#Anti-Buffy Stans

[kyliafanfiction]

“If Buffy isn’t your favorite character, why are you watching?”

Oh, I don’t know, a show with a well written cast of characters beyond the main character? The number of shows where my favorite isn’t the MC vastly outnumbers the ones where my favorite is, because I hate protagonist centered morality.

[darklinaforever]

A morally grey character is literally a character who commits both good and bad actions. Yes, a rapist or groomer can be a gray character if, in addition to these actions, he did something good. Stop trying to manipulate with concepts.

Yes of course. As if there weren't lines that shouldn't be crossed in the bad actions concerned. 😂

A morally gray character falls somewhere in between, being neither completely bad nor completely good, whose actions are generally ambiguous with usually a good purpose behind them and who can therefore be understandable.

Explain to me how grooming or rape (and completely committed I mean) can fall into these famous morally gray areas ?

Unless the character seeks to repent of it later, it simply doesn't work.

He will not fit into the box of morally gray or anti-hero under the pretext that he will do a good thing which has nothing to do with it behind it.

You have tons of villains capable of doing good things at any given moment, especially for their romantic partner, like with 1992's Dracula or The Frighteners. But the characters involved are no less villains (although complex and humanized in the case of Dracula).

It is not enough to do a good deed to be considered a gray character or an anti-hero.

The concept is much more complex than that.

Unless the action deemed good is considerable ! But ironically, as if by chance, I have never seen a character supposed to be gray or anti-hero commit grooming or rape.

Probably because it is a line which in the collective unconscious must not be crossed.

The only case that comes to mind is Spike who attempts to rape Buffy which fortunately does not succeed and the character automatically sets off on a path supposed to redeem him because he understands his fault and his horror.

And the character of Spike was first introduced as a villain / antagonist before gradually becoming an anti-hero as the show progressed.

[raisedbythetv89]

Me when the manipulative character manipulates irl viewers into ignoring all the bad and only seeing the good and then treating me like I’m the crazy one because I see through the manipulation and see the characters for who they really are instead of how they want to be perceived

[buffysummers]

You’re post about people posting anti bangel content. This is a random rant but i need to talk to a fellow bangel gifmaker on here. i made a post that featured spike (but clearly he quotes a quote about love about bangel to bangel) & in my caption i write buffy & angel. and i’ve been a gifmaker for a couple years now with various characters & ships. This post was the most anti bangel REBLOGS/COMNENTS. I’ve ever gotten. it was so wild. like i almost wanted to stop posting btvs gifs because of it. i was so flabberghasted in 2024. the show’s been over for 20 years. and still! So much hate? What the actual hell (sorry for the random rant!)

I'm so sorry :( That's awful and sadly not uncommon. The Spike stans and Spuffies are very, very aggressive and this is something I have spoken about a lot over the years. They basically want to occupy every space in the entire fandom. They post anti Bangel shit in the Bangel tag, anti Angel shit in the Angel tag. The only explanation is that they're threatened by the actual text in the show that does not support their theories that more reflect fanon than canon. Like, why else are they so loud? We don't invade their spaces like that? Where's the common courtesy, the tumblr etiquette? And they aren't new to tumblr either, there's just no excuse.

It's very disheartening, discouraging and honestly, stifling. Please don't let them get to you!

[girl4music]

With all my Bangel VS Cangel talk recently it probably does come across like I hate Bangel. This isn’t true.

I don’t hate Bangel at all. I just don’t ship them as that all-encompassing true love/soulmates ship many do.

I wanted to root for them. I really did. But with pretty much everything with them or revolving around them - all that I could see was red flags everywhere. How can I put my support and faith into a dynamic like Buffy and Angel’s when they can’t even put their support and faith into each other most of the time?

That’s not a relationship. I don’t care what anyone says. And it’s not a Bangel VS Spuffy conflict either. I’m not saying what I do just because I ship Spuffy. It would be shallow and petty and pathetic if that was the only reason why I go so hard against Bangel. I’m not into that whole fandom stan/ship wars business.

