camellcat

[camellcat]

oh my goooodddduh. rewatching superstar... the way buffy let spike pet her, that she LEANED into his hand, the way she just watched him.... the fact they literally forgot JOHNATHAN was even there bc they were so focused on each other, that they were both shocked when he shoved spike away. and then we're shown buffy could've pushed him off at any moment and chose not to...... CRAZY

[camellcat]

I had another btvs dream, and it gave me a cute spuffy idea

post-s7, maybe two or three years in the future but ignoring comics. the scoobies all have their own lives, but they're meeting up in some big city to properly catch up and hang out again like they used to. except... spike is invited. without buffy's knowledge

after andrew spilled about spike's back-on-the-mortal-plane status, buffy was hurt. she'd thought, out of everyone, he would've been the one to come back to her. it's what he did, right? but he didn't. so he must've believed it when he said he thought she didn't really love him. and maybe he doesn't love her anymore, either

so they've not spoken a single time since sunnydale. spike hasn't reached out and buffy's not sure whether she would even open that line of communication for him again anyway. but the rest of the scoobies, or at least dawn and willow, have stayed his friends, if not exactly the closest ones. and they know that for a long time, buffy was miserable. for so many reasons. and though she's got her own life, and she's content with it, she's not happy. but willow knows her and xander would kill for another shot with tara and anya, so maybe it's time buffy got hers?

buffy's got them on speakerphone during the drive. xander's her best gossip buddy, though he's got less specific things on actual people and more just everything that's ever happened while he was traveling, and willow provides appropriate quips and giggles. it's lighthearted. it makes buffy feels younger in a way she's not since her second resurrection. then, when she's almost there and the call has sort of tapered in conversation, willow suddenly blurts out that spike's coming, too, ahahaha, surprise! it's an almost-full sunnydale reunion, aren't you excited, buffy? and also they're all going to be arriving a day or two late, to give them time to bond! ah. ahaha. haha. and then she hangs up the phone before buffy can fully process what's just been dropped on her

she thinks about turning her car around and going home. she thinks about spamming willow's voicemail with a thousand messages. she thinks about taking the next road off the highway and simply having her vacation somewhere else. she finds herself at the hotel they've all agreed to stay at, instead. once outside, she spots spike, leaning in a shady spot and anxiously puffing a cigarette. she steels herself to be cordial as she makes her way to him, like their history hadn't happened to them, but they just end up staring at each other

spike thinks he might die, again, again. he's terrified to open his mouth in case his first words are "I love you," which he knows for damn sure wouldn't be appreciated, or "hi," like an knobhead, or "buffy," in the most desperate tone he's not used since being hers. he's missed her. she looks like she doesn't know what to make of him

finally, after a long, long minute of nothing, she nods her head in a late greeting, and slowly asks if he'd like to go in with her and find their rooms. he nearly topples over at hearing her voice again. to make matters even worse, their rooms have been put right next to each other. buffy thinks she might die, again, again

I stopped thinking about it here really, so general idea is that they suck at the bonding thing because buffy is angry and upset and afraid that if he's never reached out to her then it's because he didn't want to, and spike doesn't know how to start again, too afraid impose in her life where she must not want him anymore, too afraid to become what they once were. so once dawn willow and xander get there and realize oh this has gone nowhere and they're still not on actual speaking terms, to quote my friend cause I think the way they said it is too funny to paraphrase, "their friends end up locking them in a closet or something. in a twist they DONT have graphic nasty sex in the closet but they do talk. and then maybe have graphic nasty sex somewhere else immediately once they get free." they re-bond. spike's still going to have to fully win her trust back, and she has to win his, but he's willing to work for them again as long as she's willing to do the same

it's a nicer vacation after that for everyone

[camellcat]

It is truly unhinged to me that by season 4, there are zero wolves in Scott's pack.

They really looked at the show's title and went "well, it ain't called Teen Wolves now, is it?".

This is truly the thing that frustrates me the most about this show. Season 2 was so strong on having actual werewolves in this werewolf show - Derek, Scott, Boyd, Erica, Isaac and by the season finale also Jackson.

Then Jackson and Erica get written off. But Cora enters the plot! But then Boyd also gets written off. And then season 3A wraps and Cora gets written off too.

By the time Scott actually has his own pack, he has like one and a half wolves (genuinely, Derek's place in Scott's pack is highly debatable? He comes back, because he was just gone for months. And he ends up mentoring Scott. But also in season 4, Scott only noticed that Derek had been missing after weeks, so clearly, he wasn't actually in the pack. Otherwise it wouldn't take you weeks to notice someone has gone missing). It's Scott, Stiles (human), Allison (human), Lydia (banshee) and Isaac (WOLF!!!).

