#i realise it might not come accross but i do not hate angel

[jupitermelichios]

📷cake-and-monsters said: This makes a lot of sense . My inner Buffy nerd would be genuinely interested on your expanded thoughts on Joyce and Angel’s relationship with Buffy heh

I'm not sure I have much of interest to say about Joyce and Buffy. Joyce is a bad mum, but she's a bad mum in a very believable, and unfortunately common, way. I don't think she necessarily actually wanted kids; she probably didn't think about it all, in fact. Having kids was what women in her societal niche did, so she had some. Her own feelings didn't come into it. Marrying a man who you don't actually like and who doesn't like you was what people did, so she did it. Hers is a life unexamined. Nothing has ever happened to derail her from the path set out before her - even her teenage rebellion was by the numbers - and so she's never actually stopped to think about whether the path is what she wants

the problem is that buffy is not on that path any more. until she became the slayer, buffy was living, more or less, the exact same life her mum had, only the fashion and the slang any different. then overnight the tracks switched, and buffy's living a life completely divorced from what joyce is familiar with, and she has no idea how to cope

there's a jeanette winterson quote i think about a lot. it's something her mother said to her when she first came out to her. "Why be happy when you could be normal?" That's essentially Joyce's mindset in seasons 1-3.

they turned the reveal of buffy's slayer-ness into a coming out metaphor, because that was all teen genre shows knew how to do in the 90s apparently, but i am personally absolutely certain that joyce would have reacted in the exact same way, with the same level of vitriol, if it was an actual coming out. her problem isn't with slaying, her problem is that buffy is stepping off the path, and in doing so, forcing joyce to actually think about her own life in a way she's never done before

~

Angel is more interesting, and kind of a unique example, i think. its fascinating that twilight was inspired by bangel, because edward is in some ways angel taken to the logical extremes - angel is dramatically more likeable, but he has most of the same faults, in smaller, more forgivable ways

he is absolutely in love with an ideal far more than he's in love with a person, and he would absolutely fall out of love overnight if he realised she wasn't that ideal. the complication is that her being a flawed human is part of that ideal, so what it would take to make him realise he doesn't really love her is hard to say

if cordelia wasn't enough to make it happen, i'm not sure anything could.

except that i also think cordelia did, in a lot of ways. he experienced a relationship built on mutual respect, with a fully grown adult (don't get me started on the question of how the fuck old cordy is supposed to be in angel season 4, time in los angeles works differently than in the rest of the buffy universe) who viewed him as a peer. that has to have put every other relationship in his life up to that point into harsh perspective. but by that point he'd built so much of his identity around the idea of loving buffy that he couldn't admit it to himself without shaking his entire foundation

buffy is, to him, a kind of measuring stick. if he meets buffy's standards, he must be good enough, he must be redeamed enough, and the fact that she's a traumatised teenager who's super strength didn't actually come with any special moral sense never occurs to him. she's the slayer. if even the slayer thinks he's good, then maybe he really is

for my money, the curse proves that. i don't think that moment of pure happiness was love. if it was, there were a million small moments before they had sex that should have qualified. that pure happiness was the fact that, just for a moment, when the slayer allowed herself to be so vulnerable with him, showed such deep trust in him, he could believe he really had been redeemed. (also sprinkle over a healthy dose of 'sex is dirty and bad so if she's letting me defile her it's extra meaingful etc' because he's what the writers thought people in the early 18th century europe were like, so his religious beliefs are a horrifying mishmash of puritanism, victorian anglicanism, and 20th century american evanglicalism)

if buffy was a decade older and more mature, i'd even be sympathetic to him. after 100 years of guilt and the sure and certain prospect of damnation, of course he was desperate for anything that tasted like repemption

but buffy is 16 the first time they kiss, and it's fiction and no one's being hurt, but that still tells us something about angel

because if buffy actually was that decade older and wiser, i don't think he'd fall for her in anything like the same way. maybe they'd still fall in love, but she wouldn't be the one to trigger the curse. his life wouldn't revolve around loving her. buffy being so young means she's essentially got nothing to compare against. it's easy to sweep a girl off her feet if she's not an a stable footing. it's easy to seem like the smartest, strongest, kindest guy in the room when the room only contains you

buffy would probably think he was a good person if they met as adults. she'd probably like him, and applaud the work he does to protect people, but she'd also see his pettiness, and his short-sightedness, and his paternalism, and a dozen other faults. she'd see him as just a person, good and bad, and it's hard to believe in the absolute and perfect redemption of someone who leaves the toilet seat up and keeps getting into stupid fights with his brother/lover/grandchilde/whatever the writers have decided spike is to him today, and is kind of a bad friend a lot of the time. he needs her to look at him and see a hero, because he needs, desperately, to believe he's capable of being a hero.