I genuinely CANNOT see the appeal in Bangel at all.

I can see the appeal in Spuffy despite the mutual abuse. They have the same appeal for me so of course I can… but it’s not about them why I say what I do. And it’s not because I hate the individual characters in the ship either. I’ve actually come to like Angel a lot in his show. His development from who he was in ‘BtVS’ to ‘AtS’ is significant. He is so much more interesting. And I’ve always liked Buffy. I just find it difficult to focus on her character arc because of how painful it is.

Bangel is not a healthy relationship to me at all. A healthy relationship is one that makes both people in it better people for being together and because of the positive influence that they have on each other. I could barely stand either of them when they were together. They honestly both came across as awful people. You know what really threw the nail in the proverbial coffin for me though? The moment I gave up even trying to pretend that Bangel meant anything to me? The moment I knew their relationship was done for good?

‘I Will Remember You’

It’s funny. So many people regard that episode as Bangel’s episode. Their great tragic romance episode.

It’s certainly tragic alright. But it’s not romantic. It’s not something I watch and think “they’re so 😍”

I watch that and I think “what the bloody hell is the point of them in the first place?” It’s true - love makes you do insane things. But if one of those insane things is purposefully preventing any happiness for you and your love out of a scare that may not even come true…

It’s not their great tragic romance episode at all.

It’s their ‘Hell’s Bells’. And even that relationship still had all the potential to be salvaged despite how absolutely devastating that episode was for Anya. That episode still had somewhat romantic undertones. ‘I Will Remember You’ didn’t. Those “cute” moments between them meant nothing if neither of them could hold on to the memories of it.

What I can say that they did for each other was help each other to grow into stronger people than before.

But that’s not in a good way. That’s in a “well, that’s inevitable” way because pain does help us grow. But at the end of the day I don’t blame the couple or the characters. I just think Whedon loves destroying love because he understands this probably a bit too much.

He never wanted to make last and celebrate any of Buffy’s romantic/sexual relationships because he believed that growth from pain was just the stronger and more realistic story to tell. And he wasn’t wrong. It is. But thematic balance is important for a reason and I don’t think he quite knew how to keep that balance. Likely because he didn’t have that balance in himself.

Anyways, I just wanted to express this thoroughly once and for all. I’ll likely never mention it again in this depth - but to reiterate - I don’t hate Bangel but I am very much anti-Bangel because I genuinely don’t see the point in being pro for shipping them as a romantic/sexual relationship and I don’t see the appeal at all. Maybe someone could explain it to me.

@hysterical @sayyoume @oveliagirlhaditright

[byronlc]

multi-muse indie rp blog with canon muses. medium to low activity. 21+. penned by am. millennial. CET. likes rare fandoms. very slow writer.

rules memes open starters muse list under the cut

mains and affiliates: neverfittedin / dcyswclking, entangledmuses / ofthexnight, sarcaasmic

graphics by the amazing @neverfittedin

muse list

all canon muses can be treated as OCs and are adaptable to (almost) any fandom/setting

🚩 marks villainous/dangerous muse

Primary Muses

🚩 Trevor Anderson, 21-27, bi, Hellraiser (2022), fc Drew Starkey

your casual criminal crush

(🚩) Peter Rumancek, pan, 19-22; or 27-31, Hemlock Grove, fc Aaron Taylor-Johnson (post-series, headcanon-based portrayal)

your sexy man-beast who tore his own heart out

🚩Barry, 24-28, Outer Banks, fc Nick Cirillo moved to @klldare

your local drug dealer with a good heart and a gold tooth

Zach MacLaren, 20-24, The Other Zoey, fc Drew Starkey (intro)

your typical jock that is literally a puppy dog (aka the other Zach)

