Tag: BTVS

hcconn:

I think Drusilla hates herself. She was so good, a tool of the powers and a pure young woman and then to become what she is, evil and vampiric, finding pleasure in torture and killing of the worst kind, I think deep down under all of that insanity she hates herself. And I think that’s why she prefers Angelus to Spike. Spike loves her, loves who she is, the thing she has become, is utterly devoted to her, Angelus could care less about her, just uses her. So she goes to Angelus because she hates who she is and can’t stand the fact that Spike loves what she has become.

drusillathekiller:

“Buffy was so whiny in season 6! Like, okay, we get it, your life sucks, but the rest of the Scoobies had it hard too and she pushed all her friends away! No wonder she got thrown out of her house, she was being such a pissy, cold, distant bitch! She should have pulled it together, watching her moan so much for so long was so annoying! Things weren’t that bad and her wangst dragged on and on and on!”

Okay, but wasn’t it strongly suggested that the reason Buffy was so “whiny” was because she had clinical depression, and quite possibly was experiencing suicidal thoughts or even tendencies? 

“Dawn is so whiny and ungrateful! Like, oh my God, so annoying. All she ever did was complain and piss and moan! Other characters suffered way more than her but all she did was cry all the time and mope about her sister dying, when she came back anyway! Christ, I wish Buffy just left her on that tower!”

Well, couldn’t a lot of Dawn’s alleged “moaning” be attributed to the fact that she displayed many of (if not all) the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? 

“I can’t believe Drusilla cheated on Spike, the slutty, selfish cow! What a whore! Spike loved her more than anyone else in the world and she just couldn’t keep her legs closed for ten seconds once Angelus came back. Pathetic. Spike deserves so much better than that bitch.”

Sexist terminology aside, surely at least part of the reason Drusilla was so receptive towards her sire’s advances was because she was implied to suffer from Stockholme Syndrome after decades of his abuses?

tinierpurplefishes:

buffyconfessions:

Why is it Willow is told off for violating Tara’s mind with magic but Xander never gets demonized for subjecting the whole of the female population to control by magic? Yeah that part was an accident – but he meant to violate Cordelia’s right to her own mind, body and soul.

Xander gets away with all kinds of shit. He’s pretty commonly saying or doing sexist/misogynistic stuff, and the only reason he didn’t have more racist bits is because the show was so heavily whitewashed. He gets called on basically none of it

You mentioned the Fang Gang and the Scooby Gang being inversions of each other. Can you explain how?

drusillathekiller:

buffyboleyn:

[takes a shot of non-alcoholic whiskey] this is gonna be fun, so kinda informal.

Darla/Giles – So obviously they’re the oldest of the clan right? In effect, the’re also the most aloof, the most distant from the “core” relations, having secondary loyalties elsewhere with the Order of Aurelius and Watcher’s Council, respectively. Both also likely to go “pshhh, drama queens” at their pubescent charges. Like Giles, Darla went absentee on the group for a period of time but whereas Giles left to pursue his own interests and self-reflection in that affluent gentleman of leisure kind of way, Darla regressed from finding any sense of self when she left, going back to the Order (imagine if Giles re-joined the Watcher’s Council in season 6)

Buffy/Angelus – Both are the “core” around which all other relationships in the group kinda revolve? They’re the ones associated with great prophecy, the strategic planners, the generals, the true matriarch/patriarch of their respective families. Deliberate parallels between their origin story are set up in Becoming: both getting approached by older people on the street like alley cats. And to quote the First Slayer, “Death” is Buffy’s art; Angelus likewise insists that a “true kill takes artistry; without that, we’re just animals”. Both work towards transcending that label of “just a killer”, as Buffy laments in The Gift. However, whereas Angelus is full of shit, and is really just a killer and monster with better branding, Buffy understands that to invert this structure you have to turn your art into a gift for others. Angelus’ kills are a gift to no one but himself.

Willow/Drusilla – Vamp!Willow affects very similar, but contemporary aesthetics to Drusilla. She likes “puppies” and lace and bodices, but she’s bound in leather to connote a more put together version of Drusilla. At the same time, human!Drusilla gave off a very timid and sheltered vibe. At their core, they’re curious, intuitive types and the most connected of their groups to the ephemeral world; Willow with her magic, Dru with her Sight. This would make them the most powerful of their groups, if they weren’t so personally fragile; Drusilla’s emotional whims mirror Willow’s fallback on magic. It’s interesting that Angelus singled Willow and her pets out in s2, just like he singled Drusilla and her family; Willow and Dru speak very similar things to him.  However, Willow has a support network to get her out of that hole, while Drusilla did not. In effect,  Willow eventually rises about to be a wicca, goddess-power, while Drusilla has to eternally bear the scars of misogynistic assault upon her body and mind.

