#buffy summers meta

[raisedbythetv89]

The eldest daughter experience if you’re surrounded by shitty people is everyone randomly and suddenly despising you for the behaviors they forced you to adopt and rely on 99% of the time. It’s like a teenager rebelling against their parents and them suddenly wanting to assert their independence but then doing absolutely NOTHING to take on more responsibility in their lives so they go right back to depending on you and the cycle just repeats.

This is what happened to Buffy throughout the whole series (willow being super bitter and childish about Buffy not wanting her to do magic even though willow has created so many problems for Buffy with her magic) but especially with everyone but Spike in season 7. She started to be confident in her leadership, a role she was thrust into first by the council who tried to kill her at 18 and then by the scoobies when they brought her back to life just to slay, raise dawn, and pay the mortgage and bills, and they all turned on her for finally accepting and acting like the leader she’s always been even though they have been so unbelievably dependent on her protection, self sacrifice, and leadership.

People who act like this are terrible people and shitty “friends” who don’t care about you as a person and are just using you to be responsible for them so they don’t have to AND to have someone else to blame besides themselves when things don’t go the way they want. (Notice how horrifically awful xander and willow are especially at taking personal responsibility and how when they fuck up everyone suffers SEVERE consequences/is forced to clean up their mess for them the majority of the time, they learn nothing and the cycle continues)

Get away from those people immediately and let them fucking drown because in situations like that it’s either you or them that’s making it out alive.

[anakinskywalkerisfave]

#aw this is so cute i wholeheartedly agree! #with riley she had to act like she was less than what she was #and with spike... she straight up hated herself #and he fed off of that bc that's the only way he could have her

(tags via buffysummers)

A big part of the reason I only ship Buffy with Angel (aside from the fact that they're basically canonical soulmates) is that I feel like Angel is the only one who simultaneously sees and isn't intimidated by how extraordinary Buffy is and gives her a safe place to be entirely unextraordinary for a little while.

With Angel, she gets to have insecurities and hurt feelings and irrational fears and snappy, bitchy moments. She gets to just need a hug and a pep-talk sometimes, or reassurance after a bad dream, or just a break from things in general.

And at the same time she never, ever needs to pretend she's less than she is. She doesn't need to pretend to need help when she doesn't, or that she doesn't know what to do when she does. She doesn't have to play an elaborate game of charades to draw attention away from her own strength and intelligence or that she is, in fact, very much the Head Bitch In Charge.

And Angel is equally interested in both sides of her. He wants to hear silly stories from her childhood and take her ice skating and laugh at her messy bed hair and listen to her complain about stuff. He's also very much into watching her kick everybody's ass, including sometimes his. And it's not that he loves both the girl and the slayer. He understands, better than just about anyone else, that there's no distinction.

[thequeenofsastiel]

I can't BELIEVE I never noticed that Spike only started calling Buffy "Buffy" to her face AFTER he realized he was in love with her, EXCEPT for ONCE in the episode in which he realized he was in love with her, in the very last scene they shared before he realized. He always called her "Slayer", or some insulting/patronizing nickname, or occasionally by her last name.

And honestly the fact that he started calling her "Buffy" very much should have given her pause. It actually sort of did in the first scene they shared post-epiphany. She called him "William" in this deeply sarcastic tone, like she thought him calling her "Buffy" was meant to be some sort of jibe.

Did I go back and rewatch every single interaction they had in the entire series before he had that dream just to make sure I was right once that thought occurred to me? The world will never know.

[trash-and-trash-accessories]

I love Spike so much. He's the most character of all time. But it's more than that. He's more than bleached hair, a pretty face, and bloodlust. He makes sense. The character makes sense.

He's William. He's still, despite it all, William Pratt, the god-awful poet and pathetic wet cat of a man under the thumb of mommy his whole life. He just wants to be loved and held and to satiate his unending bloodlust. He's not the big bad. He's pathetic.

He's burnt out on all the plots and schemes. Plots and schemes are Angel's thing. Serving some grand evil purpose is Darla's thing. Cruelty is Drusilla's thing. William Pratt is a poet and a mama's boy who just wants a strong woman to love him and tell him what to do. He's tired. He's so tired of the plots and schemes.

Sure, he knows how to have a good time, he plays kitten poker and sells demon eggs to the highest bidder but that's a matter of making money or hanging out with friends. It's not what he WANTS. The only thing he wants is to be loved by someone who loves him back. The problem is, he's toxic and obsessive. He doesn't fall in love. He becomes consumed. His whole world revolves around the object of his obsession. So when he's with Drusilla, he's the big bad evil guy doing schemes. Trying to impress her with extreme violence and death. Because that's what Drusilla is into. Torture and death. She's Catholic. And a vampire.

He also tries to impress Angel by killing Slayers because Angel is into Slayers and Angel and Spike canonically slept together don't at me. This man is bisexual.

When he's with Buffy he's a loyal dog. A bad boy, a part of the demonic world, but a dog nonetheless. He's a soulless monster but his obsession with Buffy turns him into one of the good guys. It's not natural for him. He feels it happening and he fights against it, but he's madly in love with her and he will be and do whatever it takes to impress her and make her love him back. He's obsessive.

He knows it, and he doesn't like that side of himself. He doesn't like that he's a pathetic dog. Sometimes he pushes against that side of himself. He tries to be a good person, for real. Not just a pathetic stalker of a man.

But he can't fight it. He is what he is.

And unfortunately that is a soulless vampire.

Hence that one scene that I pretend didn't happen.

But despite being definitionally evil, he can't stop being consumed the person he's obsessed with. Buffy wants him to have a soul. She wants him to not be the monster he is. So he rips William Pratt from his grave and resurrects him for her. He goes through hell to put his soul back inside his body for her. It takes her a long time to accept him again after what he did.

But he's the good boy now. He's a good dog.

Only she doesn't see him that way. In the end, he has her trust. Her love. She cares about him and sees him as her equal. As someone she can trust. She can't trust her friends because they're messy and constantly fucking up and betraying her because they don't understand what it is to be The Slayer. To have a human body and a human soul, with demonic power inside, and the divine mandate to sacrifice yourself for others, to save the world. No matter what that does to you.

Spike has a human soul, a demon inside him, trauma, and a divine mission to save the world. To sacrifice himself for everyone.

Spike is the only one who understands Buffy, and maybe the only one who ever will.

He's the perfect culmination of all her other relationships.

He fucks. Unlike Angel, Spike can fuck. He can experience joy alongside her.

He respects her strength and isn't emasculated or intimidated by the fact that she's stronger than him. He loves that she defeated a god. Unlike fucking Riley.

He's lived lifetimes worth of traumatic experiences. But he isn't currently experiencing an ongoing mental health crisis like Faith was.

And he likes poetry!

They even have the same ex boyfriend!

In conclusion He and Buffy are both the most character of all time and the narrative's favorites and therefore they are both perfect for each other and have the potential to be extremely toxic together and I'm so happy for them, I hope she pegs him, I know he would love that.

[figsandfandoms]

one thing about BTVS that annoys me to this day is that they never tried to make Buffy a journalist. like, it would help her so much.

why is this girl asking about dead bodies? she's a journalist.

why is she always around crime scenes? she's a journalist.

why is she always sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong? she's a journalist.

why is she always covered in blood and bruises? she's a damn good journalist.

the plots practically write themselves. season three, why is Buffy snooping around the Mayor? journalist, writing a piece for the school paper. we know they have one. it could explain why she's in the library all the time and why she doesn't have a particular major at university- a journalist is interested in many things!

[anakinskywalkerisfave]

#I fucking love this scene #also FUCK xander harris (tags via op)

I love it when spuffies try to downplay Buffy saying “I loved him more than I will ever love anything in this life.” As Buffy referring to having “loved” Angel, past tense. If that were true she would have followed it with “I loved him and I put a sword through his heart because I had to.” The End. That completes the past tense, feeling + action. BUT she didn’t. She followed it with “I loved him more than I will ever love anything in this life.” It’s literally past and present tense. Past, reflecting on what she felt when she was forced to kill him. Present, what she feels about him currently as the love of her life.

Do you know how insane that line is? If I were a hater (and failed English in school) I’d cling to “loved” too because Buffy literally confirms in a single scene that Angel is, and will always be, the love of her life. YEARS AFTER THEIR BREAKUP. After Riley. After Spike. It’s Angel. It’ll always be Angel.

[linkspooky]

TOGACHAKO VS. FUFFY: How To Save Your Evil Girlfriend

So, once again My Hero Academia has failed to deliver on its promise of saving / redeeming one of the main villains of its story, and victims of its ficitonal society. This time I'm going to make the added argument that not only does failing to save Toga make the story worse, it also makes Uraraka's character almost completely hollow. While you can dismiss Deku's lack of character development as him being a shonen protagonist, both Uraraka and Shoto had arcs and Ochako's is effectively ruined by her failure to save Toga.

In order to make my point I am going to compare it to a villain redemption arc in another piece of media that does it right, Faith's character, and her strained relationship with Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A series which is overall anti-state punishment and pro-redemption and delivers on practically all the themes MHA promised us.

MORE UNDER THE CUT:

THE GOOD GIRL and THE BAD GIRL

There is a reoccurring dynamic between two female characters in media, usually between a heroine and a female villainness that I like to call: The Good Girl vs. Bad Girl complex.

However, if you were a Freudian you'd be calling this a Madonna Whore Complex.

To explain the Madonna Whore Complex, one of the biggest examples in other Media is Aronofsky's Black Swan. The entire movie is themed around the Madonna Whore complex, and the impossible double standards the male perception imposes upon women.

