poor-little-greene

[poor-little-greene]

no fucking way. jeremy renner in house md

no fucking way. laura palmer in house md

[poor-little-greene]

MAKE EVERYTHING YURI

working on some more Hilson Yuri :3

[poor-little-greene]

Normal house interaction

[poor-little-greene]

nononono guys i swear i wasnt half in love with her, i just stalk her spotify every once in a while so i can listen to the same sort of music and subtly drop hints that i do so she thinks we’re cosmically connected in some way but like i don’t miss her or anything

[poor-little-greene]

it makes me so UUNNGGGGHHH i can get enough of it

[poor-little-greene]

she’s also HOT

i’m fucking sobbing oh my god😭😭

[poor-little-greene]

no fucking way. imagine me and you lady in house md

no fucking way. laura palmer in house md

[poor-little-greene]

no fucking way. all american rejects in house md

no fucking way. laura palmer in house md

[poor-little-greene]

no fucking way. riley finn in house md

no fucking way. laura palmer in house md

[poor-little-greene]

no fucking way. dawn summers in house md

no fucking way. laura palmer in house md

[poor-little-greene]

no fucking way. laura palmer in house md

[poor-little-greene]

COD jumpscare… the bug has returned to my brain and I shake him around in a jar. 🫙

[poor-little-greene]

can you please explain how spuffy is a lesbian relationship? (I'm asking in seriousness, I'm interested in your analysis-- I realize the phrasing of the question could be read ambiguously but I think you're brilliant and I love your takes :) )

Oh you’re so nice, thank you! Honestly, it was a theory I started with @burneddownthegym, half as a joke, because we both saw homoerotic subtext in the way their relationship was written so we were calling them a lesbian ship. Eventually we started seeing other people’s opinions and analysis which genuinely supported the theory and began trying to piece it all together. We talk about it because it’s fun and because we think there’s genuinely a lot of solid evidence to unpack. I guess we thought two gay people could talk about where they found gay subtext, specifically because we relate to it, on Twitter without people taking it in bad faith, as usual we were wrong dlkfjask. Some of these points will be Wren’s, some will be mine, mostly they’ve fused into one big, long mess.

I will definitely try to explain best I can and cite some of the places we’ve been pulling stuff from, but if I come off sounding like the Pepe Silvia meme then it is what it is ldkjfasl. My disclaimer is that this isn’t 100% fully realized so there’s probably a lot of other points or examples I’m missing or forgot to include and some things that don’t directly link together or aren’t fully explained yet but I did what I could.

Edit: Originally put this in the tags but now I’m putting it in the post. Please do not read if you cannot be open minded. If you are set on hating Spike and/or Spuffy you will probably not enjoy the post, so if you know this, read it, and then get mad at me that is your problem, not mine. As I said multiple times, you don’t have to agree but I am a lesbian and so getting called lesbophobic for my interpretation is pretty annoying. 

I think the most important element that people misunderstand is that, to me at least, this has nothing to do with sexuality or gender headcanons. I use the terms lesbian and lesbian relationship more figuratively than literally, but defining or drawing hard lines on these in this context is unappealing to me and limits the discussion, so just consider it to be largely irrelevant to this post. 

The slayer/vampire dynamic as well as the slayer and vampire elements respectively are essential to this interpretation. What would otherwise be a heterosexual dynamic is twisted beyond recognition by the subversive gender elements that occupying the slayer/vampire roles have imposed on Buffy and Spike as individuals, and how those elements have in turn impacted the nature of their attraction to each other. However for the sake of this post I am going to start with their attraction, which I feel is the most overtly homoromantic element, and work backwards. 

The attraction Buffy and Spike feel towards each other causes them to experience a lot of confusion and shame. It’s described multiple times as being “wrong.” Spike says in 5x14 “because this, with you, is wrong. I know it. I'm not a complete idiot,” and Buffy in 6x13 says “It’s [her attraction to Spike] wrong. I’m wrong. Tell me I’m wrong.” They both find themselves attracted to someone that they and the outside world believe they should not be attracted to. They both struggle to accept that they have this “wrong” attraction and can neither control nor fight it. They both struggle to accept that they are not attracted to what they feel they should be: Spike believing that he should be attracted to evil, and Buffy believing she should be attracted to good, namely in the form of a ‘nice, normal’ guy. Both of these beliefs are imposed on them by other people’s expectations, rather than their own desires. Buffy in particular is deeply insecure about not being attracted to the people she feels she should be (Riley Finn, Scott Hope, Ben in season 5, Robin Wood, the list goes on). Buffy feels that if she tells her friends about this attraction they’ll be repulsed by her, and Spike is mocked by the demon (and sometimes human) community for his feelings towards Buffy. Their relationship is both something that they feel internal shame about, and that the outside world shuns them for. In this sense the explicit slayer/vampire dynamic becomes a stand in for an implicit same sex relationship. Once the supernatural elements are removed the subtext draws strong parallels to the experience of coming to terms with homosexual attraction and lack of heterosexual attraction.