Xander/Spike – Of these pairings, I would say Xander and Spike have the MOST in common, and their directions diverge THE LEAST of these 4, which is why this is so LONG….Warning: we’re gonna go into some gross, negative territory here…On a neutral note, the close, co-dependent Xander/Willow thing is mirrored a bit in Dru and Spike (who are in themselves mirrors of season 2 Angel and Buffy, but that’s another meta…) to the extent that Vamp!Willow and Vamp!Xander are basically Dru and Spike with their shit together (FUCK XANDER IS EVEN WEARING SPIKE’S JACKET AND S6 DOUCHE BOYFRIEND NECKLACE). Also, as the fine snowdropsandtigers​ said, William is the Victorian Xander. I mean, the scene where he gets shot down by Cecily is cinematically paralleled in the scene where Xander asks Buffy out in Prophecy Girl. Throughout the series, both Xander and Spike are vulnerable to really entitled Nice Guy ™ behaviors, especially towards Buffy. While most do not blame Xander for his sexual assault on Buffy during his possession (wow, have your protagonist sexual assaulted by TWO of her close male friends, such feminism, such grace Joss!), he pretends to not remember and thereby denies Buffy the chance to organize her own emotions; Spike gets a soul insisting “it’s what you [Buffy] wanted right?” and then spends a season claiming to have been “used” by Buffy, essentially doing the same. There’s a bunch of other misogynistic micro-aggression that can’t all be listed; Xander pretty much calling Cordy unintelligent or a trashy dresser even when they are dating  (dude, Cordy is an A-student and look at your clothes) and Spike tossing “bints” and “bitches” around like it’s Black Friday. However, there’s kind of a point to this male aggression; this is an externalized reaction to these guys feeling like “the spare” of their group, the “disposable” one, the “clown”. While Xander is not necessarily jealous of Buffy and Willow romantically( as Spike is with Angelus and Dru) they’re nonetheless both alienated from a core dynamic and that bites in a particularly male ego place. 

Hitchcock said that if you ever meet your double, you should kill them. And I would get why, seeing as the Fang Gang is kind of the world’s most depressing Choose Your Own Adventure book about the Scooby Gang. 

This is amazing. 

drusillathekiller:

Imagine how sad it would be if- at the start of the series- the Scoobies knew what was going to happen to them further down the line.

What if the perky, playful Buffy we see in Welcome to the Hellmouth knew that she’d come home one sunny afternoon to find her mother lying dead on the couch? What if she knew she’d be forced to sacrifice her first love, that she’d have no choice but to claw her way out of her own grave one day? What if the bouncy, indomitable Buffy who wanted to join the Sunnydale Razorbacks and spent time giggling about a guy she met in the library had any idea that she’d be made to stab one of her dearest friends in the gut, to lead girls as young as her at the time into almost certain death, that she’d be betrayed by Giles, by Willow, by nearly everyone at some point?

Imagine the adorable Willow Rosenberg, with her softer-side-of-sears wardrobe and precocious crush on Xander knowing that she’d have to watch her lover be shot dead. That she’d have to nurse her through the unforgiving jaws of insanity. That she’d be driven to the point that she’d try and end existence itself rather than endure it any longer. That she’d torture and murder another human being.

And just think about the skateboarding, wise-cracking Xander Harris knowing that his engagement would fall apart before his very eyes, that the love of his life would literally be bisected without ever having a chance to say goodbye to her. 

And who could forget Giles, Giles who had been so excited to start his duties as watcher in the pilot? What would it be like if he was aware that he’d come home one night to roses, romantic music, and a beloved ally of his lying on his bed with a snapped neck? If he knew he’d be coerced into betraying Buffy, that his dark past as Ripper would be exposed, how different would he have been?

Last but not least, picture Cordelia, confident, self-assured, happy Cordelia foreseeing a future of horrific demonic pregnancies, of comas, of being forced to feel the collective misery of the entire world. Would she be the same person?

Think about how devastating, how shattering it would be to know your future and for it to be filled with horrors. Horrors you couldn’t change. Horrors you couldn’t escape.

And then feel sad, because that’s literally what happened to Drusilla Keeble.

Why isn’t the Buffy/Xander pairing more popular?

drusillathekiller:

magicboxprompts:

Hmm, I don’t know? What are people’s theories? Just on a hunch I would say that people don’t want to ship Buffy with a “normal guy”? It’s never really been a popular ship. I don’t ship but I’m willing to try if someone wants to try and convert me!