Secondary Muses

🚩James “Junior” Rennie, straight, 21-28, Under The Dome, fc Alexander Koch (intro)

your sociopathic obsessive boy next door

Dale “Barbie” Barbara, straight, 30-36, Under The Dome, fc Mike Vogel

your brooding anti-hero

(🚩) Liam/Angelus/Angel, 270 and forever 23 vampire; or 20-25 human, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, fc Jacob Elordi (headcanon-based portrayal; also modern non-vampire verse)

your ever-brooding, moody vampire cursed with a soul

Dylan Massett, straight, 21-27, Bates Motel, fc Max Thieriot

your white knight in a leather jacket

Selective/Exclusive Muses

James M. Beaufort, straight, 18-23, Maxton Hall, fc Damian Hardung (exclusive to @entangledmuses' Ruby Bell)

your way too attractive rich boy

🚩Rafe Cameron, 19-26, Outer Banks, fc Drew Starkey moved to @klldare

your @unhlnged rich boy

JJ Maybank, pan, 18-23, Outer Banks, fc Rudy Pankow moved to @klldare

your chaotic, quick-tempered @salt-lifer

Natalie Scatorccio, 18-23, Yellowjackets, fc Sophie Thatcher (very selective)

your i-don't-give-a-shit-but-also-care-too-much queen of misfits

New Muses (pending)

Troy Otto, Fear the Walking Dead, fc Daniel Sharman

your severly broken psycho boy

Fox Mulder, The X-Files, fc tbd

your tbd

Coriolanus Snow, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, fc Tom Blyth

your tbd

Louisa "Wheezie" Cameron, 18-23, Outer Banks, fc Victoria Justice (aged-up headcanon-based portrayal) moved to @klldare

your little miss always overlooked

Nadia Godfrey, 18-23, Hemlock Grove, fc Elle Fanning (aged-up headcanon-based portrayal)

tbd

Muses on Hiatus

Grayson Ernest Theodor Spencer, ace, 24-28, Silber Trilogy, fc Josh Hutcherson (heavily headcanon-based portrayal)

your permanently tired loser boy, who will do anything for a cup of coffee

🚩Carlisle Cullen, 400 and forever 35, Twilight, fc Alexander Skarsgård (headcanon-based portrayal) (intro)

not your teen romance novel's friendly vampire daddy

🚩Chase Collins, 30-36, bi, The Covenant, fc Sebastian Stan (also younger version and non-magical version)

your power-hungry warlock with a wicked sense of humor

Luke Riordan, 21-26, Gen V, fc Patrick Schwarzenegger

your golden boy with a dark future

Zachary "Zach" Shan-Yung Dempsey, demi, 21-28, 13 Reasons Why, fc Ross Butler

your former jock turned musician that will literally come pick you up

[dotthings]

Regulars and leads have different contracts. Always. The leads are paid the same, regulars always get paid less. Before season 15 Misha said that he asked CW "to get paid at least a fraction of what Jensen and Jared were making" and they said no.

This is a disingenuous counter-argument.

Yes there are different tiers of leads. There's 1st, 2nd, 3rd. There's leads/regulars who are higher on call sheet and some lower.

Stop denigrating the casts of shows that have multiple series regulars by pretending none of them could be classified as some tier of lead.

Nobody ever denied Jared and Jensen were #1 and #2 top leads, the most central leads. The topic is anti-Misha stans who deny Misha's position as a tertiary lead. Jared, Jensen, and Misha were all "series regulars" contractually.

You do realize this type of information is publicly available to anyone who knows how to google, right?

[x]

Misha started out as recurring. But it has been many, many many years since he was recurring or anything less than a tertiary lead series regular.

Notice how there's no separate category for "leads." Because leads are series regulars.

Series regulars do not all have the same status.

But let me repeat this yet again: nobody claimed Misha's status as top lead. He's a tertiary lead. He has also had his status repeatedly and malicious downtalked by antis who don't comprehend basic publicly available information on contract status or tv show structuring.