"The white swan and the black swan are not merely characters, and not merely characters that are relevant to Nina. The black swan and the white swan are archetypes of women. They are emblematic of the Madonna and the Whore [...] . The white swan is the Madonna, she is pure, innocent, the ingenue. The black swan is the whore, she is cunning and deviant. The seductress. Nina and her ballet counterpart Odette are characterized as perfect ingénues. Ingénues are young, innocent girls who possess qualities of youth, innocence, kindness, naivete and purity. She is the fawn eyed damsel in distress and in literary films she's often the heroine or protagonist. On the other side of the coin from the ingenue, we have the seductress, embodied by Lily and her ballet counterpart Odelle. The seductress is characterized by her promiscuity, cunning nature and sex appeal. She is the alluring femme fatalle, willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She's most often framed as the village. These draw parallels to Freud's psychoanalytical theory, a theory that suggests in the minds of some men they struggle to fully see women as fully realized and rather view them in archetypal categories." [SOURCE]

Black Swan is also a movie where Natalie Portman attempting to live up to the impossible expectations society has placed on her to be both the White Swan and the Black Swan goes insane, and quite possibly dies at the end of the movie.

Considering that Toga's entire story is that she is a shapeshifter who went mad because she could not fit both her parent's and society's expectations of being a "normal girl" then you can see why the Madonna Whore Complex is relevant, with the oversexualized, vampish, femme fatalle Toga quite obviously playing the part of the whore.

Before you call me a fraud for citing freud though, let me prove my point that the Madonna Whore Complex is quite literally everywhere in media.

I could literally keep going if this post didn't have an image limit: Jean Grey and Emma Frost, Jean Grey and Madelyne Pryor, Starfire and Blackfire, Raven and Terra, The Two Sisters from Ginger Snaps, t's literally everywhere all the way back to Lilith and Eve.

More intelligent takes on this trope play with the concept of the Madonna Whore Complex (MWC) to either present the archetypes as two fully rounded people (Catra and Adora) or demonstrate that it's impossible for women to fit into these two dinstinct categories (Natalie Portman in Black Swan).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a work that challenges the MWC, by allowing both its good girl, and bad girl to be fully realized characters. My Hero Academia plays the MWC straight to a sexist extent by not allowing Uraraka and Toga to escape their categorization of Good Girl and Bad Girl, and also going out of its way to punish and kill the seductress for her sexuality like this is a slasher horror movie. Actually, it's worse than a horror movie because at least Jennifer's Body plays with the MWC in a clever way.

It's not just bad writing anymore Hori's writing has crossed over into actively murdering female characters to enforce puritan values, but let's not get into that just yet we'll talk about the writing portion instead.

I'm going to outline what BTVS accomplishes, demonstrate how it does this below, and then go on at length picking apart how MHA fails.

BTVS:

Shows Buffy and Faith as fully realized people

Shows the pressure to conform to the "Good Girl / Bad Girl" label.

Breaks down those two categories

Redeems it's bad girl

With that out of the way let's get the ball rolling.

HOW TO (NOT) SAVE YOUR EVIL GIRLFRIEND

This is the part where everyone in the audience is going to gasp. Even though I'm using Buffy and Faith as a positive example of deconstructing the MWC and redeeming a villain, Buffy does not save Faith. The two of them reconcile in the end, but Faith is not redeemed or saved by Buffy, and in fact Buffy is in part responsible for Faith's fall.

So, why would I say Buffy and Faith are a better example of villain redemption then Uraraka who at least did everything she could to offer a helping hand to Toga?

Because Buffy not saving Faith is THE POINT and Faith receiving redemption even though Buffy gave up on her is also THE POINT. Lemme explain, by starting at the beginning.

BTVS is a story that exists to flip both horror tropes, and the idea of the chosen hero on its head. The concept started out with Joss Whedon noticing that the Cheerleader is always the first victim in any given horror movie, and wondering what it would look like if the Cheerleader could fight back. If the Cheerleader was the thing that monsters ran away from.

Which leads us to Buffy Summers. Buffy is chosen by the universe to slay vampires, she is hero with super strength that can easily take on legions of vampires and often has to fight even tougher villains for each season's conflict. Buffy carries all the classic features of both the ingenue and the chosen one protagonist rolled up into one:. Ingénues are young, innocent girls who possess qualities of youth, innocence, kindness, naivete and purity.

However, after dying in the first season, and having to kill her boyfriend in the second season after he turned evil and inflicted a lot of psychosexual abuse on her Buffy has also got a whole lot of trauma. Which is when Faith appears on the scene. One of the first ways that the show challenges the idea of the "Chosen One" is that there are actually two Chosen Ones, Faith being the other Slayer.

Buffy much like Deku has a case of protagonism brain rot, but in her case she was actually chosen by the mystic powers that be to be the protagonist of reality. Buffy, who views herself as the hero of the story as a coping mechanism (we'll get back to this later) is suddenly challenged when the fates chose yet another chosen hero, challenging her pre-conceived notion that she is the hero of the story. If Buffy is not the only hero then who is she? What is all the suffering she's endured so far if it's not a part of her own personal hero's journey?

Buffy begins to dislike Faith on sight for projection reasons, before Faith does anything wrong. In a way Buffy herself the female lead is enforcing society's standards of the MWC because all the reasons Buffy decides to disturst and dislike Faith on sight are because she exhibits qualities of the seductress.

Faith is openly promiscuous, often comparing the art of killing vampires to sex, she is also someone who is proud of her power as a a slayer and uses it for her own purposes. She is a slayer for selfish reasons (apparently) while Buffy is the selfless hero. In the first episode Faith appears in, Faith, Hope and Trick Buffy is almost immediately hostile to Faith who has so far done nothing wrong for, trying to get along with Buffy's friends, getting a little bit too into vampire slaying and openly relishing her strength, and like occasionally making lood comments.

FAITH: Don't… touch… me…! BUFFY - yanks Faith off the unconscious vamp with one hand, stakes the vamp withher other. Then she turns to Faith who is breathing hard, high on adrenaline, rubbing her fists. BUFFY: What is wrong with you? FAITH: What are you talking about? BUFFY: I'm talking about you living large on the great undead here. FAITH: Gee, if doing violence to vampires upsets you, I'm pretty sure you're in the wrong line a work… BUFFY: Or maybe you like it just a little too much. FAITH: I was getting the job done. BUFFY: The job is to slay demons. Not mash them into sloppy joes while their

Buffy then escalates to like ableist slurs towards Faith within half an episode for getting slightly violent in a fight against vampires that were trying to kill her.

GILES: Well, Buffy, you have to realize you and Faith have very different temperaments… BUFFY: I know, mine would be the sane one. Giles, she's not playing with a full deck. She has almost no deck. She has a three. GILES: You said yourself she killed one of them, she's a plucky fighter who got a little carried away. Which isnatural, she's focussed on Slaying,she doesn't have a whole other lifehere like you --

The twist this episode is that no matter how much Faith tries to present herself as a free-spirit, she's actually a scared homeless girl who just happened to become the Slayer. Unlike Buffy she does not have a watcher, a mother, or friends to support her. She lives in the cheapest motel in sunnydale. The reason she's so violent against vampires is because she is understandably having a trauma flashback because her mentor was murdered right in front of her by a different vamp.

This is repeating pattern throughout the whole season, Faith is shown to be a victim of trauma, and occasionally acts in ways that are understandable for a victim like her to ask, only for Buffy to start mischaracterizing her as someone violent and insane and throwing the slurs.

You can compare both Faith and Toga as characters who are complex victims of trauma who society turns their back on and become bad victims, but Faith is a special case because we actively see her turn to the dark side. Faith starts out trying to be a hero like the rest and she practically does nothing wrong for half a season, and when she does finally make a mistake and become a bad victim it's the hero's desire to punish her and castigate her that turns her into a villain.

We actively see Faith's fall happen onscreen, and it's like totally Buffy's fault. Buffy throws her completely under the bus, because she's so desperate to see Faith as the Bad Slayer and Buffy as the Good Slayer. Faith is almost pushed into evil because of the MWC, the characters around her can't see her as a fully fleshed out human being so they are quick to demonize her when she starts acting like a bad victim.

So the two episodes appropriately named: Bad Girls and Consequences depict Faith's fall. In that episode Faith and Buffy are fighting vampires, and one human is mixed among the vampires. The human grabs Faith by the shoulder, and Faith thinking that the human is a vampire turns him around and stakes him.

It's a complete accident, something that Giles even says later on is an accident that can happen to any Slayer on the job and is completely normal. It's a murder that Buffy herself could have committed.

GILES: This is not the first time something like this has happened. BUFFY: It's not? GILES: A slayer is on the front lines of a nightly war, Buffy. It's tragic - but accidents have happened. BUFFY: What do you do? GILES: The council investigates, meters out punishment if punishment is due… I've no plan to involve them,however. That's the last thing Faith needs right now. She's unstable, Buffy. She seems utterly unable to accept responsibility. Shows no remorse.

However, even in the same breath Giles explains that it's an accident and not Faith's fault, he's also calling Faith unstable and irresponsible. Basically when they're not calling her a psycho (just hitting her with the ableist slurs), the protagonists all lowkey imply that Faith is somehow inherently violent and unstable because she displays symptoms of a bad victim.

I might also remind you Faith has not done anything to earn any of these accusations, until she kills someone in a complete accident. A complete accident that Giles once again said wasn't her fault and wasn't really a big deal.

FAITH: My dead mother hits harder than that.

Faith is stated to be a victim of physical abuse, heavily implied to be a victim of sexual abuse, and is homeless (none of the main characters offer to let her stay in her house she spends half a season in a terrible motel). However, Faith is quickly demonized by the white wealthy main characters for acting in ways that are completely typical for a homeless teenager.

