The tl;dr comment on BtVS vs. Twilight, and how creepy vampire boyfriends are still creepy.

[parallactic]

I haven't posted for a while, haven't looked at my f-list in a while. But while I was playing catch up, I came across redbrickrose's link to Buffy vs. Edward (Twilight Remixed), read her comments section, and wrote a reply that became a tl;dr about teenage girls and creepy vampire boyfriends, and meta I keep coming across that's started to bother me. And it's

Comments

[redbrickrose]

I didn't at all mean to imply that the creepiness of Twilight lay with Bella's behavior and if I did, I apologize. I absolutely agree that fault lies with the stalker character. I do feel like the vid highlights what is problematic about Twilight without necessarily addressing Buffy's own issues (which is not to say that I don't love the remix because, I so do).

Mostly I agree with what you said at the end about how I want those narratives to play out - but then I tend to be extremely squicked by power imbalances.

And this:

what BtVS has over Twilight is a smaller power gap between the two partners, and arguably in some instances Buffy was the one with the edge over her vampire boyfriend. (In Buffy/Angel, Buffy was the pursuer and pushed for more, while Angel tended towards caution and let her set the pace. In Buffy/Spike, the physical violence was consensual and if anything Spike tended towards masochism and explicitly asked Buffy to hit him harder, and they were both emotionally abusive.) Oh, and BtVS explicitly links Angel

[parallactic]

I don't think you implied that the creepiness in Twilight was due to Bella, and I assumed that of course you thought it was the stalker's fault. But... I've seen a Buffy-like character's strength praised before, and it carries connotations that if creepy stalkery stuff is directed at a strong character then it makes it less wrong

[redbrickrose]

Yeah, I think you're right that there's frequently some really problematic victim-blaming in the Twilight meta - and that Angel had some seriously creepy moments early on. I still think the BtVS text was more *aware* in general - but you're right that it wasn't always.

[wordsofastory]

I think this is a really interesting post. Although I completely agree with you that the problematic behavior lies with the creepy stalker character, I think the reason why so many commentators focus on the behavior of Buffy/Bella is because both of these stories have a primarily female audience (more true for Twilight than BtVS, but certainly BtVS is more about the teenage female than the teenage male). And so Buffy/Bella is more the PoV character, more the one the audience is expected to identify with, more the one who functions as "imagine yourself here". And so, naturally, they are the one who an audience tends to imagine other behaviors for, or wonders how they themselves would act when placed in the same situation. The creepy stalker character is other people- you can't control how other people act, but you can control how you react to them.

All that said, though, I agree with you and do wish that more commentators would make explicit that it's really not okay for anyone to behave like a creepy stalker.

[parallactic]

Although I completely agree with you that the problematic behavior lies with the creepy stalker character, I think the reason why so many commentators focus on the behavior of Buffy/Bella is because both of these stories have a primarily female audience (more true for Twilight than BtVS, but certainly BtVS is more about the teenage female than the teenage male). And so Buffy/Bella is more the PoV character, more the one the audience is expected to identify with, more the one who functions as "imagine yourself here".

I hadn't thought of that angle, and didn't consider the primarily female audience. I tend not to identify with characters. I do like to imagine how and why a character reacts the way they do.

The creepy stalker character is other people- you can't control how other people act, but you can control how you react to them.That makes the commentary come off as more palatable, or understandable. When they don't make the creepy stalker character more explicitly accountable, I tend to go: "It's great if she were stronger or

[wordsofastory]

I tend not to identify with characters.

I do, though not necessarily the audience-placement one. So it's easy to me to see how people focus on one character's actions, even if it's a different character who's doing the Really Bad stuff. So, like, in YnM, obviously it was Really Bad for Muraki to rape Hisoka. But because I don't really care much about Muraki, most of my analysis is going to be with what Hisoka did before and after that act, and the rape itself I'll just discuss as a given.

[parallactic]

But because I don't really care much about Muraki, most of my analysis is going to be with what Hisoka did before and after that act, and the rape itself I'll just discuss as a given.

Hm...I don't think it would trip me up if the focus were on a character's reaction, and the rape or trauma itself were a given. But what I'm talking about is if the focus were on how rape is bad, then on how Hisoka froze instead of running or fighting or doing something when Muraki raped him, and then compared Hisoka to how a Buffy-like character would have kicked Muraki's ass in that situation. Or even if it was just that murder/rape/death curses are bad, and a Buffy-like character would have handled the situation better.

That's when it starts bothering me, and what spurred the post. Like I said, I hadn't considered how the focus on the character's actions and what they could or couldn't have done to be about identification.