Beyond subtext, there are times when the script of the show makes direct connections between the two. When Riley asks how Willow could have sex with Oz because he’s a werewolf (part demon) in season 4, Buffy responds “God, I never knew you were such a bigot.” This establishes the idea within the canon of the show that demon/human, and especially demon/slayer, relationships are something that people are close minded or bigoted about in the way they would be a gay relationship. It also establishes Riley as normative and Buffy as subversive, further exemplifying my previous point about Riley representing what Buffy should want, but doesn’t. This is further illustrated in season 6 when Buffy confesses that she’s been sleeping with Spike to Tara. The only person Buffy tells about this relationship is a canonical lesbian. It is not so subtly implied that Tara is understanding of Buffy’s conflict because she feels it mirrors her own experience with external and internal homophobia. Tara later likens Buffy telling other people about the relationship to “coming out.” That’s not subtext, that’s a direct comparison between Spike and Buffy’s relationship and a gay relationship.

Katherine Ann Vogt makes the case in “‘Kinda Twisty and Weird’: Queering the Heterosexual Romance in Buffy Shipper Fanfiction” that Spike and Buffy both represent a gender dichotomy through their respective human and demon/slayer sides. The demon/slayer side represents the stereotypically* masculine (strong, hard, cruel, violent), while their human sides represent the stereotypically feminine (soft, weak, sensitive, sentimental). Buffy continuously seeks to repress her slayer side (stereotypically masculine), while Spike continuously seeks to repress his human side (stereotypically feminine). When they are unable to cloak or repress these parts of themselves they are shamed, mocked, or belittled (men being made uncomfortable or angry by Buffy’s strength and self reliance & people thinking her too cruel and violent + people mocking Spike’s sentimentalism and softness both as a human and a demon). Both are only able to come to terms with their identity and evolve as people once they learn to let go of how they think they should be and reconcile both parts of themselves, feminine and masculine. 

Since the connection between the slayer/demon dynamic and homosexual attraction & stereotypical masculinity has been established, I would argue that you could take this in part as a representation of the gender struggle sapphics undergo when reconciling being a woman/not a man (existing as and/or being perceived as stereotypically feminine) with being attracted to women (stereotypically masculine). Similarly it mirrors the specific struggle lesbians undergo while attempting to reconcile their own subversive & self defined femininity with a lack of attraction to men, which is seen as a key aspect of the stereotypically feminine. I find it notable that for both Buffy and Spike it is the human side (the self) who is stereotypically feminine, while the stereotypically masculine aspect is attached to the ‘abnormal’ part of their personhood. This is one of the primary reasons I see the dynamic as specifically lesbian, rather than just non-heteronormative, queer, or homoerotic. I think that the feminine is a key component in their relationship and it is a reconciliation with the masculine that causes them to struggle, even if for Spike the masculine is expected and for Buffy it is condemned.

*Here’s my big gender disclaimer. I am using the word stereotypical to connote gender roles and gender performance, obviously femininity and masculinity are far more complicated than the stereotypically masculine and feminine. There is also an unavoidable connection here between performing gender and performing morality given the context of the show, but it is not my intention to assign morality to gender or sexuality. As the slayer/demon dichotomy makes clear, the ‘masculine’ is amoral and can be ascribed to good or evil, positive or predatory, the same goes for homosexual attraction. And lastly, I don’t want it to come off as if I am equating lesbianism with femininity of any kind or like I’m being dismissive of lesbians who don’t identify as women, but for the sake of argument and consistency I am connecting lesbianism with the word femininity, whatever amorphous form that femininity takes.

I’m certainly not the first to liken Buffy telling her mother she’s the Slayer in 2x22 to a coming out scene, but there lies another significant connection between Buffy’s slayer side and subversive sexuality/gender (as Wren points out here Spike was also notably present for this scene). In fact, the parallels in this scene are so strong I don’t feel I need to make an argument for it. Buffy’s desire to be normal, her despair at normalcy being personally unattainable because she herself is abnormal, the pain at having a key aspect of yourself be unsettling or scary to people you care about, and the frustration at your inability to change even if you’d like to, are all elements of her struggle with being the slayer which continuously parallel a struggle with sexuality and gender.

