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Perfectly stated. Won't help the antis understand, though.

So I got sucked into r/buffy again over the weekend (I know I know) and the amount of misogyny disguised as performative feminism is killing me. As is the attempt to distill S6 into a "Spike bad/Buffy victim" when the actual story is so much more complicated, nuanced, and heartbreaking than that.

I will say I absolutely sympathize with Buffy 100% throughout S6, more than I do Spike. This is a big reversal of how I felt 20 years ago, but reflective of my own experience with self-hatred and depression. That said, I also 100% sympathize with Spike and recognize a few fundamentals that antis can't seem to grasp:

He's trying to be what Buffy needs

He can't be what Buffy needs, but he doesn't understand why

He doesn't have a soul, ergo he's incapable of meeting her at the level she needs. This is not a choice on Spike's part; it's simply fucking nature.

Death/darkness/disassociating from society is a GOOD THING in Spike's mind. He found the ultimate freedom once he rejected societal pressures and stopped trying to win the approval of his peers. He fully believes Buffy will be happier if she does the same.

Is it selfish? OF COURSE IT'S SELFISH. He can't not be selfish because of the no-soul thing. But that doesn't mean his motives are inherently bad; it means his understanding of the situation is fundamentally flawed.

In Spike's mind, Buffy seeing things Spike's way is what will set her free. This mentality is of course wrong and toxic, but his intention is not to break her down, rather cut the chains he sees holding her back. Being human did him no favors. He's trying to share his experience and becomes increasingly desperate as these attempts fail.

Throughout all of S6, with very few exceptions, Buffy pursues Spike. She does in OMWF, Tabula Rasa, initiates sex in Smashed, Gone, Doublemeat Palace, and in Dead Things, save the balcony scene. We also see that she WANTS Spike in her dream sequence, specifically in her bed the way a normal boyfriend would be. Buffy's only source of comfort and support at a time when she needs it most is coming from someone she believes she should be ashamed of, and that is what hurts her more. She's expected to take care of Dawn, of Willow in the midst of her recovery, participate in a wedding, balance being the SOLE BREADWINNER in her home (for reasons that are never addressed, much less acknowledged), along with the intense trauma of having been ripped out of heaven and KNOWING that peace exists out there somewhere and she can't have it. That the only person who seems to see her struggle, understand her, and provide any reprieve is also someone she has been conditioned to believe she shouldn't like, much less love, compounds her intense self-loathing and her belief that she is wrong. She wants the answer to be that she came back wrong because being wrong means being released from the expectations and responsibilities of being Buffy Summers.

This is what Spike can't understand, and not because he's stupid or evil or selfish, but because by the show's own lore, he is incapable of understanding it. His best and only connection to the human world is broken; it's not Buffy's responsibility to be his compass, but she IS his compass. She's the reason he's changed as much as he has, how he models his behavior, the reason he has evolved, and she's emotionally incapable of being that for herself at the moment, much less him. Again, not a burden she should have to shoulder to begin with, but a result of the natural order as dictated by the show's lore. Spike's humanity is nurtured through his connection to Buffy, and his connection to Buffy changes from day to day as her internal processes change.

I don't think "mutually abusive" is the right term as we understand it outside of Buffyverse because that has a lot of real-world implications that are absent from this fictional paradigm. But setting aside those implications, the dynamic is MUTUAL and ABUSIVE. It is intellectually dishonest to apply human motivations and power dynamics on inhuman characters stripped of the very specific conditions that allowed those dynamics to become what they are. It's also appalling to claim that Buffy was Spike's victim when she was calling the shots throughout the bulk of their relationship; it completely strips Buffy of her agency. Women can be depressed. Women can make bad decisions. Women can flounder, struggle, and fail because of themselves and crack under the pressure others put them under without being someone's victim.

Also? Denying Buffy's abusive behavior to Spike is similarly appalling. Slayers are understood to be physically stronger than vampires, the same way as most men are understood to be physically stronger than women. If a man beat a woman bloody in an alley and abandoned her there, would you say she deserved it? Would it be acceptable if you knew she was asking for it? That the man had had a really bad day? That he was going through something and trying to work some stuff out?

Season 6 is complicated, especially the Spuffy dynamic, because these are two broken people trying to not be broken and unable to help each other the way they need. But they were broken people, and that fracture was mutual, regardless of how uncomfortable that is. It's also why Season 6 is one of the show's strongest seasons. It takes us to pretty awful places but also shows us the way out. Trying to minimize that or make it black-and-white is a lot of things, and none of them are good.

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#acting like one team since day 1

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"I love enemies to lovers but without the manipulation stuff"

"I love enemies to lovers but without the abuse"

"I love enemies to lovers but without them hurting each other"

"I love enemies to lovers but without them trying to kill each other"

"I love enemies to lovers but without them wanting to hurt/kill the other"

"I love enemies to lovers but only if they fight for little things"

Ma'am, sir, or whatever you want to be called, do you even know the meaning of the word "enemy"?

Enemy: 1) a person who is actively opposed or hostile to someone or something. 2) a hostile nation or its armed forces, especially in time of war. 3) a thing that harms or weakens something else.

These are the different meanings of "enemy". So no, someone you disagree with about little things is not your enemy. For the love of God, understand it already. An enemy is someone you hate. An enemy is someone you want to hurt. An enemy is someone you want to see destroyed. An enemy is someone you'd like to kill. It's someone with a completely different morality, with different morals, with different ways of seeing the world.

An enemy it's not a person who jokes with you like "Oh, you're an idiot" "No, you". It's someone who takes seriously the fights against you, who would do anything to see you defeated and broken. That's what an enemy would do. If they do nothing like these things, they're not your enemy. They can be your rival, or someone you don't get along with, but definitely not an enemy.

And if you don't like these things, then you definitely don't like enemies to lovers ships. Because enemies to lovers ships are based on "two enemies -and I'll repeat it again just in case: two enemies- falling in love, after one corrupts or one redeems". If you don't like/don't accept two people hurting each other when they are enemies and then falling in love, don't pretend you like the enemies to lovers trope, because trust me, you really don't. You don't even know what's the trope about-

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Lately, after a recent rewatch, I have been delving back into the Buffy fandom... I had stayed away, as far away as possible, for years... a decade , maybe?

Jesus Christ, it's just as infuriating as before.

As a Spuffy shipper, it's still incredibly frustrating to be part of this fandom... the way 90% of the people still argue that Buffy didn't love Spike romantically (despite all the evidence to the contrary, the comics, even the producers' quotes... all disregarded).

Sure, who doesn't cuddle lovingly night after night with their friend (for whom they could never feel love in that way) before an apocalypse. The romantic hands-in-flames imagery symbolized her friendly love, clearly!

I need to retire from fandom again, pronto. I was fed up with this shit 20 years ago, why am I doing this to myself again now.

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The Importance of Being Idle ha compiuto 10 anni oggi!

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Downton Abbey: A New Era - Behind the Lens Episode 2 - Part 1

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lucius: something lgbt is happening here

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FARSCAPE (1999-2003)  |  season two + green

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SPN writers: John did the best he could!

Me:

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TRIXIE & LUCIFER 1.01 → 5.15

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<3

Måneskin win Eurovision 2021

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italy’s minister for economy and finances rn

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plain.record on ig

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