This is the same fandom side who once tried to claim that Misha's "and" credit denoted his lack of importance, that it meant afterthought. Instead of reality, the "and" credit is used to denote a series regular performance of particular note, and worthy of particular attention even if not titular/top lead.

Allyson Hannigan and Anthony Head on Buffy are examples.

[we-pay-for-everything]

Sorry to rant to you but I noticed on the Buffy subreddit there’s this spuffy Stan going around calling Angel a manipulative liar and a pedo it’s really annoying. When did Angel ever lie and manipulate Buffy?

I swear Reddit is the worst. Redditors seem to have all the wrong opinions!

Regarding Angel being a pedo, I'll refer you to this old post of mine, which I think also covers the manipulation accusation. But I found some other old asks: here, here and here that directly address that.

Angel never manipulated Buffy as far as I recall. I think he, at times, could be evasive and fail to properly communicate his thoughts and feelings with Buffy because he was socially inept, especially in the beginning of their relationship; however, he was not manipulative or deceitful, imo. He lied to Buffy in Pangs, but he also apologized for it in IWRY and it wasn't a big lie to begin with. I know antis use Angel's choice in I Will Remember You as an excuse to hate on Angel because they believe he took away Buffy's agency, but that's total bullshit. I lightly address that at the end of my IWRY review.

Thanks for the ask! I hope this helped :)

[zooterchet]

The ATF File (Dropped to "Null")

Deathguy: SNES CIA Cadet Civilization 1.

Nil: MSN Chat, MSN Services ISP.

Damn-Yankee: Quake, Quakeworld, Quake 2, Battlezone, Armageddon MUD, Halo LAN.

Qua'lor: SW1 MUSH, Elendor, SW2 MUSH.

Howie: BWTF MUSH, BW2 MUSH, Beast Wars Mars MUSH, BW:TMet MUSH.

Seatcushion: Fetish.Com, Bondage.Com, Alt.Com, FetLife.Com.

Mini-Peebo: M3, MotM MUCK, M3:DP.

Quint: Tapestries, Buffy and Angel, Heroes Dreams, SPR MUCK, LeJardin, MUCK, Armageddon MUD.

Graye: Furry MUCK, Shangrila MUX.

Ghul: Shangrila MUX.

Betty: SPR MUCK.

Gianna: Tapestries.

Petula: Shangrila MUX.

al-Saffah: Halo 1 LAN, Halo 2 LAN.

Chet: M3, Videoland MUSH, Heroes Dreams, United Heroes, MCM, MotM MUCK.

Mundo: Shangrila MUX.

Trogg: Shangrila MUX.

Halloween: Shangrila MUX.

Booker: Shangrila MUX.

Cracker Jack: MotM MUCK.

Apoc: Reddit.

Riddler120: Reddit.

Cheater120: Northeaston Savings Bank, Able2Know.

Zooterchet: Tumblr.

First year projection ("freshman"): 15 years old.  Political science, CIA, Bush administration.

Fourth year projection ("freshman"): 19 years old.  Counter espionage, MI-6, anti-FRG.

Contingency of axis: Matthew Lennox gaining dominance over online mate, Allison Haimes.

2001: Hook, Jewel, Furry MUCK and Taps, Cilicia, Furry MUCK.

2003: Parlay, prevention of shooting at Hopkinton Highschool.  Option choice, Heston or Yeltsin.

2004: SIgn-up, CIA Prosecutor's agent, marijuana dealer; recommended, to Matthew Lennox.

2005: Switch. Appraised of beef poisoning in notice, given Abilify; helicopter rotary g-spin, removed.  Combat infantry, able.  Drop, RGIS, on Yeltsin.  Numbers perfect, Taunton Behavioral Ward MI-6, FBI Freedom of Information, UMass-Amherst Campus AFROTC, CIA unit.  Yeltsin, running MI-6, as German.  Heston, removed to Bush, safe.