...And then season 3B ends and Isaac is written out of the show.

When season 4 starts, the McCall Pack is Scott, Stiles (human), Lydia (banshee), Malia (coyote) and Kira (kitsune).

I just really wish there were werewolves in this werewolf show. It keeps throwing Derek and Peter in and out, without really establishing whether they actually are pack (it's debatable with Derek and more than doubtful with Peter). Like, I get it, the show is called Teen Wolf, but you didn't have to take it that literally...

[camellcat]

they should have drenched buffy in blood a lot more..

[camellcat]

was talking with a friend, and I'm curious... does anyone actually know like what the vampire lore is in btvs? I'm aware of a thrall being a thing if something very special, and drac's whole shtick, but is that it in terms of vampire powers for this universe? cause I swore angel used vamp speed both in buffy and his own show at times but now I don't know if I just made that up in my head or not. I might've

[camellcat]

buffy calling a demon a "hst" is driving me kind of insane actually. buffy no!!!!! buffy you know what they are and how they work better than any of the rest of these fools!!!! don't fall for their propaganda you hate the government ur boyf is not worth this self-betrayal!!!!!!!!!!

[camellcat]

realizing that if spike died when he was supposed to, he would've died trying to save drusilla. no matter who it was, when or where or how, he was always going to go out due to love

[camellcat]

rewatched the prom recently and was suddenly sick with how badly I wanted to see bandillow together

why didn't xander suddenly spin around to grab buffy as an excuse to get away from anya but also bc his best friend is alone on a night he knows she should not be alone on, and then the both of them go hunting for willow bc duh they're incomplete without her they need their third, and then it's like they're at the bronze except it's prom okay it's different and it feels different and they know it though they won't say a word. xander twirls both the girls and then buffy twirls him back and he almost trips over his own feet. willow and buffy at one point start swinging their arms more and more aggressively, giggling, while xander does his best to stay out of the way. xander dips willow and buffy dips willow and willow is so red in the face she about matches her hair. xander does a silly wiggle and willow copies it back perfectly. buffy shows xander how to actually dance with someone rather than just standing there or wildly flailing. willow bites her tongue in her sweet smile and buffy pecks her nose. xander barely refrains from kissing both his girls and lands on their cheeks instead

they briefly say goodbye to everyone by the end of the night, with willow being willingly dragged away from oz and xander not even pretending with anya, and make their way back to buffy's. the girls help each other undress whilst xander is shoved into the bathroom, though he whines the whole time. they crash on buffy's bed, not exactly exhausted but simply content to end the day. buffy playfully threatens to kick xander off when he starts squishing her between him and willow despite him definitely having enough room otherwise, but he just presses himself closer into her side and snakes his arm underneath her head so he can be touching willow as well. they wake up with the blanket thrown across the room and still warm

[camellcat]

for the ask game: dark or light?

I'm a liar I'm sharing from the x-files fic immediately since u r my ultimate buffy friend and have seen everything I have to offer, I think

Instead, she catches a glimpse of her captor’s wide-eyed stare that, with a trick of the light, seems to flash between colours (her instincts may scream that he is not human but she is not mulder and she will not lose her grasp on reality now).

[camellcat]

Fanfiction Work-In-Progress Guessing Game

Send me a word, if it’s in my wip document I’ll answer your ask with the sentence that it appears in

[camellcat]

Some Anti-Bangel Analysis

Ok so having rewatched S1E07, “Angel”, which is all about this ship, I want to somewhat-rantily explain why I think Bangel doesn’t work for me, but does work for a lot of other people. And I think it’s actually sort of interesting, structurally.

The issue, I think, is that there are a bunch of features of the relationship that, looked at in a critical light, could be huge red flags for a manipulative or abusive relationship, but looked at in another light are just stock genre tropes. The show clearly wants and expects you to look at things in the second way, and for the most part this is reasonable. But there are just so many here stacked on top of each other that, at least for me, it becomes hard to suspend worry about all of them at once, and once any of them start registering as red flags they then recontextualise the others, producing a cascade and a sort of Necker cube effect, shifting between two self-reinforcing perceptual patterns.

(I was tempted to use the phrase “Schrodinger’s groomer”, to capture this sense of the textual character existing as a superposition of two sharply opposed readings. But the thing is, Erwin Schrodinger actually did groom teenage students. Which is perhaps sort of a bummer to include here, but the relevance is to bring out how much “great men” being creeps to teenage girls and getting away with it is a real problem, and perhaps to motivate that it’s worthwhile to think about how media depictions interact with that, even to potentially be a bit of a killjoy about it.)

