#anya fruit punch monologue

[tiefy]

reached a certain episode in my rewatch.

[diamond-rings-and-gutter-bones]

do you ever just remember anya jenkins 5x16 "the body" fruit punch monologue or are you okay

[herinsectreflection]

Top 5 buffy quotes?

Assuming this is Buffy the show, not the character, and not in order:

1) A joint venture of two related Spike quotes:

“Love isn't brains, children, it's blood... blood screaming inside you to work its will.” (3x08 Lover’s Walk)

“Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead. Course it's her blood.” (5x22 The Gift)

On top if these just being nicely rythmic, well-delivered lines, they expose so much about Spike and how he thinks. Blood is life, and sex, and warmth/love. The multitudes of blood are the multitudes of Spike - affection and murder and hunger and sex all rolled up together.

2)  “Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening.” (3x18 Earshot)

I cannot state enough how important this was to hear as a suicidal and lonely teenager, this sentiment of not downplaying Jonathan’s pain, but bringing it into this larger perspective, this shared human experience, this gestalt trauma. It’s still something I turn to a decade later, when I need reminding that every single person is their own main character, with their own unique story and perspective. And it’s so important that Buffy, so isolated herself, recognises that and appreciates that her struggles and trauma might be unique, but they’re not singular. We are all united in suffering, and that is both tragic and consoling.

3) “I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid. And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why." (5x16 The Body)

I just talked about this scene in another ask, but it’s worth reiterating how perfectly devastating this monologue is. There’s no grandiosity, no flowery prose, just blunt frustration. It’s about the absurd mundanity of existence, and how death is not different. The Body is very much an episode about the mundanity of death - how it is so small and everyday and universal. It feels completely overwhelming and cataclysmic when it happens to us, but to the world, it’s just Tuesday. It’s expressed throughout the episode with little details, like Buffy using too much kitchen roll to mop up her vomit, struggling to dial a number, going out and hearing children playing, Willow fretting over her outfit, Xander getting a parking ticket. This speech expresses all of that and more, expressing how stupid and absurd it it that death is so common, almost dull, and yet we cannot overcome it. Every part of Joyce’ body, her physical existence, is there, and how stupid and absurd is it that she can’t just not be dead any more. We as humans are certain to know death, and yet we know nothing about death - we cannot tell Anya why this happens because we don’t know.

4)  “I know I should go / But I follow you like a man possessed / There's a traitor here beneath my breast / And it hurts me more than you've ever guessed / If my heart could beat, it would break my chest”

"I touch the fire and it freezes me / I look into it and it's black / Why can't I feel? /My skin should crack and peel / I want the fire back" (6x07 Once More With Feeling)

I had to have a lyric from OMWF and couldn't choose between these two. They're both such powerful expressions of pure yearning. You can feel the pain and want viscerally when you hear them. They're great inverse echoes of each other too. Spike is a dead creature, cursed with feelings of love, a mimicry of life with his unbeating yet unignorable heart. Buffy is now living, but cursed with feeling dead, her body responding to stimuli as a living body does, but her emotional state being so totally deadened that she is unable to feel it.

5) "I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out. And I don't sleep on a bed of bones." (4x22 Restless)

This is my number one quote. It's everything about the show, a perfect summation of how Buffy forges out her own identity in a harsh world, captured in this surreal little poem. Like the Anya quote above, it describes life by noting it's bizarre mundanities ("I shop. I sneeze."). It expresses Buffy's heroism and adaptability, how she's constantly facing and dealing with new challenges. And it faces down her greatest fear at this moment - that she is a creature of death and loneliness. The "bed of bones" is such an evocative image, the inverse of this ideal that Buffy wants - to be able to go home at the end of the day to her friends, her family, her lover. To be able to live and experience lives comforts A bed of bones means a monotonous, everyday, repeated return to death and decay. That's the paradigm she is rejecting.

[buffyannesummrs]

Since you’re (about to start) buffyposting: thoughs on Anya?

oh i simply LOVE anya! 

please let me know if you were curious about anything specific always happy to ramble about any buffy topic! but generally -  

i think emma caulfield has the best comedic timing of any actor in the show, and anya is right up there with characters like spike and cordelia as a charismatic scene-stealer.

i also enjoy her character arc so much as (brief) antagonist turned unlikely ally turned friend and member of the scoobies ... it’s a formula that works. her “immortal turned mortal” trope leads to some of my favorite poignant moments in the show - obviously one of those being her speech in “the body” which is one of my top 5 buffy monologues. 

“I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid. And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why.”

whenever the show gives her more weight as a central character - “hell’s bell’s”, “selfless” - she really gets a chance to shine and i find her character incredibly compelling.

in my opinion, anya suffers from a similar problem to cordelia - the show is confused about whether we the audience are ever supposed to like her or see her as a true friend to the scoobies. that problem for cordelia was already overdone enough by season 3 (she had been empathized and shown her “true colors” as a good person time and again by that point) but for anya it gets ridiculous. she is a core member of the scoobies and she is engaged to xander post season 5! and yet the other characters continually make jokes at her expense and maintain that she’s not really one of them.

so that about sums it up! i love anya!