The moment she commits one mistake they all turn on her and use that mistake as proof of these violent tendencies they all want to accuse her of having. Faith can never be the ingenue so she must be the seductress, because she can't just be a person.

Buffy: So, I, uh... (sees Faith scrubbing) How are ya doin'? Faith: (still scrubbing) I'm alright. You know me. Buffy: Faith, we need to talk about what we're gonna do. Faith: (looks at Buffy) There's nothing to talk about. I was doing my job. Buffy: Being a Slayer is not the same as being a k*ller. Faith has nothing to say. She's finished scrubbing. Buffy: Faith, please don't shut me out here. Look, sooner or later, we're both gonna have to deal.

It is essentially two episodes of this, Faith after killing someone on accident in a life or death fight is constantly called a murderer by others. She wasn't even like, drunk, or high, or being especially reckless she was being a normal slayer.

FAITH: So the mayor of Sunnydale is a black hat. Shocker, huh? BUFFY: Actually - yeah. I didn't get the bad guy vibe off him. Faith shakes her head. Scoffs. FAITH: When you gonna learn, B? It doesn't matter what kind of "vibe" a person gives off. Nine times outta ten he face they're showing you? It isn't the real one. BUFFY: I guess you know a lot about that. FAITH: What's that supposed to mean? BUFFY: Look at you, Faith. Less than twenty four hours ago you killed a guy. And now you're laughing and scratching and zipidee doo dah. That's not your real face, and I know it. I know what you're feeling because I feel it too. FAITH: Do you? So, fill me in. I'd like to hear this. BUFFY: Dirty. Like something sick creeped inside you and you can't get it out. And you keep hoping what happened wasjust some nightmare…

Faith is dirty, faith is disgusting, faith is unstable, Faith is sick for... killing a guy on accident in a way that Giles said was a perfectly understandable accident, and not showing clear guilt because the moment she did it everyone around her jumped on her and started accusing her of being a murderer.

Why do the selfless main characters suddenly start demonizing this girl before she even did anything wrong - well it's because she's poor problem solved.

No, but it does play a factor. Why do most american white middle class look down on the homeless? Because, they must have done something to deserve it, right? If Faith killed a man, that clearly is an indication that she was violent all along and the heroes don't have to sympathize with the fact she's homeless or you know lift a finger to help her.

Now, this makes it sound like I hate Buffy, but Buffy is actually my favorite character in the whole show. The thing is Buffy's complete lack of sympathy for Faith makes her a better character. Buffy needs to demonize Faith and throw her under the bus, because Buffy is a victim of sexual abuse too. Her boyfriend turned evil after having sex with her once, and spent an entire season stalking her and terrorizing her the entire season 2 Buffy / Angel plotline is a thinly veiled groomer metaphor.

The thing about Buffy is she's not allowed to show any kind of reaction to her trauma. The episodes preceeding Faith, Hope and Trick are Anne, an episode where Buffy runs away from home after being sexually abused (stalking is sexual abuse) by Angel for a whole season and feeling like no one would understand her, and Dead Man's Party, an episode where every single one of Buffy's loved ones ruthlessly criticize her for having run away. Like, how dare a teenager not react perfectly to being horribly stalked by a serial killer after she had sex with him for like half a year.

JOYCE: Buffy! You didn't give me any time. You just dumped this… this thing on me and expected me to get it. Well -guess what? Mom's not perfect. I handled it badly. But that doesn'tgive you the right to punish me byrunning away. BUFFY: Punish you? I didn't do this to punish you XANDER: Well you did. You should have seen what it did to her. BUFFY: Great. Would anybody else care to weigh in? What about you? By the dip. XANDER: Maybe you don't want to hear it, Buffy. But taking off like that was selfishand stupid. Buffy's breaking down. It's all too much. BUFFY: Okay - I screwed up! I know it - alright!? But you have no idea. You have no idea what happened to me or what I was feeling

The reason Buffy is so hard on Faith is because everyone else is equally hard on her. The label of the ingenue is so difficult for Buffy to maintain, because she has to be pure, and without any flaws, especially when reacting to trauma that she throws Faith under the bus for her bad victim behaviors.

The white middle class demonize the homeless because they don't want to face the reality it can happen to them, Buffy doesn't want to reflect on all the things her and Faith have in common because she could very easily become Faith. Buffy is the victim of extremely similiar trauma to Faith, and being pressured to be the perfect victim of that trauma in a way that's destroying her mentally slowly.

FAITH: It was good, wasn't it? The sex? The danger? Bet a part of you even dug him when he went psycho BUFFY: No FAITH: See - you need me to tow the line because you're afraid you'll go over it, aren't you, B? You can't handle watching me living my own way and having a blast - because it tempts you. You know it could be you... ( Something snaps in Buffy. She rears back and POPS Faith a good one. Faith falls back, but she's smiling as she puts a hand to her bleeding mouth. ) FAITH: There's my girl…

Buffy is suffering under the expectations of the MWC too, but in her desperation to make Faith out to be the seductress instead of... like... a csa victim... Buffy is reinforcing those standards on both herself and another woman.

The entirety of Bad Girls and Conesequences is Faith being called a murderer by several people, having another trauma flashback to a sexual assault because Xander came to her motel room under the guise of "helping her", getting hit over the head and chained to a wall, then getting the swat team called on her and almost dragged to London for trial. Then the heroes do nothing to help her. The first thing Faith does is go to the main villain, who buys her an apartment AND A PLAYSTATION. So... the evil main Villain of the show helped Faith with her homelessness situation while none of the main characters lifted a finger.

it sounds like it sucks but it doesn't because it's all intentional. Buffy cannot process her own sexual trauma so she is just awful to people who are also domestic abuse victims. here's one of my favorite scenes, Buffy yells at a girl being beaten by her boyfriend with a visible black eye.

Buffy: Where can we find him? Debbie: I-I don't know. Buffy: You're lying. Debbie: What if I am? What are you gonna do about it? Willow: Wrong question. Buffy takes her by the arm again and pushes her up against the sink in front of the mirror. Buffy: Look at yourself. Why are you protecting him? Anybody who really loved you couldn't do this to you. She takes a few steps away. Debbie turns around to face them. Debbie: Would they take him someplace? Buffy: Probably. Debbie: (shakes her head, sobbing) I could never do that to him.(Willow sighs) I'm his everything. Buffy: (disgusted) Great. So what, you two live out your Grimm fairy tale? Two people are dead.

That poor girl gets her neck snapped like five minutes later and Buffy just kinda, moves on even though it would have been an easily preventable death.

Buffy getting mad at an abuse victim for showing textbook behaviors of abuse victims in bad relationships. Buffy is a good character because she is a hero, she can be empathic, but she really only understands heroism in term of defeating the bad guys, and when called to relate to people with complex trauma, especially trauma that reflects her own trauma she can't! She just can't process it! The expectations of being the ingenue, the perfect hero are so crushing she can't cope with a messy reality so she needs to have a black and white view of herself and other people.

Buffy needs to be firmly in the good category, and Faith needs to be firmly in the bad category in order for Buffy's brain to keep working.

Not only does Buffy's conflict with Faith characterize how much Faith suffers for being a bad victim, it shows how the pressure to be a good victim destroys Buffy mentally to the point where she starts using Faith as a punching bag.

Literallly.

It's all intentional too, Buffy gets called out on it, Faith always gets the last word and the final episode of the season makes out Buffy to be a hypocrite. After Buffy literally threw Faith under the bus, called her disgusting for murdering a man, Buffy is completely willing to murder Faith to get a cure for her vampire boyfriend who's been poisoned.

All human life is sacred and needs to be protected, but Fuck Faith I guess.

Faith: I could say the same about you. I mean, you're still the same better-than-thou Buffy. I mean, I knew it somehow. I kept having this dream, I'm not sure what it means, but in the dream the self-righteous blond chick stabs me, and you wanna know why? Buffy: You had it coming. Faith: That's one interpretation, but in my dream, she does it for a guy. Faith: I wake up to find the blond chick isn't even dating the guy she was so nuts about before. I mean, she's moved on to the first college beefstick she meets. Not only has she forgotten about the love of her life, but she's forgotten about the chick she nearly k*lled for him. So that's my dream. That and some stuff about cigars and a tunnel. But tell me, college girl, what does it mean? Buffy: To me? Mostly, that you still mouth off about things you don't understand. (Sirens) Uh-oh. I guess somebody knows you're here.

So the show goes to great length to show you that there are two sides to this conflict, Buffy demonizes Faith, because her friends expect her to be the perfect hero. Faith reacts badly to trauma because she has no support system, and the people around her have no empathy for her because they're too privileged to imagine the things in Faith's life ever happening to her.

Buffy and Faith are fully realized people.

Buffy and Faith are presented to the audience as the ingenue and the seductress but they're both fully realized characters. Buffy's not the ingenue because she's just as capable of murder as Faith is. Faith isn't the seductress because she's a homeless teenager. They are both victims of sexual trauma, though one reacts in what people consider an "acceptable way" and the other is a total slut about it.

Shows the pressure to conform to the "Good Girl / Bad Girl" label.

Buffy throws Faith under the bus specifically because the pressure in her life to be the perfect slayer is so immense that it could be her that takes the fall so she needs to believe in black and white concepts like she is inherently good and Faith is inherently bad to justify the bad things that happen to Faith and therefore convince herself said bad things could never happen to her. "You can't handle watching me living my own way and having a blast - because it tempts you. You know it could be you..."