the only way he'd ever actually admit that he's fallen out of love, or at least that the feelings have naturally faded with time and distance, is if he actually found something he could accept as sufficient repemption for his sins, or if he realised buffy wasn't actually any kind of moral arbiter, and neither are likely to happen

connor might have been enough, if angel had actually had the chance to raise him, but we'll never know

the post S3 status quo is probably the best we'll get, healthy relationship wise. buffy still loves him but does eventually move on (I don't want to feel sorry for riley, because hoo boy does he have issues with women, but it's got to be hard to know the competition is one of histories most prolific serial killers and she still prefers him to you) even if it does take 4 seasons. maybe in a couple of hundred years, Angel will do the same

[gaymer-hag-stan]

My Top Five Video Game Franchises

I wasn't planning on sharing this but it turned out good so I decided I will!

5. SoulCalibur

I'm a big fighting video game fan! I'm nowhere near being a pro though I can beat most of my friends in many different fighters. SoulCalibur is one of the games I played with an old friend during summer while at the countryside when we were kids. His uncle would occasionally come over at his grandpatrents' house and bring his Dreamcast with him and he had SoulCalibur with it! I also had the PlayStation 2 demos of SoulCalibur II and III. When I still had a Wii and a PSP I got SoulCalibur Legends and Broken Destiny for each console respectively and while none were particularly spectacular games I had hours of fun playing both and I was happy knowing I finally own two SoulCalibur games! I couldn't afford a PlayStation 3 yet and by then PlayStation 2 games were really hard to find in Greece. My main character is Ivy. Ivy is infamous for being a very striking example of female video game characters who are grossly oversexualised and while it never had any effect on me whatsoever I realised while growing up why it is an issue. Despite that, I believe that you can enjoy and appreciate characters despite their portrayal but at the same time I can understand people who want a better representaion of female characters and I support them in that endeavour. I tend to always appreciate video game characters on a deeper level, or at least I try, while playing a game and I think that even fighting video game characters can have more substance than what meets the eye, and Ivy is no exception, especially considering how SoulCalibur has really deep background stories and lores for all its characters. My favourite game is SoulCalibur III. I love its character and stage design, music, everything. I really miss this game.

4. Dead or Alive

Another game I started playing as a kid during the summer at the countryside with my cousins, I think you'll come accross this concept in almost all of the games I'll be mentioning 'cause you basically can't do anything in Greece in the summer during noon because it's too hot to go outside until the sun starts to set so gaming was our favourite pasttime after returning from the beach and while waiting to go out later in the day. My cousins and a friend had DOA 2: Dead or Alive 2 for the PlayStation 2. Since me, my friend and my cousins were four people but didn't have that many controllers we each played story mode in turns trying to unlock more costumes for our favourite characters. My main is Helena Douglas. Again, the entire female cast is grossly oversexualised but a lot of them are close to my heart. The first game I owned was, for better or worse, Dead or Alive Xtreme Paradise for the PSP, one of the side games that features only the girls in a tropical island basically playing beah voleyball, and... being sexy... The game is a mess but the voleyball part is actually really fun and trying to collect all the swimsuits for all the girls was strangely addictive! The series came back from the grave back in 2012 and I finally got to play a mainline Dead or Alive game again as it had been an Xbox exclusive from 2001 to 2006 and there were no new main games after that. The second update to DOA5, Last Round in particular is really fun and I've spent hours upon hours playing. Definitely my favourite in the series and one of my favourite games overall.