@shieldsmaiden made this excellent post about the lesbian subtext in Spike’s obsession with slayers. His desire is sexual but it’s also a deeper desire to possess or become the slayer. He wants the slayer, he wants to be the slayer, and at a point the two desires become interchangeable. Good and evil and masculine and feminine become all tangled up. The slayer is a symbol of goodness and light, but the slayer is also an inarguably female figure. He wants at once to destroy the light and become the light, desires the feminine and desires to be the feminine. As the post points out this elicits a kind of homophobic disgust from the people around him. His obsession with the light is unnatural, his twisted up desire towards the feminine is unnatural, he wants in a way that he is not meant to. As Wren notes here, Spike’s iconic leather duster being a trophy from a slayer further elaborates on this point. It is both a slayer’s jacket and a woman’s jacket and he has made it a part of his identity. He wants them, he wants to kill them, he wants to be them, in a way that is markedly homoerotic and specifically lesbian, to be feminine and desire the feminine at once. I also find it notable that Spike’s history and relationship with slayers is displayed in the same episode (5x07) that fully realizes his stereotypically feminine human side which thus far had only shown itself through his stereotypically masculine facade, as well as being an episode devoted to fully illustrating the connection between Buffy and Spike as slayer and vampire not as diametrically opposed, but rather dark mirrors of each other, two sides of the same coin. 

These two examples of the demon and slayer being representations of subversive sexuality are not identical but they are similar. The role of the slayer and the role of the vampire are set against each other and yet even though what people expect of Buffy and what people expect of Spike are vastly different, both struggle to meet those expectations. Both are too drawn to the opposing force (light and dark) in a way that they and others find disturbing, both refuse to fit into the box which says how a vampire or slayer should be/feel/act, and because of this both are the only one of their kind. Neither is fully slayer/vampire, neither is fully human. This point is addressed specifically in the script during 6x09 when Spike says to Buffy “Oh, poor little lost girl. She doesn't fit in anywhere. She's got no one to love.” to which she responds “Me? I'm lost? Look at you, you idiot! Poor Spikey. Can't be a human, can't be a vampire. Where the hell do you fit in?” Buffy questions why Spike is so drawn to the light, Spike questions why Buffy is so drawn to the darkness. Both insist that there is something “wrong” with the other, both are internally convinced there is something wrong with themselves, and yet the scene ends with them having sex. This ties all the way back in to my very first point. The roles of the slayer and demon, the wrongness in their performance of these roles, the wrongness in the performance of their gender,  the attraction that exists between the roles, how it contributes to the wrongness, all become twisted up in a cacophony of confusion, pain, and shame. All of this only further serves to prove the strong connections between Buffy and Spike’s struggle with identity, how that is fueled by struggles with gender, and how all of that feeds into the homoerotic attraction between them.

The final point I’d like to address is the idea of Spike as Buffy’s Jungian Shadow. Here is an excerpt from an essay titled “Spike as Shadow” by Delores J Nurss and further analysis of said essay by Rhonda V. Wilcox (Why Buffy Matters 82). 

The theory of the Shadow extends far beyond homoerotic subtext, but this passage is incredibly relevant. To vastly oversimplify, Spike as the Shadow forces Buffy to confront the parts of herself she wants to ignore. I would argue that two other characters have also taken this role for Buffy over the course of the series, Cordelia Chase and Faith Lehane. As it states here “the shadow is always of the same sex as the subject.” Considering that Cordelia and Faith are both women this becomes increasingly interesting. Not only do Cordelia and Faith fill the Shadow role, but they are also notable for having widely agreed upon homoerotic subtext with Buffy. Spike’s continuation of not only the Shadow role, but also the homoerotic attraction, places him once more in the realm of the feminine. This is reinforced when considering the first line of the essay which states that “Spike has devoted a century to acting out William’s shadow.” As has been established, William, Spike’s human side, represents the stereotypically feminine, which would make him the Shadow of two separate feminine subjects. The animus and anima is another relevant aspect. You might say Buffy represents the feminine aspects of Spike while Spike represents the masculine aspects of Buffy, however if you are following the line of thought which makes Spike the feminine Shadow of a feminine subject, you might also interpret it as a part of the persistent slayer/vampire/human gender dichotomy. The stereotypically masculine slayer/demon side as the male element of the stereotypically female human side, the stereotypical female human side as the female element of the stereotypically masculine slayer/demon side. 