Faith: Angel said there was no way you were gonna give me a chance. Buffy: I gave you every chance! I tried so hard to help you, and you spat on me. My life was just something for you to play with. Angel - Riley - anything that you could take from me - you took. I've lost battles before - but nobody else has -ever- made me a victim. Faith: And you can't stand that. You're all about control. You have no idea what it's like on the other side! Where nothing's in control, nothing makes sense! There is just pain and hate and nothing you do means anything. You can't even.. Buffy: Shut up!"

Buffy needs to fit her and Faith into neat little boxes because she cannot face the inherent senselessness of the world (and also that she is a victim too "you made me a victim")

Breaks down those two categories

Even in Seasons where Faith is not present she haunts the narrative, because the writers were well aware that Buffy and Faith are the same person under different circumstances.

All of Season 6 Buffy is faced with many of the same situations that Faith was, she suddenly becomes poor and in danger of losing her house, she has extreme depression from coming back from the dead (long story) she can't share those feelings with any of her friends because they treated her much like they did Faith - having no sympathy for imperfect victims. Buffy even gets into an unhealthy, sexual relationship, and like Natalie Portman basically changes from the ingenue into the seductress.

A relationship she has to keep a secret because once again, Buffy must fit into the box of the ingenue in order to be loved by her friends. This leads to her committing several bad behaviors, and at times borderline emotional abuse towards her sister (and debatably her boyfriend) and all comes to a head when Buffy is faced with the exact same situation as Faith.

Buffy in Season 6 believes she has killed a person accidentally while being the Slayer. It's a repeat of Bad Girls with several paralels, including someone trying to hide the body only for it to turn up later, and Buffy insisting she has to turn herself into the police and face jailtime.

However, in this version Buffy unlike Faith has friends who try to stop her from turning herself in and explain to her the murder wasn't her fault - and Buffy still reacts the same way Faith does. She basically borderline quotes Faith.

Faith: Shut up! Do you think I'm afraid of you? [Faith grabs Buffy and throws her down, then sits on top of her and starts punching her.] Faith: You're nothing. [Punch. Punch.] Faith: Disgusting. [Punch. Punch.] [Faith grabs Buffy's hair with both hand and bangs her head.] Faith: Murderous bitch. [Bang. Bang...] You're nothing. [Bang. Bang...] Faith: [Switches back to punches] You're [Faith is now crying.] disgusting.

This is an earlier scene which plays out as an exact parallel to this scene:

BUFFY: You can't understand why this is killing me, can you? SPIKE: Why don't you explain it? She hits him a few more times. He takes it, not fighting back. SPIKE: Come on, that's it, put it on me. Put it all on me. (She kicks him) That's my girl. BUFFY: (yelling) I am not your girl! She hits him hard. He falls back onto his butt. Buffy gets on top of him and begins hitting him over and over. BUFFY: You don't ... have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in you. You are dead inside! You can't feel anything real! I could never ... be your girl! She continues hitting him throughout this. Now Spike goes back to human face. He's looking very bruised and bloody, but he doesn't fight back, just takes it. Buffy hits him again and again, looking angry and desperate. Finally she stops and looks at him in horror.

So if Buffy can react the exact same way that Faith does, when faced with the same trauma there is no good girl or bad girl, there's only two people who are complicated human beings.

The story *gasp* lets the hero be a bad girl.

Redeems it's bad girl

Faith's redemption is a shocking contrast to MHA the plot of BTVS does not allow Faith to commit suicide in order to redeem herself. In fact, her entire arc is an argument against the "put her down like a mad dog" trope. Starting with the fact that the heroes who are partly responsible for Faith's fall in the first place, are all too willing to just let the homeless teenager fall by the wayside, and then put her down for her own sake.

As I stated above, the inherent hypocrisy Buffy shows in her calling Faith a murderer and irredeemable for killing someone on accident because all human life is sacred to her, and then going on to try to murder Faith at the end of the season already shows the "put her down like a mad dog" argument doesn't work. Faith isn't too far gone, it's just Buffy who sees her that way. And because Buffy has given up on Faith she's failing at being a hero.

As I said above, Buffy is not the one to rescue Faith. In fact, in the episodes where Faith's redemption arc starts, Buffy is the one trying to hunt her down and enforce punishment on her. The episodes "5x5" and "Sanctuary" are both focused on Buffy going to LA to hunt down and interfere when Angel is trying to help Faith get back on her feet. The two episdodes basically explore the concept of redemption vs. punishment and how punishment saves no one.

5x5 depicts Faith's spiral as she runs away to LA to escape Buffy who is hunting her down, and accepts a job to assassinate Angel, which if she succeeds will get her rich and also get the cops off of her trail. We're led the whole episode to believe Faith has learned nothing until the confrontation with Angel at the very end, which you should really watch because it's great television.

Faith: You hear me? - You don't know what evil is! - I'm bad! - Fight back! Faith keeps whaling on Angel, sometimes he ducks, sometimes the hits connect. Angel grabs a hold of her: Nice try, Faith. He tosses her away from him. Then walks after her. Angel: I know what you want. She hits him and he hits back dropping her. She comes back up hitting and screaming, but not making much of a dent. Wesley leans out of the window and sees Faith beating up on Angel. He goes into the kitchen and grabs a butcher knife, then heads for the door. Angel as he dodges another hit: I'm not gonna make it easy for you. Faith throws herself against Angel screaming: I'm evil! I'm bad! I'm evil! Do you hear me? I'm bad! Angel, I'm bad! (She begins to sob, grabbing a hold of Angel's shirt and shaking him) I'm ba-ad. Do you hear me? I'm bad! I'm bad! I'm bad. Please. Angel, please, just do it. Wesley comes running out of the house. Faith sobbing: Angel please, just do it. Just do it. Just k*ll me. Just k*ll me." Angel wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her against him. She over balances them and they sink to their knees, Angel still holding her as she cries. Angel: Shh. It's all right. It's okay. I'm here. I'm right here. Shh.

Faith tries to take the Toga approach to commit suicide in order to atone, but Angel actively understands that is what she's trying to do, and denies her the chance to die to redeem herself and instead holds her until she calms down.

Angel doesn't just save her once though he spends the entire next episode defending Faith from Buffy who has come to LA to take her revenge, and trying to talk Faith into believing she can still keep on living in spite of all the bad things she's done.

Faith: Are you saying I got to apologize? Angel: Think you can? Faith: I don’t' know. - How do you say 'Gee, I'm really sorry tortured you I nearly to death? Angel: Well, first off I think I'd leave off the 'Gee.' And secondly I think you have to ask yourself: are you? Faith: What? Angel: Sorry. Faith: And what if I *can't* say it? There are some things you can't just take back, no matter how sorry you *are*, right? Angel: Yeah, there are. I've got some experience in that area. Faith: Right. And you've been doing this for a hundred years! I'm not gonna make it through the next ten minutes. Angel: So make it through the next five, the next minute." Faith: "I don't think I can. Angel: Yes, you can. Faith walks away: God, it hurts. I hate that it hurts like this. Angel follows her: Oh well, it's supposed to hurt. All that pain, all that suffering you caused is coming back on you. Feel it! Deal with it! Then maybe you've got a shot at being free.

Angel's advice is "Guilt is supposed to hurt but if you face your pain you can try to find a way to be free of it" which is something much more profound then any of the forgiveness crap they peddle in MHA. More importantly though, the conflict the whole episode goes out of its way to show that revenge is bad, and punishment doesn't save a soul.

Angel: I didn't - I didn't think it was your business. Buffy: Not my business? Angel: I needed more time with Faith. I'm not sure... Buffy: You needed - do you have any idea what it was like for me to see you with her? That you went behind my back... Angel: Buffy, this wasn't about you! This was about saving someone's soul. Buffy: I came here because you were in danger. Angel: I'm in Danger every day. You came here because of faith. You were looking for vengeance. Buffy: I have a right to it. Angel: Not in my city.

Faith's suicidal ideation is a recurring theme that carries through her character arc in the following season - she does in fact go to prison for awhile (Elizabeth Dushku had to go make Bring it On) but Buffy remains anti-state punishment because going to Prison doesn't help her whatsoever. In fact, she just breaks out when she has to save Angel and spends the rest of the season free.

There are two episodes that actually are dedicated to showing prison didn't help, and what Faith needs to redeem herself is to spend every day of her life trying to be good, not just accepting punishment.

ANGEL: Faith, wake up! FAITH: (wakes) I've rolled the bones. You for me. ANGEL: I used to think that. That there'd be a point when I'd paid my dues. Angel and Angelus are fighting in the alley again. Angel leaves the fight and goes over to Faith's side, holding her up in his arms. ANGEL: Faith, listen to me. You saw me drink. It doesn't get much lower than that. And I thought I could make up for it by disappearing. FAITH: I did my time. ANGEL: Our time is never up, Faith. We pay for everything. FAITH: It hurts. ANGEL: I know. I know. ANGEL: Get up! You have to get up now. Faith, you have to fight. I need you to fight. Do you understand what I'm saying?

So you have one manga series where the teenage girl who did bad things commits suicide because she believed she was going to be in prison for the rest of her life and had no future, and you have the other where the teenage girl tries to commit suicide - only for Angel to stop her and encourage her every step of the way that there's still a future for her even if she can't be "forgiven".

One work ends Toga's life because she's done "unforgivable things" and the other tells Faith that the things she should feel guilty for the things she's done, and she should feel that guilt so she can keep working to be a better person every single day.

One of these is a good message to send to your teenage homeless trauma victim, the other is incredibly harmful. With that out of the way let's switch to BNHA.