So: 5 things about Bangel that are creepy if you can’t turn off your creepdar:

1. and 2.

Let’s start with the age gap, or rather the two age gaps. Because even before they know he’s 240-year-old vampire, it’s clear that Angel is older: physically he’s in his twenties while Buffy is canonically 16 when they first kiss. (Sarah Michelle Gellar is actually 20 at the time, I think, and David Boreanaz is 28). When Buffy tells her mother he’s “a student” she immediately has to add to “at community college”. And then the vampire reveal adds on another 220 years.

But what’s interesting is that the show actually, I think, wants to use the vampire reveal to deflect the age gap issue: they repeatedly make jokes about how the gap is such a ridiculously large number because doing so helps underline that come on, it’s a vampire show, there are stupidly old characters, so it’s misplaced to be worrying about the real-world ethics of age gap relationships, we’re in a fantasy that’s just wildly beyond that. And as a genre move, I think that’s probably fine. If you’re going to have immortals or ancient beings or whatever in your story, and you don’t want to keep them totally sexless, you have to either spend at least 30 minutes of screen-time working out the ethics of immortal age gaps, which in turn requires understanding how immortality affects emotional maturation, and so on, OR you can just… not worry about it, and trust your audience to also not worry about it.

And I think the show is making a somewhat similar move already with the more obvious age gap, in episodes prior to the vampire reveal (when the romantic tension is already being foregrounded and discussed by the characters). The genre-based excuse here isn’t about vampires and horror, but about the age of the protagonists: this is a coming-of-age sort of show, with teenagers as protagonists, and so like most such stories it presents a world where anyone younger than the protagonists is a helpless baby and anyone older is a blinkered fool (except a few select mentor figures), and the only competent people are within the age band that the protagonists occupy at any given time. And one consequence of that is that the agency and competence of the teenage protagonists is amplified, they’re treated as more mature and more resilient and more autonomous than we can reasonably ask any actual 16 to be. Which then makes it seem like no big deal for them to carry on romances with a “sexy older man”.

(It’s a bit like the accusation that Buffy, and slayers generally, are “child soldiers”, and that Giles and the other watchers are therefore committing war crimes. On some level… yes? But also the whole premise of the show asks you to identify with a 16-year-old who feels the weight of the world on her shoulders, and to engage with that through a story where the actual world does actually depend on said 16-year-old winning her fistfights. So on some level engaging with the show requires not worrying about the child soldier issue.)

3.

So there’s the two age-gaps. But I also think certain things about how Angel and Buffy interact feed into the sense that Angel is not just coming from a position of greater power, but is actively cultivating and exploiting that power differential. And one of these is his “mysteriousness”. I don’t know too much about the writing process, but it seems like, even before it was definitively decided he was going to be a vampire (or maybe even that he was going to be a love interest) he was always portrayed as mysterious.

He’s the man of mystery! Watches from the shadows! Appears out of nowhere and drops a cryptic warning and then disappears! What’s his mysterious deal? Aren’t you intrigued? Don’t you want to find out more?

And again, this is just stock genre tropes. Mysterious characters are fun and exciting! Buffy not knowing who he is, not knowing when he’s watching her, not knowing when he’ll appear next, not knowing how he knows about the latest menace he warns her of, etc. is as much about controlling the flow of information to the audience as it is about what the characters know. It’s to draw them in, keep them guessing, maintain the most pleasurable balance between understanding and surprise, etc. And on that level, sure, we can forgive a designated mysterious character for being needlessly mysterious.

But, if you look at it without that genre context, it does sort of look like Angel is really committed to observing Buffy extensively, following her around, while working quite hard to make sure she can’t do the same to him, and can’t even actively contact him. (Commissioner Gordon can at least shine the Bat Signal when he needs his dark and brooding boyfriend to show up and help him fight crime.) And when he does turn up he delivers brief, cryptic messages when he could perfectly easily explain things at length.

(And yes, this is something that changes over the various seasons: in parts of seasons 2 and 3 it seems much more like they can get hold of each other when they want, and share information freely. But… I’m not sure it ever completely goes away? Buffy still spends a lot of time wondering, debating, struggling to get more insight into what he wants and what he’s feeling, and in season 4 he’s right back at it, sneaking around Sunnydale to “make sure she’s ok” without telling her.)