Edit (12/1/21): This isn’t really evidence but I have to use every weapon in my arsenal here so I’m adding Steven Deknight’s (writer of the episode) quote on my thread about Buffy, Spike, Faith, and shadow integration in “Dead Things.” This is a piece of the “extends far beyond homoerotic subtext” I was talking about, and has nothing to do with lesbian Spuffy, but insofar as Spike & Buffy and Buffy & Faith as Jungian Shadow Integration is relevant to the theory, it’s pretty validating. Not to mention how Spike taking on the role of and interchanging with a female shadow of Buffy’s plays into it.

(here is the tweet) (here is my original thread on dead things + the tumblr post equivalent)

In the end I would say the thing that links all of this together is balance. In the same way the Buffy and Spike act as mirrors to each other, they also act as mirrors in their attraction and gender. The balance of the feminine and the feminine, along with the balance of the masculine and masculine which offsets it. This acts in the same way a lesbian dynamic would, possessing both the stereotypically feminine in the form of your gender, and the stereotypically masculine in your desire of the feminine. Only when Buffy is able to come to terms with the inherent stereotypical masculinity and darkness of her slayer side, and Spike is able to shed the performative masculinity in his demon side by making the choice regain his soul they are able to fully develop a functional and long lasting relationship where neither feels shame, brining the metaphor of internalized homophobia full circle.

I would like to close this by saying that it’s only one interpretation. There are lots of ways to see the show, we’ve analyzed the canon and found there is a lot that supports this reading. I think that some of this subtext was done intentionally, some was not. However, you’re meant to find your own meaning in media and there’s certainly meaning to be found here. I’m not saying that Spuffy is a lesbian relationship in the literal sense, but I do think that there’s a lot to link them to lesbian dynamics and lesbian experiences both in sexuality and in gender politics. People certainly don’t have to agree but in the end we’re just having fun attempting to analyze a tv show, and in conclusion:

[poor-little-greene]

there were just soooo many aspects of spike and buffys relationship that could be interpreted as queer. I love when magic is used as an allegory for queerness, from buffy being so ashamed of them and spike being the only one who knows that part of her. It exists outside the bounds of what’s “acceptable” in her world, likt the literally cant be together in the light of day. GAAAAAYYYYYY! omfg and the soul arc. spike choosing to suffer, to be remade, just to be worthy of her love?? its actually just doomed yuri dont piss me offffff.

what is it about spike that attracts lesbians??? ive met so many lesbians that like spike in particular and im wondering why that is.

I don’t think there’s anything about Spike that specifically attracts lesbians.  Some people like brooding, hero(ine)s with Dark Pasts; other people like straight-arrow Boy (or Girl) Scouts; others like snarky, wisecracking rogues.   I think that there are things about Spike that attract a certain segment of people in general, and some of those people are lesbians. Over the years, most of the people who’ve been surprised to find out I was gay were people who buy into the idea that Spike’s attraction lies entirely in the fact that James Marsters is good-looking, and therefore felt that all Spike fans should logically be hormonally addled straight woman (and possibly the occasional hormone addled gay man or bi/pan person.) 

I like Spike because his character arc in season 5 and part of S6 touches on questions of free will and what does ‘being good’ or ‘being evil’ mean which have interested me for decades.  And Buffy’s relationship with Spike is seasons 5/6/7 poses questions about personal desire vs. responsibility that have likewise interested me for a long time.  In S5/6, Spike pushes the boundaries of his universe, and I love that – one of the things that grabs me in a story is when the rules of a universe are tested to destruction.  Once he has a soul and is neatly confined within the Soul = Good/No Soul = Bad dichotomy again, Spike interests me far less as a character.  I retain a sentimental attachment to souled Spike because unsouled Spike mashed my narrative kink buttons SO HARD, but the more canon tries to build a wall between the two, the less interested I am.

(I think perhaps if I’d started watching the show earlier, I might have been more of a Buffy/Faith shipper, but I didn’t start watching until they were at each other’s throats.  And if I’d started watching later, I don’t know if I’d have shipped anyone at all.  I just happened to start watching at the perfect time to become a Spuffy shipper, and been stubborn enough to ride out the subsequent disasters for the ship.  I still like Buffy/Faith, I just can’t read a lot of it because so many Fuffy shippers bash Spike to hell and gone.  Which is ironic considering that the character dynamics of the two ships are damned near identical.)