3. Tekken

Again, a fighting series and yet again, one I played with my cousins and friends during summer at the countryside xD ! Tekken 5 was one of the games all of us owned and played the most so it's also my favourite and among my favourite games overall, definitely my favourite fighting game. My main is Nina Williams and along with Lara Croft I think they're my ultimate favourite female video game characters. They have a very similar demeanour and character design though Nina's costumes lean a lot more on the sexy side than Lara's ever did and she is a lot colder than Lara is but both were among the things that helped me realize how very gay I am. I think that any other fellow male Greek gamers or gamers from more conservative countries in general are very familiar with the concept that "playing with girls is gay", a sentiment I haven't really seen fly around in more open-minded societies. In any case, at some point I realised that I actually was gay all along so all these people were right and there was nothing wrong with it. So in that regard Lara and Nina are kinda my main heroines. I even got her own action-adventure spin-off game. The game itself is... mediocre, but I loved it because it was all about Nina! It kind of had a Tomb Raider meets James Bond feel to it. A friend of my dad's gave me a couple of games as a gift at some point and one of them was Tekken Tag Tournament that had all those classic characters that were either dead or a thousand years old in Tekken 5 featured while they were still in their prime so we also had a lot of fun with that game during summer. In 2009, I still couldn't afford a PS3 so I asked my mum for a PSP and Tekken 6 was included with it, spent countless hours with it and eventually got it again when I got a PS3 along with Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

2. Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy is a series I absolutely hated until I somehow didn't anymore... I tried a Final Fantasy X demo as a kid and I was extremely put off by the turn-based combat system. It was something no other games had at the time, none of the games I had played anyway, and it felt really weird and unintresting to me. so I decided that I will hate it forever and ever... Until 2015. By then I had just started university and I was kind of depressed because I really hated what I was studying and felt very trapped. For some reason that still puzzles me until today I decided that I wanted to try out Final Fantasy again. I made a little internet search and found out Final Fanatsy XIII was the most recent entry (side note: I hadn't upgraded to PS4 yet). I rented it from the video store and spent a week staying home playing it instead of going to uni... I understand now that it wasn't the most sensible option but it was honestly a break I really needed in order to truly realize that I should seek out other options if I'm not happy with my studies, and I did. After XIII I got VII for the PS3 and last March my friends got me XV for my birthday. A couple months ago I went on a "shopping spree" and got VII, VIII, IX, XII and X / X-2 for the PS4 and I am currently waiting for my copy of the FFVII Remake to arrive. Final Fantasy is probably the series that has made me cry the most and also inspired me a lot. It's also the only one that has ever come close to replacing Tomb Raider as my favourite series. Lastly, Final Fantasy XIII along with Resident Evil 6 and Tomb Raider: Legend are my "holy trinity" of video games people love to hate but I personally adore xD I'm not sure I can pick a favourite as I've enjoyed all of the ones I've played but maybe X? Though I'm feeling the VII Remake might surpass it.

1. Tomb Raider

Again, the summer story, you know the drill. I remember first playing Legend's demo and then while I was staying at my cousins' at their home in a town which is near the countryside we usually spent our summers, our uncle would have us go pick up games to rent at the video store after returning from the beach. We kept on renting Legend and trying to beat it. We only ever got up to the waterwheel puzzle in Ghana... If you have no prior experience with Tomb Raider (and you're literally nine!) Legend can actually be very challenging! Next year I got Anniversary, which was the first Tomb Raider game I ever owned and then got Legend. At some point during one of our video store raids my cousin decided to rent Angel of Darkness instead of Legend so we also got to experience that. It's probably his favourite. On my playthrough I got up to the point where you see Kurtis running off with his bike and then I think I got stuck in the sewers and didn't really know what to do next! I haven't been able to get my hands on it ever since. After the summer I converted a bunch of my classmates into Tomb Raider fans. Two of them had a good PC and that was the first time I ever got to play Chronicles. I got Underworld in 2008 but it was just the crappy PS2 version. I own all main and Lara Croft games except AoD. Lara Croft has been my favourite video game character for about as long as I've been playing video games. She is very special to me for reasons I already explained with Nina and it's very very hard to imagine how my life would be without her. I'm truly thankful for her and Tomb Raider. Legend will forever be my favourite and possibly favourite game ever.