HOW TO BURY YOUR GAYS

Now I'm going to attempt to demonstrate why MHA fails to truly deconstruct the MWC, and this not only ruins any potential character development for Uraraka, it also sends a deeply harmful message with Toga's death.

I think I've gone to great length above explaining how BTVS communicates it's stance of being anti-punishment and pro-redemption and even goes as far to demonstrate how punishment does not save anyone. Yet, here is the manga about heroes saving people that completely fumbles those exact same themes.

MHA:

Doesn't show Toga and Ochako as fully realized people

Doesn't show the pressure to conform to the "Good Girl / Bad Girl" label.

Doesn't break down down those two categories

Doesn't redeem it's bad girl

So let me start by saying outside of the context of the story Ochako and Toga both had the potential to be great characters. Unforunately this isn't Gacha, so the way the characters are written in the story, and the quality of their story arcs affects how well they are characterized.

Toga is much better off as a character as opposed to Ochako who sort is reduced to a satellite that revolves around Deku, but their story arcs and the way they conclude does a disservice to both of them as characters. They fail entirely to be shown as fully realized people by their narratives, because of the narratives desire to force them into the good girl and bad girl box.

More or less, Ochako isn't allowed to have flaws, and Toga isn't allowed to redeem herself in any way that doesn't involve killing herself.

Let's get to the characters though, the basic premise of the comparsion between Toga and Ochako is that Ochako perfectly fits into the mould of what society considers a "good, nice girl" she perfectly embodies the ingenue. Whereas Toga was horribly abused for most of her life until she snapped, because she was unable to simply pretend to be the normal girl that Ochako is naturally.

One thing I will give credit to MHA for, it does Toga being pushed to the margins and eventually falling off the edge of society as a young eventually homeless girl that no one cared enough to help about as effectively as Faith did. Toga and Faith were also both demonized before they did anything wrong, and were further demonized because they didn't act the way good victims were supposed to act.

The manga is almost masterful at portraying how much being forced into the box of the ingenue caused Toga's mental decline, until she eventually snapped and became the seductress instead.

Toga hasn't even done anything yet, she's already being punished and demonized simply for appearing deviant. Because once again the categories of Ingenue and Seductress aren't for viewing women and girls as fully realized people, you are either a perfect, innocent, girl, or you're a whore.

Toga is also hypersexual the same way Faith is. Of course it's not done with any of the same amount of nuance of BTVS because Hori has a habit of using Toga for fanservice, but Toga does have a habit of sexualizing herself, in a way that would be classified as deviant love. We also in the manga first view her as nothing more than a shallow yandere who creeps Uraraka out with her blushing and hot desire for blood, only to be shown she's actually capable of being an emotionally intelligent and caring individual when it comes to how she relates to her friends.

Toga viewing sucking blood as love is a clear metaphor for deviant sexuality, or even hyper sexuality, it's something that makes her a literal vamp. Toga being overly sexually aggressive and suggestive with the way she sucks blood is something the society she's in demonizes her for, Deku even makes a thoughtless comment that pushes her off the edge that he'd never even think of hurting someone he loved.

Faith is a CSA victim who is constantly trying to play off her trauma, so she's totally into sex guys, she loves sex, she loves it rough, she goes to clubs and grinds on guys, she's all into sex and violence and safety words are for chumps.

Toga was told her way of expressing love and attraction was wrong and deviant from a young age, and as a result of that the same way that Faith embraces hypersexuality, Toga embraces her femme fatalle / yandere persona and plays it up. Well everyone was right about her, she's fine with being a monster, so she just wants to live as a monster stabbing people randomly and taking their blood before moving onto the next victim.

They can't ever be the ingenue, so Faith and Toga embrace being the seductress instead. Yes, Hori does use Toga for fanservice, but at the same time you can't deny she's deliberately playing up her sexuality like a femme fatalle in a way that is not healthy (Faith is a hypersexual teenager too, I'm saying it's a trauma response for both of them).

MHA also shows much like with Faith how Toga despite being just a teenager is someone all of society has given up on - the same way that everyone gave up on Faith for being a homeless teenager. Then further demonized her for acting in ways homeless teenagers act, until she at last finally committed one crime and they turned on her.

Toga's first crime was committed after her mental breakdown, but it's revealed much later on that Toga wanted to ask Saito for permission to drink his blood, and if she'd just been granted it or at least the emotional abuse heaped on her had stopped she never would have had her breakdown.

For Toga it was Saito, for Faith it was killing by Mistake, after being abandoned they endured violence that further radicalized them with no help from the heroes.

Toga's character also textually acknowledges that the heroes are not going to help her, and are likely going to kill her, whereas in Buffy it stays subtext. Which isn't a problem, it trusts it's audience to go "Oh, the good guys are being jerks here" however, it's a direct facet of MHA's worldbuilding that Toga has watched the heroes kill her best friend, and now thinks she has to fight to the death because the heroes will kill her too. She can't back down and let herself be saved, because the heroes don't even see her as human.

Buffy can't forgive Faith for accidentally killing some random guy because all human life is sacred, but also she tries to kill Faith multiple times, because Faith's not human I guess. Uraraka and Deku believe themselves to be heroes but they actively support people like Hawks, who murdered Toga's best friend and have done absolutely nothing to show her that they won't kill her.

Toga reflects a lot of Faith's suffering for being a bad victim that society allowed to fall through the cracks, and a Seductress who needs to be punished for expressing her sexuality. In fact if it were just Toga, you could call it at least an effective deconstruction of the "seductress/whore" because Toga is a fully realized character and her entire backstory is about how society's expectations for her to be a perfect ingenue, and then punishing her when she wasn't a perfect ingenue is what led to her complete mental breakdown. She couldn't be the white swan or the black swan, so she became the blood-soaked swan instead.

Where the comparison starts to fall apart is Ochako. Toga is a character, and Ochako is not. Just like Deku Ochako more or less just kind of morphs into a plot device that exists to save the villain counterparts to prove what good heroes the kids are - and then she doesn't even do that part. Failing to save Toga is the final nail in the coffin for Ochako being a character and not a plot device to show how good and virtuous the heroes are.

BTVS goes to painstaking extents to establish how Buffy and Faith are the exact same girl in different circumstances. They are both victims of sexual abuse. They're both the Slayer. They both lose their mom at different points in the story. They both struggle with the fact that slayers are also killers, they're both the "chosen one". They both have issues that makes them conflate sexuality with violence.

Buffy is put through several situations that parallel Faith, she loses her mom, she becomes financially destitute, she starts exploring her sexuality in a very faith-like way. The two of them swap bodies at one point and nobody can tell the difference.

There's no strong parallel between Ochako and Toga to give the audience a reason why we should care about the relationship between the two girls in the first place. Ochako's connection to Toga tells us nothing about her character, because there's no strong parallel as shown to us by the story.

There are some parallels, the story attempts to tackle the emotional repression angle of how much the ingenue suffers because she's forced to repress her emotions and how much she envies Toga's free expression.

Why does Ochako think that way? Why does she focus on Toga in particular? The plot tells us why Buffy feels she has so much in common with Faith, they're both the chosen one but Buffy feels like she's under such intense pressure to be perfect that seeing Faith get to act out and express herself makes her jealous.

The manga tells us that Ochako is emotionally repressed, but it doesn't show us, because there are never any real consequences for Ochako repressing her feelings. Natalie Portman in Black Swan, and Buffy both experience mental spirals because the pressure to be the perfect woman is too much for them - to meet the impossible purity standards of the ingenue while still being a sexual creature.

In Uraraka this is the extremely simplified belief that she can't have feelings for a boy, while also being a hero because those beings are selfish and she should be focused on saving people. However, we never see her suffer because of these feelings. We don't even get the bare minimum of having her angst over unrequited love.

I don't want to give Ochako too little credit, there are several things that could have been a connection to Ochako, but they all turn out to be non-starters. Ochako is poor and often makes remarks like "The best way to save money is to not eat" in omake and she hangs out with mostly rich friends. She had early angst about the fact that her friends were becoming heroes for mostly altruistic reasons and she became a hero for money.

That could have also connected to the scene where Ochako witnessed the scene of a hero quitting amongst all of the destruction after the end of the first war arc, to show her the consequences of all the heroes who were heroes for less than altruistic reasons.

Ochako could have even told Toga something along the lines of "I was poor, I know how it is to struggle" especially since Toga spent a good portion of time homeless after she was throne out by her parents.

Instead that goes unaddressed except in this scene which makes it look like Toga is ignorant for assuming Ochako never suffered.

Toga and Ochako both feel like they need to repress their feelings but Toga was emotionall abused by her parents, then experienced psychiatric abuse, and then was disowned after her mental breakdown led to a violent incident. Uraraka feels like she can't tell the boy she loves how she feels. One of thsee things is not like the others.

There are more possible connections that you could draw between them, Uraraka gives a big speech about how the heroes have it rough too guys and at that point it cuts to a picture of Toga crying and that could have led to a revelation that if Ochako is asking the common people to see heroes as human beings, then they should try to see villains as human beings too.

This could also couple well with the fact that Toga believes Ochako wants to kill her the same way that Hawks killed Twice. Both of these facts, Ochako originally only being a hero for money and watching heroes for money quit, and also Ochako learning about Twice killing Toga's friends could lead to some self-reflection on the hero system and Ochako could listen to Toga and be the one to convince her that heroes will save her.

However, none of these happen so we don't know why Ochako feels compelled to save Toga, other than the fact that Ochako is just that nice.

It is really a repeat of Deku's writing, we are told that Himiko just really, really, really wants to save Toga, but not only are we never given an in character reason why that is, but we're also supposed to ignore all the evidence that contradicts this.

