioning state she was able to maintain before Sweet forced that confession. Or to direct her fury at the people she really needed to feel it. As it was that catharsis was denied her until Normal Again.

kikimay July 25 2012, 19:33:27 UTC

Like the others above. ù_ù

rebcake July 25 2012, 19:46:40 UTC

Oh yes. Her desires are many and complicated:

1. something more than that crummy fat-free yogurt (stop denying herself pleasures)
2. to lash out (even at the wrong person)
3. a bit of peace (that little death)
4. a challenge (though perhaps that's more Spike's thing)
5. to feel
6. to stop feeling
7. great muppety Odin, the sex

And, there's probably a hundred more things that she wants and doesn't want all at the same time.

red_satin_doll August 9 2012, 21:07:30 UTC

I picked "neither" because "her own desires" seemed to simply the matter to me, although I may have misunderstood the question or the possible choices. To me, making love to Angel was "giving in to desire" (and hormones); things were much simpler back then. (That she gets nostalgic in the presence of the lover who made her life a living hell at the age of 17 and she had to kill - oh Buffy, sweetie, get thyself to a therapist.)

What I mean to say is that I agree to what everybody has posted above.

I've wondered - would Buffy have any idea who the heck Odin is? (I don't think she's stupid by any means, it just doesn't sound very - Buffy to me. Almost more Willow-ish, in a way.)

rebcake August 9 2012, 23:03:08 UTC

I've wondered - would Buffy have any idea who the heck Odin is?

I don't know why not. The line is a Buffy quote from the comics, but does seem more Xandery than Buffy-y, on its face. My head canon is that she secretly is well-versed in hero mythology. She doesn't want to let on, but it slips out occasionally. ;-)

red_satin_doll August 9 2012, 23:09:25 UTC

:) I like that thought - but yes it seems more Xander-y (but not quite Andrew-y). He's probably read the Marvel Comics Thor, right?

penny_lane_42 July 25 2012, 19:11:52 UTC

Amen.

rebcake July 25 2012, 19:35:48 UTC

It helped that she didn't have any real respect for him left so using him to make herself feel better didn't give her the moral qualms doing the same to a human would have.

I'd add that finding out that he can defend himself against her physically also made it easier for her to go for it. That could be another factor in the "she's NOT just an awful person" argument. In a way, that would indicate that she does have a sort of respect for him (a warrior's respect for a worthy adversary/ally), even if she's not respecting him emotionally.

shapinglight July 25 2012, 20:08:29 UTC

Hmm, I'm not entirely convinced of that. I do think she regained respect for him as a warrior in season 7, but I never had the impression in Smashed that knowing he could hit her again figured very much with her in that sense.

I also don't think she for one moment thought he would try to kill her. I don't think she thought that in Smashed even when they were fighting, which is weird, but then again, despite the lack of respect, she had definitely come to trust him in a way, which of course is why the AR took her so by surprise.

I do think the fact that his strength rivalled hers was possibly a turn-on, but if not, at least a relief. She couldn't damage him. He could give her what she felt she needed.

And maybe I should leave this now. I'm going to tie myself in knots if I'm not careful and say something that comes across all wrong.

I-it's complicated.

rebcake July 25 2012, 22:52:25 UTC

I do think the fact that his strength rivalled hers was possibly a turn-on, but if not, at least a relief. She couldn't damage him. He could give her what she felt she needed.

Agreed. I'm sure that she was turned on and relieved by his ability to engage in "the dance".

What I meant by "respect", is that she is confident in his ability to more or less match her, physically. It's hard for me to imagine Buffy engaging in rough sex with someone who is getting electroshock when he partakes. I'm sure there is fanfic to that effect, but I just don't think she'd go there. Of course, we'll never know if she would, as that wasn't the situation presented, but I don't think her "dark place" was quite that dark.

But, yes, complicated about covers it. ;-)

kikimay July 25 2012, 20:10:57 UTC

I believe that she respects him as enemy. Maybe it's me seeing things that don't exist, but she doesn't really fight him - going for the slay - when he's chipped. In "Fool for Love" she asks him to stop trying to make her angry. She knows that he can't face the slayer.

red_satin_doll August 9 2012, 21:18:38 UTC

It's interesting the way Buffy and Spike - in Smashed, particularly - subvert "the dance" as Spike has understood it previously. In FFL it's violence and death as a metaphor for sex (which reminds me of a lot of fin de sicle thinking about 'vampire women', St Augustine, vagina dentata, femme fatales of film noir and that whole image of women's sexuality as dangerous, something to be tamed or destroyed.) Buffy and Spike turn the dance around and make the metaphor the reality, so to speak, getting right to the heart of the matter ( ... )

rahirah July 25 2012, 19:57:13 UTC

This, although I think Buffy was at least as awful to Spike as he was to her earlier in the episode.

rebcake July 25 2012, 23:12:26 UTC

Well, yes. But for that there is a separate poll!

http://fantas-magoria.livejournal.com/335454.html

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