The prominent (and in my humble opinion rather reasonable) justification for not shipping Buffy and Xander is that he doesn’t always treat his lovers- and indeed his female friends- very respectfully. He belittles and publicly humiliates Anya constantly in her attempts to understand human culture and tradition, rather than being sympathetic as to how hard it must be to be shoved into a society you’ve been apart from for a 1000 years. He cheats on Cordelia and when she doesn’t accept his apology instantly he takes to relentlessly taunting her instead, not understanding that she has the right to forgive him in her own time, or not at all if she so chooses. He takes advantage of Willow’s crush on him and uses her as a “backup plan” when Buffy rejects him, instead of telling her that he isn’t interested so she can move on as she deserves. And when Buffy politely declines his offer to date him, he does not react with the same politeness in kind. To put it delicately. As such, I find it understandable why people think shipping him with Buffy undermines the themes of female empowerment in the show.

What I find interesting is that I rarely see the same arguments against shipping Angel with Buffy. Surely that isn’t the dictionary definition of a respectful, equal, or even lawful relationship either? Angel stalks Buffy, constantly makes decisions for her without her knowledge or consent, tells her she isn’t allowed in “his city” as though he owns LA, talks down to her, and under Californian law is guilty of statutory rape. The huge age gap between them also perpetuates a very unequal power balance, something Angel himself points out in Some Assembly Required. Yet Angel and Buffy is beloved among the fandom and iconic among pop culture. 

As for Spike and Buffy, well, we know what happened there. Even the most avid supporters of the ship own up to it being very mutually abusive and unhealthy, at least in season 6. Need I even mention the events of Seeing Red? And Spike/Buffy is likewise very popular.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to enjoy any of the above ships (there are plenty of lovely people who ship all three), and I’m not hating on any of them, and I’m not saying that Angel or Spike’s treatment of Buffy retroactively justifies Xander’s. But I do think it’s interesting that Buffy/Xander is perhaps deservedly condemned for its sexist implications, but less commonly Angel/Buffy. And although Spike/Buffy does get a lot of criticism for the way it was handled, it still prevails as one of the most popular ships in spite of this.

I’m not going to get into a debate about which unhealthy facet of Buffy’s relationships is worse, because I don’t want to trivialize anyone’s experiences, and if I were to play Top Trumps with how Buffy was mistreated that misses the point completely. The point is that Buffy doesn’t deserve to be manipulated or abused at all. No one deserves to be. No ifs or buts about it.

Characters who have paralleled Faith

part-timeslayer:

  1. Buffy: The Light and Dark Slayers, mirror images. Way more similar than they realize, or, are willing to admit. Here is a good gif set showing it.
  2. Angel: Broody Brunettes with a dark past, complicated history with a blond of the same gender, and both desperately seek redemption.
  3. Spike: Reckless, passionate, always second best, complicated love-hate relationship with Buffy, see Angel as a mentor figure for a time before eventually considering him a peer, and perhaps, friend. A few Spangel-Fuffy parallels in this gif set.
  4. Willow: Both start out friends with Buffy until a tragedy strikes, they then go to the dark side, finally understand how far they’ve fallen, and rejoin team good. Arrogant and sometimes callous, but still insecure. Want friendship/family, looks to older male figure as a role-model/father-figure, feed off of their incredible power, before foregoing it temporarily as part of their redemption.
  5. Tara: I didn’t realize this one until the other day when I saw this gif set. It points out similarities I hadn’t seen before. They’re both insecure, lgbt (well for Faith, I’ll never say otherwise regardless of whether the show spelled it out), have powers, are the outsiders, with a troubled childhood, something of an on-off relationship with a Scooby, that started when they realized that they had supernatural abilities in common.  
  6. Giles: Former rebels (though still pretty rebellious, just not as much), dark past, now mentors to young Slayers, even when part of the gang they are always somewhat separate.  
  7. Darla: Beg Angel to kill them (as seen in this gif set), Angel helps them with their redemption. Again, both are mentor figures. Evil at one point. Though they only know Connor for a short time, both have an influence on him, (Darla obviously much more, she’s his mom), and he only really seems to listen to them. Comparisons regularly made between them and Buffy.
  8. Drusilla: Troubled Brunettes with a history with Angel, and mental illness. Both have strong psychic powers (though, Drusilla’s are stronger), a desire for family. See Angel as a mentor. Have their experiences with their mental illnesses mocked by the good guys. Suicidal tendencies. 
  9. Xander: Insecure, trouble with relationships, implied abusive family, feel like they’re the useless one’s in the group, working class, not a lot of interest in school stuff, nerds.