Ochako wants to reach out and touch the sadness inside of Toga, but she never actually does anything to try to understand or talk to Toga until the last possible minute. In fact, it's Toga who reaches out several times and Uraraka who ignores her. It is Ochako who insists several times that Toga's deeds are unforgivable and then the conversation stops there.

There's also the scene where Deku and Ochako are looking over the cliffside and Ochako is actively reminding herself of the damage that Ochako caused as a reason that she doesn't have to think of her as a human being.

Ochako doesn't even go in with a plan to take down Toga non-lethally like Shoto did with Toya, nor does she even think about what she wants to say to her until the last possible moment.

Ochako's actions make her more like Buffy, someone who actively doesn't empathize with the villain and doesn't want to save her because of her own personal hangups. (However, we're given no personal hangups for why Ochako, the most perfect hero ever wouldn't want to save Toga). Her actions are like Buffy's, not reaching out a hand to Toga she only gets worse and worse, but we're told the opposite. That she's someone who wants to reach and touch Toga's sadness.

It would be better if Ochako DIDN'T want to save Toga, because at least there would be an arc to it. The lack of empathy would be a character flaw on Ochako's part, something that she needs to overcome to be a proper hero. It would be better if Ochako DIDN'T want to save Toga, because then she'd need an in character reason why she doesn't empathize with Toga, like Buffy does with Faith.

Ochako is supposed to be deconstructing the ingenue, but she's not allowed to have any flaws, or be anything other than the perfect, empathic hero and because of that she ends up reinforcing the Ingenue instead. The ingenue isn't allowed to be anything other than perfect, and the Seductress must be punished.

Doesn't allow the Bad Girl to be redeemed:

Toga's death ends up reinforcing basically every backwards double standard about the MWC including the need for men to punish and villify women who freely express their sexuality. Toga's entire character arc is asking the question if soemone like her is allowed to live in this society, if the heroes will save the life of someone like her and the answer we receive is: no she can't live.

Toga can't live in this world, she has to die. Not only does Twice die and never receive justice and his murderer get off scott free, Toga who asks the question of if she's going to die too, the answer is yes.

In both of these plotlines you have young woman who have done bad things but are still teenagers, who are struggling with suicidal ideation who believe their only escape is death. Faith is told that the guilt of the things she's done is painful, but she has to live in order to make up for it because that's the only way to free herself. Whereas, Toga comes to the conclusion that there is no future for her other than being in jail for the rest of her life and therefore it's not worth living.

Toga has to be punished by the narrative in a way that's completely unnecessary, because characters like Bakugo and Edgeshot somehow survived doing open heart surgery in the middle of an active battlefield, but Toga dies from a blood transfusion.

One of these narratives is telling a troubled young abuse victim who's still a teenager to live, and the other is telling her to die. Now which one of these plotlines would you want a young girl to read?

[thechosenthree]

I’ve been thinking so much lately about how even though Kendra is barely mentioned after her death, she is haunting the narrative for the rest of the show.

Every time Faith is on screen or mentioned, Kendra’s ghost is right there with her. The fact that if Kendra’s hadn’t died, Faith wouldn’t be a slayer, means Kendra is never really forgotten. Faith is a living reminder of Kendra’s tragedy.

And Buffy continues to use Mr. Pointy!! In a way it makes sense to me that Buffy wouldn’t want to bring her up with other people? (I obviously understand the actual reasons but I’ve been trying to make it make sense in universe.) After all nobody else in Sunnydale knew her like Buffy did. They were freaks together!! And then Buffy was alone again.

Faith shows up and Buffy’s got someone who understands!! But it’s not the first time she’s had that, and I keep thinking of how in early s3, Faith must be a constant reminder for Buffy of the friend she lost.

And I can’t imagine Buffy bringing Kendra up to Faith? How would she go about that without it being this weird thing of having to acknowledge Faith replaced Kendra? That Buffy and Faith wouldn’t even know each other if Kendra hadn’t died?

So instead Buffy mourns Kendra alone. And keeps her stake with her, a way of holding onto her long after she’s gone. She brings Kendra with her into battle every time. She’s never really alone. Except that Kendra is dead, and Buffy must feel even more alone than she did before she met her.

And in The Wish Buffy is dressed so similarly to how Kendra was in Becoming when she died!! Wishverse!Buffy is so Kendra AND Faith coded, in different ways. It makes it feel like they’re all three in that episode.

And Wishverse!Buffy died right before Giles smashed the power source. Which means Kendra was called!! For like half a second of course before everything went back to reality. But being that she was raised to be The Slayer, it’s possible Wishverse!Kendra was actually aware she was called? I don’t know exactly how that works. But it’s different than the council needing to go find Buffy and tell her her destiny when she was called.

It’s just!!! They are the chosen three!!

They’re technically never all three on screen together— unless you count one conversation in s3 where Kendra is mentioned in front of them both. But Faith showing up cements Kendra’s place haunting the narrative for the rest of the show. If she’d died and there’d been no other slayer called, she could have faded away…

Faith’s literal existence as a character in the show ensured that she didn’t.

[cabeswaterdrowned]

The reason Spuffy manage to serve while being a ship with two blondes is that a) such a toxic freakshow (affectionate) in other ways it cancels that out b) she’s more dirty to medium blonde and he’s freakplatinum so there’s some contrast

[herinsectreflection]

In 2024 I'm fully rejecting the "Buffy's friends don't understand her/don't deserve her/are obstacles to her happiness and only Faith/Spike/whoever can truly understand her" reading. Giles, Xander, and Willow represent the core acknowledged parts of her psyche while Faith and Spike simply represent the unacknowledged parts of her psyche okayyyyy. If Buffy's friends are demanding something of her, it's because she is demanding it of herself! If they are in conflict with her, it's because she is lost and in conflict with her own mind! If they do not understand her it's because she doesn't understand herself! She cannot achieve spiritual peace if she does not make peace with these parts of herself, so any suggestion that Buffy should ignore or cut out her friends is a fundamental misreading of one of her core parts of the text!

If you come to me with a theory that any single character is more important to Buffy than any of Giles, Xander, or Willow, I am returning your book report ungraded and covered in red pen. Did not understand the assignment. Please see me after class.

[moistvonlipwig]

Eternity, Growing Up, and Why Buffy Keeps Dating Vampires

Vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, on a most basic level, represent stagnation, a desire to stay young forever, the refusal to grow up. The show emphasizes this several times: in the show's very first episode, Buffy recognizes a vampire by his outdated outfit, and in 2.07 "Lie to Me," Ford claims that becoming a vampire will allow him to "die young and stay pretty," the dream of "every American teen." Buffy's role as the titular vampire slayer can thus be read as a metaphor for her choosing to grow up and become an adult in the face of temptations to do otherwise. So what does it mean, then, that Buffy's two most narratively significant love interests are vampires -- that she repeatedly, across seven seasons, courts eternal immaturity? I would argue that Buffy's relationships with Angel and Spike represent her inner struggle to accept the reality of growing up and getting older.

Buffy and Angel's relationship is marked by repeated references to the concept of "forever" or an eternal relationship: "When I look into the future, all I see is you" (2.12 "Bad Eggs"); "Love is forever" (2.19 "I Only Have Eyes For You"); "Forever. That's the whole point" (3.01 "Anne"); "You still my girl?" / "Always" (3.17 "Enemies"); Buffy's "Buffy & Angel 4ever!" doodle on her notebook (3.20 "The Prom"); "How's forever? Does forever work for you?" (5.17 "Forever"). At first glance, this may appear to be a romantic cliche, but taken in context of what vampires represent, the motif takes on new meaning. To be eternal is to be like a vampire -- to stagnate, to never change or grow or mature. Indeed, Angel's final line on the entire show, in his and Buffy's last scene together, is, "I ain't getting any older" (7.22 "Chosen"). In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, immortality is synonymous with immaturity. To want a "forever" relationship, then, is to want to never grow up.

(This idea is revisited in the Angel episode 2.13 "Happy Anniversary," a disturbing tale about a man who responds to his impending breakup with his girlfriend Denise by attempting to freeze them both in time mid-coitus forever. Lorne's response -- "I can hold a note forever. But eventually that's just noise. It's the change we're listening for. The note coming after, and the one after that. That's what makes it music." -- is a perfect summation of the Buffyverse's stance on the concept of eternity. To last "forever" is not romantic or beautiful; it is simply to be in stasis.)

Buffy and Angel's relationship is also frequently associated with death, and Buffy's death in particular: "When you kiss me, I wanna die" (2.05 "Reptile Boy"); kissing against a gravestone reading "In Loving Memory" ("Bad Eggs"); Angel's dream of Buffy bursting into flames in the sunlight like a vampire after marrying him ("The Prom"). The implication is that, if Buffy stays in the relationship, it will metaphorically kill her, cut off her future, freeze her in this moment of teenage love until the end of time, like the first episode's vampire whose fashion sense was stuck in the past or, indeed, like the fate that almost befell poor Denise. To borrow a metaphor from Revolutionary Girl Utena (another show very concerned with the dichotomy of eternity vs. growing up), Angel and Buffy's relationship is their coffin. They can choose to stay trapped in it forever, to never grow or change, and thus to metaphorically die; or they can choose to leave, to grow and change and mature, to gain "the power to imagine the future" (Ikuhara Kunihiko, Utena DVD commentary), where before they could only imagine each other.