4. In the first few episodes Angel plays as almost a trickster character, all one-liners and mischievous grins. That fits with the character being mysterious: finding fun and amusement in knowing more about Buffy than she knows about him. Later on that largely disappears, replaced with a more somber brooding tortured style. But because the informational asymmetry is preserved (he never stops being mysterious), the trickster style sort of transmutes into a strain of paternalism, where he acts like he knows better than Buffy. I actually recently saw a good post about this from @camellcat, so I’ll just quote:

“angel emphasizes the age gap, a lot. he talks down to buffy, or doesn't discuss with her at all. he speaks with giles like an equal and calls all of buffy's friends kids. […] he calls buffy a child and a brat when he's upset with her. bangel makes the imbalance not only clear, but it's a large part of their relationship”

(And, not to re-litigate my general dislike of reality alteration, but apparently in his spin-off Angel alters his loved one’s memories "for their own good", not once but twice? Like, Willow is one of my favourite characters and I think violating Tara’s mind is probably the worst thing she did. I think admitting that earns me the right not only to hate on Angel a bit for this, but also to link it thematically with all these other ways that this character is presented as thinking he knows better than others.)

But genre-wise, of course, the character made lonely by the burden of having to save others who can never know about it is classic. It goes naturally with Angel’s periodic obsession with prophecies and destinies. (Which is very justified, because he does after all have multiple people come to him and tell him “hey, you have a special destiny”, so even if it is a genre trope I find rather annoying, it’s not something I can hold against this specific character…)

Even Buffy is, in a sense, structurally paternalistic towards... the entire mundane human population, in that she conceals some pretty crucial information from them "for their own good." But in her case it's basically forced on her by Giles, and as a character it's sort of contrary to her ethos.

(As an aside, is Buffy the only major character who doesn’t use magic to violate other people at some point? Willow’s got the memory spells, Xander tries a love spell, Angel’s got whatever happens in ATS, Faith does a magical body-swap, Anya’s wish-granting is violating on a massive scale, Giles uses a crystal and an injection for Buffy’s cruciamentum… Spike I guess doesn’t go through with the demand for a love spell on Drusilla because he figures he can just torture her physically… Am I missing something?)

5. Ok so the final thing, that just especially aggravates me on this re-watch, is that Angel really seems like he’s… playing hard to get? Like, actively cultivating and encouraging Buffy’s interest and attraction to him, while then refusing to explicitly accept that this is what he’s doing. Twice in S1E07 he says, basically, “I can’t be around you, we can’t do this, we can’t be together.” He delivers it with all the brooding seriousness-authority of a 200-year age gap, and so Buffy nods and agrees.

BUT Angel, if that is your view, then

Do not give her unsolicited romantic gifts (the necklace, the jacket, etc.)

Do not answer her (perfectly justified!) request to know why you’re following her by saying “maybe I like you…”

Do not tell her that “whenever I’m around you all I can think about how much I want to kiss you”

Actually leave! Say “we can’t be together” and step away. Don’t stand there staring at her mouth until she kisses you!

And again, there’s a perfectly good genre-trope justification for this. People who lose their self-control, who can’t help but do what they know they shouldn’t, it’s dramatic! It’s fun! It’s sexy! We’re enjoying a hyperbolic gothic romance here, not the Healthy-Communication-Solves-Problems-Respectfully-Show. And in a hyperbolic gothic romance, this kind of contradictory behavior is, of course, a sign of how enormously big and weighty the character’s feelings are, feelings that threaten to tear them apart, and which leave them barely holding it together.

But if we drop the gothic romance lens, the contradictory behavior is liable to look, instead, manipulative (perhaps subconsciously, perhaps not) - like stringing someone along, making them obsess over you, then shifting and denying responsibility, making them equally or more responsible for whatever happens.

And the way the 5 things interact is that the age gap, and the paternalistic attitude, make me so much less sympathetic to the inconsistency.

Two stupid teenagers who can’t control themselves around each other? Great.

Two stupid adults who can’t control themselves around each other? Great!

An adult who can’t control himself around a teenager? Beating to death with a shovel time.

This post is already too long, but I do want to bring the griping back to an actual literary interpretation. Because lots of people do enjoy Bangel as a ship: Sarah Michelle Gellar, apparently, among them! I don’t think that necessarily says anything bad about them.

Because, as I said, for each of the things that bugs me is, there is a very good genre reason to Not Worry About It. He’s a vampire, it’s coming of age, he’s the designated mysterious/burdened with lonely knowledge character, it’s gothic romance, etc.

But Not-Worrying-About-It takes a certain amount of mental effort, more so the more sensitive one is to the issue one is suspending worry about. I do think (hope?) that in 2025 audiences are a bit more sensitive to the issue of creepy men preying on teenage girls than they were in 1997. It’s certainly something I have more awareness of now than when I first watched the show. And the way that the show piles up all these different layers makes it hard for me to enjoy the ship: too much effort is needed to not-worry.