There was quite a fad for a while for calling Spuffy a ‘queer het’ relationship, but the people who did that tended to be slash writers who were trying to come up with an excuse for why they wanted to write a het pairing so as not to damage their Cool Kid street cred.  As far as I could see, ‘queer het’ was just ‘ any story featuring a het pairing which doesn’t completely conform to stereotypical gender roles.’  Which is still just het.  As someone who spent some time in the closet back in the 80s, I do feel that there were some extremely painful parallels between some aspects of Buffy and Spike’s S6 relationship and a closeted gay relationship.  There’s some evidence that at least some of the writers were thinking about it that way too, particularly in the shooting script for Dead Things, in Tara and Buffy’s final conversation.  In that sense, I called it ‘queer’ a couple of times myself.  However, I probably wouldn’t do that today.  It’s an analogy of limited scope and usefulness, both because there are always problems in making analogies between real-world minority groups and supernatural critters, and because there are a lot of other factors in S6 that are more important.   

And yeah, one of the things I like about Spike and Spuffy is that the relationship doesn’t conform to stereotypical gender roles, and Spike is not just fine with that, he revels in it.  But that’s hardly exclusive to lesbian Spike fans.

So the tl;dr answer to “Why do lesbians like Spike?” is “The same reasons anyone else likes Spike, Anon.”

[poor-little-greene]

ong ptolomaea best song on the album!!!!!!!! its just so visceral its like ive been dunked into cold water. yummers!

i think ptolomaea by ethel cain is one of the most brilliantly crafted songs i’ve ever listened to.

the way it opens with this distorted deeper voice (isaiah) and you hear the sound of flies buzzing in the background underneath the voice, thats such a cool detail. and while isaiah is singing, you hear ethel incoherently mumble (you literally hear her say “mama?” its so 😭😭) as she’s waking up from the drugs. when we finally hear her voice, it’s high pitched, raw, and vulnerable. because of how vulnerable of a situation she is in, but she doesn’t realize it yet because of the drugs she’s on. so this whole beginning is echoey and it captures the whole aloneness she’s feeling.

and then we get a beat drop at “even the iron still fears the rot,” where the instrumentals are a little heavier, her voice is still high and raw but there’s a sense of knowing in it. (“hiding from something, i cannot stop. walking on shadows, i cant lead him back”) as her hallucinations and the drugs start to wear off, she’s facing this darkness that’s been eating away at her with “daddy’s left and mama won’t come home,” which is something she rarely comes to terms with.

then we get that dark distorted voice again saying “you poor thing, sweet morning lamb. there’s nothing you can do, it’s already been done,” which is incredibly terrifying. not to mention that deafening crash of the drums, god the way those drums thunder so intensely like you can feel the dread in your bones. and then we hear ethel’s voice again saying “what fear a man like you brings upon a woman like me? please dont look at me..” which refers to when isaiah tells her to “show me your face,” during that line. and she’s pleading for him to stop looking at him, you can’t hear it because it’s in the background but he says “come here,” and right after you hear ethel say “i can see it in your eyes, tell me, what have you done?” which then goes into a sea of begs and pleas for him to “stop, stop” until the final “stop” is not sung, but instead a bone chilling shrill shriek. which is cut off by “i am the face of love’s rage.” and if you listen to the acapella, during “i am the face of love’s rage,” right underneath that main vocal, you hear a second high pitched scream, you hear bundles “no’s” and even a “no! please!” which i think ties the story really well together.

in the acapella, while “blessed be the daughters of cain,” is being read out, you can hear the gargling and choking noises as ethel is struggling to breathe and as she’s literally dying its really sickening but so well executed from an artist perspective. and then at the very very end, you hear a death rattle like that is INSANE

i love ptolomaea, i love how the instrumentals create such a unique atmosphere that makes it as terrifying as it sounds and how hayden uses her voice in different ways to tell the story effectively. and it works, it all works.

ptolomaea is the best song on preacher’s daughter thank you for coming to my ted talk

[poor-little-greene]

actively compiling a list of ships that would be better lez, now theres sort of kinda maybe a little flaw in it because i think most ships would be better without men but anyways. here is my list, in no particular order.

wolfstar

eric and donna

chase and cameron

buffy and spike

my parents

jackie and hyde

trent and daria

house and wilson

everyone from 10 things i hate about you

me and dev patel

effy and freddie/cook

hiccup and astrid

and more to come...

[poor-little-greene]

I TAKE IT ALL BACK SHES SOOOOO FINE I WISH I WAS CHASE

ugh cameron’s so hot, such a shame she’s literally the worst