It's no coincidence that the second season's finale, an episode all about "becoming," about growing up and maturing, is when Buffy finally finds the strength to kill Angel in order to save the world. In doing so, she rejects her desire to stay young forever, trapped in her coffin with Angel for all of eternity, and chooses to continue to grow up instead. But, of course, growing up is never quite so simple; Angel comes back, and Buffy falls back into her relationship with him, falls back into her desire to pretend the events of the second season never happened and she is still the same young girl who never lost her "innocence" at his hands. Even when we consciously choose to grow up, it is all too easy to seek comfort in the idea that maybe, if we try hard enough, we won't have to. In the end, it is Angel who recognizes the harm their relationship is doing to Buffy, and he departs, taking Buffy's childhood with him. Her youth leaves her, as it leaves us all, whether she wants it to or not.

But Angel is not the last vampire she has a relationship with. In the show's sixth season, Buffy emerges from her literal coffin only to climb right back into a metaphorical one. In the time since she said goodbye to Angel, Buffy has attended college, had to drop out of college, had another romantic relationship fail, lost her mother, essentially become a parent to her newly-acquired sister, died through suicidal self-sacrifice, and been resurrected only to find that she is still just as depressed as she was before dying and is now swamped with bills she cannot pay. Her problems are firmly in the realm of adulthood, and at many points throughout the first half of the season, she longs for the grave she left instead of the life she has: "I was happy. [...] I think I was in heaven. [...] This is hell" (6.03 "After Life"); "There was no pain / no fear, no doubt / 'til they pulled me out / of heaven" (6.07 "Once More, with Feeling").

It is at this point that she begins a sexual relationship with Spike, her second dalliance with eternal immaturity. Buffy and Spike's relationship is also marked by references to death, with an emphasis this time on graves: Spike notices and verbalizes the shared experience they have of clawing their way out of their graves ("After Life"); Spike and Buffy fall into a grave together during Spike's song, during which he beseeches her to "let [him] rest in peace" ("Once More, with Feeling"); several of their sexual encounters literally occur inside the crypt Spike lives in; this crypt is brought into focus especially in 6.13 "Dead Things," in which Buffy and Spike place their hands on either side of its door, separated by her status as living and his as dead. Buffy additionally uses Spike as a proxy to call herself "dead inside" ("Dead Things"). Buffy may have literally risen from the dead, but in a metaphorical sense, she is still trapped in her coffin, unwilling to leave it.

There are, of course, multiple layers to the grave and coffin motif in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's sixth season. But I would argue that one such layer is that it serves as an extension of the death metaphor from Buffy and Angel's relationship, in which death signified Buffy never growing up. In this reading, Buffy's longing for the "heaven" granted to her by the grave is really a longing for the innocence of youth, now lost to her as she must continue to grow up. In Buffy's confession to Spike in "After Life" about where she was in death, she makes particular note of how "time didn't mean anything" in the place she labels "heaven," whereas in the real world, it's hellish "just getting through the next moment, and the one after that." Unlike Lorne, who saw beauty in the progression of time, Buffy sees only suffering, and longs for a time in her life when time itself seemed not to march forward at all.

It is no wonder, then, that she seeks comfort in someone who is frozen in time, who can never grow up. If Buffy's relationship with Angel represented her childhood desire to stay young forever and never face the hardships of adulthood, her relationship with Spike represents her adulthood desire to return to that period of youth and never leave it, to curl up in her coffin and close the lid. But unlike Buffy and Angel's relationship, which is littered with references to eternity, Buffy repeatedly insists on the temporary nature of her dalliance with Spike: "What we did is done. But I will never kiss you, Spike. Never touch you, ever, ever again" (6.08 "Tabula Rasa"); "Not gonna happen. Last night was the end of this freak show" (6.10 "Wrecked"). Buffy is furious with Spike for his hold over her and hates herself for wanting him, but returns to him again and again. She believes she shouldn't want to return to her unattainable youth, she knows she should accept her adult life and face its difficulties head-on, yet when confronted with its difficulties, she repeatedly goes to Spike to escape them, as in 6.11 "Gone," 6.12 "Doublemeat Palace," and 6.15 "As You Were."

If Angel represents Buffy's youth and Spike her nostalgia for that youth, then of course it follows that Angel must leave Buffy, but Buffy must leave Spike. Nostalgia, unlike youth, does not depart from us so easily. But she does leave him, and in the sixth season's finale, she finally crawls out of the grave she's been trapped in, represented by her leading her sister out of a literal grave and smiling at the world before her. As Buffy tells Dawn: "Things have really sucked lately, but it's all gonna change. And I wanna be there when it does. [...] And I want to see you grow up" (6.22 "Grave"). Change, the inevitable forward march of time, the reality of growing up -- these things no longer strike Buffy as hellish, but rather beautiful. She is an adult, and she is living in this ever-changing world, and she embraces that reality fully, leaving the coffin of youth behind for good.

What to make, then, of Buffy's relationship with Spike in the show's seventh season? I would argue that her evolving feelings towards Spike in the final season represent her reconciling with and forgiving her past self, the Buffy that didn't want to grow up, before finally letting that part of her go. She comes to recognize that Spike, like her past self, was capable of change, eternally immature though he may seem. She forgives herself for wanting him. When he offers to leave, she tells him she is "not ready for [him] to not be here" (7.14 "First Date"). She has already chosen to embrace and accept her adulthood, and she no longer resents her desire to return to childhood, but she still needs her inner eternal child with her.

It is in the very last episode of the series that she lets go, demonstrating her full-hearted and joyful acceptance of ephemerality in the process. Buffy has not told a romantic partner she loves them since Angel, although she told Angel she loved Riley in Angel 1.19 "Sanctuary," and from episodes like 4.03 "The Harsh Light of Day," it is clear how much the unexpected transience of her supposed-to-be-forever relationship with Angel has haunted her. But in 7.22 "Chosen," Buffy tells Spike she loves him in a moment when she knows for sure that his death is imminent and that their joint existence together is temporary. She no longer fears a love that is not eternal. Through Spike, she expresses her love for her past self and for the part of her that never quite grew up, and then she lets that part die with him, and with Sunnydale itself, the place where she spent her adolescence, another representation of the grave that was her dream of forever childhood. Despite this destruction and loss, Buffy only smiles in its face, and it is this smile we leave her on. She has grown up, she has forgiven herself for not wanting to grow up, she has let go of the last remnants of the childhood she once hoped would be eternal, and she has come to not only accept the ephemeral, ever-changing nature of life, but to meet it with love and joy. "The power to imagine the future" is hers to wield. And her smile tells us that she is finally ready to wield it.

[taylorsversion22]

This is my Roman Empire! They are my Roman Empire ❤️😭

[thequeenofsastiel]

I keep thinking about how Angel was snarky in 5x11 of ATS regarding the fact that Spike having a soul had made no difference in his personality. Because that MUST have been weird to him. Getting a soul deeply changed who Angel was. So much so that he considers himself to have an entirely separate person inside of him. He probably never imagined that it would be possible for a vampire to acquire their human soul and have the exact same personality. It honestly probably fueled his resentment of Spike. Dgmw, Spike was definitely aggressive towards him, which didn't help, along with the fact that Spike and Buffy shared romantic feels, but I think Angel must have hated the fact that Spike's personality was the same. The only thing that changed was that Spike's desire to be evil was gone. And of course there's the fact that Spike went and risked his life to recover his soul because of how much he loved Buffy. All of that probably made Angel feel inadequate. Why was it that Spike was capable of loving Buffy without a soul while Angel couldn't? That must have haunted him. I wish we'd gotten to see more of that. I wanted to see more of Angel's inner turmoil about Spike in relation to his soul. And in general I wish both shows would have spent more time analyzing why Spike's personality only slightly changed.

[secretsofthewilde]

Well. I did say that only one person needed to ask and I'll share. So here you go @raisedbythetv89 @richtea-biscuit

The actual academic essay I wrote and submitted is available to read here (x) for now at least, but as it was written for an assignment with a set word count and parameters, I ended up having to take out the section I had originally written about Cordelia and also there are a lot of references to the set textbook readings I was given. So it might not be the lightest of reading.

Essentially the essay poses the argument that for all the supposedly progressive feminist intentions of the show, we regularly see gender and sexual stereotypes still being reinforced within the show especially through the way that the women are treated for their relationship with sex. That is to to say that while the ‘Scooby gang’ typically seems to contest gender norms, with the male characters often appearing as submissive to Buffy and the female characters themselves each threatening gender norms in their own way, the intimate relations between the characters often undermine these initial contestations. In my essay I explore this through comparing Faith and Buffy's relationship with sex during the early seasons of the show.

Below is my section on Cordelia which unfortunately didn't make it into the essay, followed by a summary of my essay points on Faith and Buffy. I'm mainly sticking to seasons 1-3 for this essay because while I do mention season 4 at one point briefly, the introduction of Riley and Tara mark a change in the nature of sex and what it means in the show.

Part 2 (which is a look at Willow) has also now been written and can be found here (x)

Cordelia Chase

Cordelia starts out as a mild social antagonistic force to our Scooby gang, she is a bully. As the show progresses though she slowly starts to build connections with them, however she isn't allowed into their group until she is depicted as having romantic feelings for Xander, rather than just sexual. When it comes to Cordelia and Xander's relationship she is the dominant one. She has more social power than him and the Scoobys, as well as being more financially and academically stable than him. She also is the only one with a car, meaning she is the one who drives them to their dates. And while this at first seems to be challenging gender stereotypes of powerful men providing for an attractive but weaker woman, the problem is that she isn't allowed or accepted into the Scooby gang until after she sacrifices her social privilege to commit to a public relationship to him. Prior to this sacrifice any relationship or attempt at casual sex we saw Cordelia make was framed as shallow behaviour from her to be scorned or done for comedic effect. We see both her and Buffy seek intimate relationships in these early season, but only Buffy's attempts are framed as sympathetic. It was only when she expressed an emotional connection to Xander that she was presented as a sympathetic character to the audience.