(And note that the writers are not compelled to do this by the genre tropes they’re working with: the @camellcat post I quoted above is comparing Bangel unfavorably to Spuffy, which also features a 100+ year age gap (because vampire), but which never has Spike display the slightest hint of paternalism: he approaches Buffy as someone who is unquestionably better than him (even if for much of the show he spits on the idea of goodness). Also, nothing says that vampires have to be old: young, freshly-turned vampires are arguably much better for exploring the themes of danger, hunger, loss of control, etc. That’s why Buffy/vampire!Kendra is the OTP. But the show in fact layers different sorts of power imbalance over each other, in a way that I suspect is partly just the unplanned output of lots of writers building on each other’s earlier ideas, but is also probably reflective of a bit of a blindspot/lack of concern/lack of awareness about predatory age gaps in the real world.

[camellcat]

how do i inject spike btvs directly into my veins

[camellcat]

spike yelling at xander to "fag off" is crazyyy. he clocked xander so casually. flounce away gay boy

[camellcat]

my friend brought up a fantastic point during where the wild things are, which is why in the world wasn't anya the one to talk down the spirits? during the episode we see her reminiscing on her vengeance days with mr I'm-still-evil spike himself, and then we get to see the spirits of the house enacting... not quite vengeance but they're taking out their pain on the inhabitants. it's close enough. so, okay, we have a basis. it could've been completely the same for most of the episode, you could just have anya realize vengeance isn't the way to fix things, not for them and not for her, and be able to give the spirits if not peace then get them gone. then her and xander could've reconciled. and with this instead we would've gotten a far more satisfying ending as the "evil" of the episode is taken care of, and shown that anya deserves to have a proper place among to scoobies, or that at least she's got more to her character outside of being xander's sex-crazed girlfriend. considering she's, y'know, over a thousand years old

we just wonder why she's... here. this entire season has felt like it's been either wasting the characters or downright assassinating them, but holy hell does anya get it bad. this would've been so easy to do, to give her something to do. my friend's running theory is that they wrote the scripts and the only people who actually read them over were the actors themselves lol

[camellcat]

so I was talking with one of my friends about all of our opinions on bangel, and he mentioned how he didn't think spuffy was any better than bangel, only different. and I choked the debate bc I hadn't expected the topic switch, but it's been a day and I thought it over a little more. and what I think a key difference is between bangel and spuffy, and what makes spuffy a million times more tolerable for me, is the respect aspect

he doesn't like either ship bc of the age gaps. he finds both incredibly weird. and I don't care, because it's a show with vampire love interests, and none of it is real. but I think what makes bangel worse is that angel emphasizes the age gap, a lot. he talks down to buffy, or doesn't discuss with her at all. he speaks with giles like an equal and calls all of buffy's friends kids. one of my favourite lines is literally buffy calling angel her "cradle-robbing, creature-of-the-night boyfriend." he calls buffy a child and a brat when he's upset with her. bangel makes the imbalance not only clear, but it's a large part of their relationship in general that is never properly addressed by anyone in the show, let alone the two of them

but spike treats buffy as his equal, always. whether she's his enemy, his reluctant ally, his friend, or his lover. through all stages of their relationship has spike seen her as an equal. and while he talks down to the people in her life, it's not because he genuinely sees them as lesser, it's because he hates all of them. you can see who he treats with respect and who he doesn't is based purely on how much he likes them, not because he's over a century old and thinks that alone makes him better than them. there's a difference. they fight and they piss each other off and they love each other and never once did spike try and lord his age over her as a reason why he was better than her

I think spike sort of grows with the scoobies, like being around younger folk makes him younger in turn. he flows with them, he works off of them. and even then, he just seems to be mentally around the same age groups as the scoobies, if how he treats giles and especially joyce is any indication. angel is static, though. he's not on their level and he won't even try to fit into buffy's world. he doesn't want to. and maybe spuffy would be the same if they'd genuinely started off when she was sixteen, but I just don't think so...

[camellcat]

everybody fuck off forever. she's gonna be a firefighter when the floods roll back, except they never ever do. wailing

[camellcat]

I think I've talked about this with tender before but I'm reading a fic and it's reminded me that I fully believe if buffy were properly bi. like if she herself identified with being bi. and I don't think she would use a label. but if she did. she'd absolutely believe that being bi meant you had one slot for a man and one slot for a woman. like for true loves, you had two slots, cause you like both genders. anyways. she just now believes in true love twice rather than one encompassing love. y'know