#i used to be like ''haha they're just in ordinary person love they're not soulmates''

[jennycalendar]

jenny and giles are genuinely SLEPT ON. there is so much insanely cool stuff going on wrt the way they mirror each other. the whole flexible identity thing is literally Right There; it’s what causes the initial rift between them -- but it’s also really interesting that jenny’s situation with her family is the inverse of giles’s deal with eyghon.

for giles, eyghon is a part of his past that he keeps secret because it represents his attempt to ESCAPE his responsibilities. he actively tried to remove himself from the destiny he was forced into, acting out and making incredibly self destructive choices, and this path led directly to the death of one of his friends. eyghon is kept under wraps in giles’s life because he doesn’t want anybody to know that he isn’t as dedicated to the job as people seem to think. he wants people to think that he is steadfast.

meanwhile, jenny is upset about the situation with her family because she CAN’T escape her responsibility to them; she keeps this a secret because it undercuts the free and easy image she presents to the rest of the world. she is tethered incredibly firmly to her destiny and has found a way to quietly and carefully integrate it into the life that she wants to lead, but this isn’t what she wants. she wants to be free.

so giles is a rebel trying his best to pretend that his destiny holds him prisoner, and jenny actually IS caught in a web of familial obligations that she refuses to acknowledge -- because she wants to pretend she’s a rebel. they see each other and there is this immediate recognition that they can’t own up to, especially since who they Really Are is supposed to be super secret: giles sees somebody who is unbothered by the way the world is Supposed To Be and determined to upend it (which is exactly the same as the guy he’s trying to hide) and jenny sees somebody who is tied down by a duty that is slowly destroying him (which is exactly her situation). they fall ridiculously hard for this person who they see as completely capable of understanding them, as they are, while also simultaneously having no intention of ever revealing themselves. it is so fucked up.

and then there’s the kind of people that they are, just in general! jenny uses her gritty too cool for school exterior to hide the fact that she is an idealist and a scholar: she believes wholeheartedly in a kinder world. in the potential of angel to be someone good. raised and steeped in blood and hatred, she is looking at the world and saying, “fuck you. no. buffy is going to get her boyfriend back.” she KNOWS it is impossible. she TRIES ANYWAY. she spends a MONTH researching and coding and working and learning until she finds a way to achieve the improbable. she is described within canon as a dedicated teacher, a thorough teacher, someone who leaves lesson plans hefty enough that a high school junior can teach her class without stressing. (yes that is a weird god damn plot point but so is everything relating to jenny. moving on.)

meanwhile, giles PLAYS at being a librarian, but like i always say: man chose that job so that he wouldn’t have to talk to people. jenny’s got drive; she loves her cover story and she throws herself into teaching her classes. she adores what she does. giles abhors the reality of library sciences and regularly closes the library so that he can pursue the weird demonic shit. where jenny’s i-don’t-care veneer hides a warm and passionate heart, giles’s warm-and-stuffy-librarian thing hides this exhaustedly cynical and often very unpleasant dude. he’s of course soft with the kids because he does love them, but there’s twenty years of resentment and repression going on there. he is not happy to be where he’s at. though he’s enchanted by jenny’s determined optimism, he doesn’t harbor it quite as passionately as she does.

so literally giles is what jenny pretends to be (and also kind of is), and jenny is what giles pretends to be (and also kind of is). because of course on so many levels jenny is fiercely rebellious: she breaks free of her destiny when it really counts. she’s strong enough to commit to that. and then giles really is trapped by his role as a watcher, no longer pretending: he is forced to choose between jenny and buffy, and chooses buffy without hesitation. they are what they say they are, and they’re also lying all the fucking time. it’s insane.

and more insane than that is the fact that the people they actually fall in love with are the people underneath all of that. jenny isn’t in love with a bumbling librarian or a sexy dangerous badass, she’s in love with this really sweet guy who works too hard and hates himself too much and is kind of a dick sometimes, but in a hot way. giles isn’t in love with the hot computer science teacher or the quietly dutiful but somewhat clumsy double agent (if she can even be called that) -- he is in love with this weird mean nerd who doesn’t totally know how to whisper sweet nothings and tries to communicate how much she loves him by endlessly making fun of him. they are drawn to each other and they see right fucking through each other to the point where everything else is genuinely just semantics. nothing matters but the fact that rupert and jenny are in love.

of course, they are both pedantic nerds who spend WAY too much time on semantics and not NEARLY as much time on their own feelings. they are also guarded as fuck. so it takes them an impossibly long time to figure shit out, and they really only get a half-second of knowing before it is cut brutally short.

like. they are That Couple. they are so devastatingly romantic and so genuinely messy and fucked up and this is packed into this weird less-than-a-season-long arc that’s really only intended to add some flavor to a story that isn’t theirs. nothing is gonna hit for me as hard as giles and jenny, who found space to fall desperately in soulmate-level love in the margins.