Buffy Summers

Buffy and Angel are the first intimate relationship we see explored in the show and so it's the one that sets the audiences' initial expectations for intimacy. While Buffy is dominant within her social groups and her general use of violence to defeat enemies is something that we would say challenges gender norms, she rarely maintains these traits (or at least they are made much weaker) in scenes that explore her relationship with Angel. Once she's romantically interested in him she routinely takes a submissive role in their relationship; she goes to him for help and advice, places his well being over her role as a slayer, and waits for him to be the one to define and initiate their relationship.

 Unlike Cordelia’s early relationship with Xander, the audience is meant to be invested and sympathetic towards Buffy and Angel. From the get go we have it established that the two love each other, but despite their doomed fate we are meant to want to see them together and therefore we are sympathetic to Buffy's attempts at intimacy with him. When they do have sex and Angel loses his soul, these painful consequences is sometimes seen to be done as a punishment for Buffy having sex, but I think it's more to do with the tragic nature of their gothic romance rather than that - because Buffy and Angel did have the emotional and psychological connection that the show requires in order for their intimacy to be viewed as 'good'. In contrast though, once they break up we see Buffy try to have sex casually with other non-supernatural students but this only results in her getting hurt. When she and Parker have sex he dumps her the following day after using her; which is her punishment for attempting to have sex with something who she didn't really love like Angel. Buffy's also interesting in that her attempt to have a not only loving but sexual relationship also sets her apart from the other slayers - Kendra doesn't have sex, Faith doesn't do emotional intimacy, but Buffy tries to have both.

Faith Lehane

Faith gets to be the sexually free and explorative girl that Buffy is unable to. While she does struggle to do so, within the first three season Buffy does successfully create and sustain a heteronormative relationship that is both sexually and emotionally intimate. While Buffy might flirt with other guys that aren't Angel, she's still easily the "good girl" who cares more about the emotional connection with a guy than sex; in comparison Faith is someone who presents very confident in her sexuality and actively seeks casual sex without any emotional connections. If Buffy is seen to be masculine because of her traits as a slayer than Faith can be seen as hyper-masculine. So she challengers gender stereotypes in that her seeking casual sex and her dominant flirtatious behavior are traits typically reserved for a stereotypical "bad boy" type of character.

When Faith is first introduced to the show as an ally to our Scooby gang, her sexual confidence and behaviours are initially something that Buffy herself wants to replicate. The only time that we actually see her engage in sex on screen however is when she initiates sex with Xander, which coincidently also marks the last episode where she is considered to be someone trust worthy. Faith is the one to initiate sex with Xander, and she remains in a dominant position of control of the scene that we observe. The moment seems to subvert the trope of the confident male "deflowering" the inexperienced and submissive women (who in this scene would be Xander). However the scene is immediately cut with Faith kicking Xander out of her apartment after he tries to initiate an emotional connection with her, and this is framed for comedic effect. By framing their whole sexual encounter as comedic, it's undermining how Faith's sexual confidence seemed to challenge gender roles and instead framing deviations from expected heteronormative behaviours as something to laugh at.

It's also important that the very next episode (Bad Girls) is the one where we clearly see the descent of her mental stability as her reckless behaviour (both sexual and violent) in one-night results in her accidentally killing someone. What was initially seen as traits of a sexually confident woman, and therefore challenging gender roles, then becomes depicted for the rest of the season as signs of her mental instability and her eventual role as an antagonist. This is her punishment for engaging in casual sex; for not having the emotional or psychological connection that is needed for sexual actions to be accepted or approved of by the narrative.

Conclusion

Within the first three seasons of Buffy we see that the female characters are able to challenge gender roles in many ways, however this isn't extended to sex. They can enjoy and seek sex out at times, however they will suffer as a consequence if they don't fulfil certain heteronormative conventions during those times.

Buffy and Faith are allowed to be powerful slayers who are in charge, but in order for their power (and how they challenge dominant ideologies) to remain acceptable it needs to be limited to their battles in the streets rather than in the sheets.

[figsandfandoms]

i feel like buffy and xander are both struggling with gender but like, from different angles?

buffy wants to be a typical girl, with the hair and the dates and the boys and the dresses. that's the life she wants, but instead she's the strong one, the protector, the fists. she's the one having to make the tough calls, she's the one who can't commit and can't say i love you, two traits that are typically given to male characters.

she struggles against this the whole series, the forced masculinisation of herself that comes with being a slayer.

meanwhile xander is the more feminine-coded one of the group- he's the damsel in distress, the one who needs protecting and saving, he's the heart. he's the one who goes to buffy and talks to her about her relationship with riley, something that could have easily come from willow but xander noticed and had the talk.

xander's the one staying at home and cleaning while buffy is out saving the world. he's struggling with what it means to be a man in the late 90s and early 00s, especially coz he doesn't have the role models he wants or needs- not his father and not even really Giles to an extent, since Giles is the one watching and not acting, but that's not the kind of man xander wants to be.

maybe this is where a lot of the anti-xander-ness comes from in a modern re-watching of buffy. coz it's more acceptable for a woman to struggle with the pros and cons of womanhood than it is for a man to struggle with being perceived as weak or girly. (and i'm saying woman and man here but for most of the series these characters were teenagers).

[raisedbythetv89]

OK.

ALRIGHT.

It’s official…I’ve gone insane but it’s all their fault for being such insanely talented actors who gave so much nuance to their performances

I hadn’t given this moment in “Crush” the attention it deserves but the reason it’s so important is this is the first time Buffy lays eyes on Spike after Dawn tells her Spike is completely in love with her and Spike is literally at her house charming her family and planning to ask her out on their first date NOT date aka the biggest and boldest move he has made in an attempt to move them from enemies to lovers

She’s been going on and onnnn about how sick and wrong it is and how freaked out she is about the idea of “the slayer” and “the slayer of slayers” in love since she found out BUT THEN SHE ACTUALLY LAYS EYES ON HIM AND SEES HIM FITTING PERFECTLY INTO HER FAMILY AND LIFE AND MAKING HER MOM SMILE AND HER SISTER FEEL NORMAL AND SAFE and she has this like soft shocked bewilderment and she’s looking to him like “care to explain why you’re sitting on my kitchen counter rn?” (them having secret conversations with just their eyes in front of her family makes me insane 😩) and not one single look of disgust that she’s been claiming to feel all day because she’s surprised and therefore her guards aren’t up

And he’s got his terrified deer in headlights look he gets every time he first sees her unexpectedly 😭

and it’s SO CUTE because he is so terrified and he knows this is lunacy and the idea of them is insane and makes no sense but still in his heart of hearts he is a brave, vulnerable romantic. Shooting his shot just like he did with Cecily because “fella’s gotta try” compared to Angel who stalked her for over a YEAR before introducing himself and was the most wishy-washy, bread crumbing mother fucker when it came to actually being with her and Riley who had to be told he liked her and then had to get a bunch of help from Willow before he even made a move. Riley and Angel are genuinely both cowards who want to play the hero but never truly had the courage to do so which is why they always infantilized and shamed/guilted Buffy into being smaller to make them feel bigger which is the CORE of why Spike is literally the only one of all of Buffy’s romantic interests worthy of her because of his bravery, despite knowing with the utmost certainty he will fail and get hurt over and over again, that doesn’t stop him from trying anyway. He’s the only one brave enough and tbh crazy enough to love Buffy Summers in the ways she both needs and deserves.

And I SWEAR the softness in her gaze and overall demeanor of dazed bewilderment and considering what she’s seeing in front of her just gives off this vibe to me that a part of her really likes the scene she’s walked into, the part of her Dawn represents that’s considering, again (but now with new light because I think she’s already considered it after “Something Blue”) what her life would be like if she dated Spike. It’s this TINY MOMENT of her girlhood that still exists under her slayer armor shining through - she’s seeing her (forbidden) crush after finding out she’s his (forbidden) crush too and he’s in her kitchen!! Making an effort with her family and he’s so CUTE and laughing and she basically classic Buffy swoons over a cute boy for just a second before her armor is back on and it’s actually too much for me

AND SPIKE uggghh 😭 he shifts sitting up taller like his inner William standing up when his lady walks in combined with his punk persona that meets every challenge head on but always with a bit of attitude and swagger. Already ready for the battle that is William the Bloody trying to love The Slayer.

This tiny moment of unspoken communication and body language perfectly encompasses what they both bring out in and give to each other and I’m obsessed. Spike brings out the abandoned young girl who is soft and vulnerable and just needs love and support and Buffy gives our brave, big-hearted, protective warrior looking for his place of belonging and people finally worthy of his love that he can care for and protect.

Am I insane for writing all of this about a 2 second clip? Yes, yes I am but this moment is IMPORTANT and it happens so quickly yet it contains so much and completely backs up what I already knew about this episode which was that the only reason Buffy was making such a big deal about Spike being in love with her is because she’s VERY attracted to him but that was so much easier to ignore before she knew the feelings were reciprocated. If she didn’t care about Spike she wouldn’t care about his feelings because they would be of no consequence to her but now…. her crush on her mortal enemy that’s killed two slayers wasn’t a big deal because it was literally never gonna happen…… suddenly could happen and she was SO unprepared for how to handle all of that and so overcompensating the entire episode and beyond 😹😹😹 because also it’s been well established how perceptive Spike is about how people are doing and what they’re feeling so when he says he knows there is something between them he’s not being delusional he is right on the money which freaks her out even more because how could he know about something she didn’t know about herself AGAIN 😹