2006: Snitch.  Hell's Angels and Freemasons of Canada, dropped through AIM.  Identifier, John Washburne, Marvel Comics.  Double play, Wiesel and Stan Lee.  Divorce, Carrie Carr and Anthony Parziale, Wiesel.  Back bend, Stan Lee, writer's contract, long play.  Plant, Michael Charlebois, Scarecrow's father, FOX.  Tie, Marvel Comics and Holocaust History Museum.

2008: Scoop, ATF contract, through Salib Law.  Appointed, Joshua Moen; "Toad", as doctor, slipped.  Twist and pull, Ivan Tomasic in CIA, through father, AF NRO.  Haze for unit, granted.  Agent, placed.  Midnight's Children, played to insider, Jessica "Maus" Bailey.  Cake, for Jew, placed in Queen's care.  Charles, pulled, as Adolf Hitler.  Jewish Gold, removed from firm.  Fort Knox and Bank of England, separated.  Strangle, George W. Bush.

2011: Snitch, MI-6.  Pulled out, returned to community.

Casino Royale: 

007: DEA Sanctioned Kills: Carlin Sarkesian, Alan Laverdiere the First.

Felix Leiter: Reagan's Lipitor Medication; Bromide, for a heavy mense.

Le Chiffre: Boris Yeltsin, taken through a bank heist on the Bank of England.

Quantum of Solace:

007: DEA Sanctioned Kills: Luke Stetson, Calvin Williams.

Felix Leiter: Print of "The Last Witch Hunter", Kaulder, "The Nolan Trilogy", Scarecrow, Joker, and Bane, "Wolfram and Hart", Israeli intelligence services.

Mister White: Elie Wiesel, taken through Johnny Cochrane's law, downfalls of Hunter S. Thompson, OJ Simpson, and Osama Bin Laden.

Skyfall:

007: DEA Sanctioned Kills: Richard Coughlin, Jenna Williamson.

Felix Leiter: Print of "Assassin's Creed", basic combat tactical theory of modern US Army, given to USMC; non-hegemon source of hierarchy logic, battlefield.

Raoul Silva: Stan Lee, major writer, scened as pornography actor, in "Batman" print of pornography; recovery of nursing sector, through cop spouses, Frank Miller ruled away in "Sin City" and "Sin City 2", "That Yellow Bastard" as cop's posture.  Film films interdicted, by United States Fraternal Order of Police.

SPECTRE:

007: DEA Sanctioned Kills: John Washburne, Gwenn Pratt.

Felix Leiter: Print of "Gotham", COINTELPRO dossier on MI-6 Bellevue, Irish Resistance to German print houses; revealed to British, as German and Israeli complicity.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld: Priests as revealed as spies, for Kingdom of Italy; cake, wine, and architecture, the three points of a heterosexual child; having refused Catechism, as having admitted to homosexual; rapist, pedophile, homeless, and in different combinations, the lackluster of the Synagogue, the rackets.

No Time to Die:

007: DEA Sanctioned Kills: Christine Warren, Michael Fargnoli.

Felix Leiter: Arranged method of "John Wick", "The Matrix" and "John Wick" arranged to provoke Wachowskis as "bastards", illicit cooperation in underground bondage parlors, intended for "Crime Council" of Connacht, Ireland, the five government membership of proper assassins; CIA, IDF, MI-6, ExSec, and MSS, through major scandal.

Safin Lucypher: Shutdown of "Saint's Row" and related publication studios, as against FBI, Rockstar Games; "all crime is now gay", users of the GTA 3 camera as having admitted the deaths of police officers through theft from "Arkham Asylum" writers, out of DC Comics, the CIA. 

[kyliafanfiction-archive]

I’ve only ever seen Buffy, of all characters, defended with the argument “If you went through even a little of what she went through you’d crawl into a little ball and hide under your bed” or its cousin arguments. Like, Buffy is a hero who has gone through hell and back, but lots of characters have. I mean, no one defending Iris West or Laurel Lance or Rey has (as far as I have seen) used that sort of argument, when the fact is if most people even went through a little of what they went through, we’d hide under our beds too.

So why does Buffy get this specific defense raised as a shield against her faults?

[kyliafanfiction]

A nuanced take on the perspective of everyone else in Dead Man’s Party, my kingdom for a GODDAMN NUANCED TAKE

[thegayhimbo]

Sometimes, the hardest part of being in a fandom is when I see people either make rape apologies or abuse apologies for a character whose actions are vile and indefensible. I get we all have characters we like/identify with (or villains we find entertaining) for various reason, but whenever I see fans trying to rationalize why it's okay for a character to act abusive, or are using said character's backstory to justify them being shitty towards others, or have to victim-blame other characters for something that their favorite character did, or try to downplay the severity of their actions so they come out looking good, or use asinine excuses like "Rape/Abuse is a part of their culture" or "You can't apply human morality to this rape/abuse situation" (People who use those justifications btw can fuck right off. Rape is a vile, indefensible action no matter what genre of TV or situation it's happening in. Same goes for abuse. Stop trying to justify why they're okay. I cannot believe I have to say that!), or try to rewrite the scene in their head so that it wasn't rape/abuse/whatever and then force that perspective on other fans........................not only does it kill any enthusiasm to be a part of a fandom, it just goes to show we have a LONG WAY TO GO before we stop contributing to rape culture and/or abuse culture. On top of that, it just causes me to deeply despise those characters because of the lengths people go to in order to justify/downplay/whitewash/ignore every horrible thing their favorite character does. Stan culture really is the worst.

I'm not going to name any characters I'm referring to with this post, but you probably know who they are. I also want to make clear that some characters I'm alluding to are abusive but are not rapists. Again (depending on which fandom you're in) you can do the math and figure out for yourself which characters I'm referring to as rapists and which aren't.

[giffingbuffy]

[keanurise]

aight buffy rant

i literally cant follow any buffy blogs bc the majority of yall ship spike x buffy + hate dawn & tara

spike legit tried to fuckin r*pe buffy and buffy never loved him yet yall are like “"mmm spuffy is so much bettert than bangel aha!!”“ like aight ur entitled to ur own opinion but imagine liking a toxic relationship over a healthy one honestly not for me whoops ://

also whenever someone’s like “oo whose ur least fav” yall either say tara or dawn like am i watching the show wrong bc i cannot for the life of me understand how xander fucking harris is more likable than tara or dawn

tara is literally the purest? softest? escaped her abusive family? the cutest lesbian? anxious after her years of abuse but is still the most stable character? morally the best character? has never done anything wrong?

dawn is literally just an angsty lonely teen who doesnt know her place in the world and has 0 friends EXCUSE HER IF SHE WANTS A LITTLE ATTENTION SOMETIMES i just want her to be happy shes so cute

but sure hate these two characters! somehow prefer xander harris over them! the man who believes in the friend zone and that he’s entitled to sex! the man who cheats on his girlfriend then treats her like shit because she won’t get back with him! the man who leaves his fiancé at the alter then gets mad that she wont get back together with him! the man who literally gets angel killed in s2 which caused a shitty series of events because he was bitter and jealous! sure! hes likeable!

[rahirah]

The Good Spuffy Fan

Way back when S5 was airing, and Buffy/Spike began to seem like it might be an actual thing that might possibly happen in canon at some point, several factions in fandom absolutely freaked out about the prospect. There were the people whose shipping preferences were being bruised - Bangel fans and Spike/Dru fans primarily, but also every other ship involving Buffy or Spike: Spangel, Spander, Bander, Biles, and for some reason I have never been able to figure out, Tillow. (The Kitten Board hated Spike. I have no idea why.) There was also the faction of fans that we called "Fundies" – that is, people who beleived that everything Giles said about vampires in Season 1, Episode 1 was gospel truth, and any later developments which appeared to contradict it were bad writing and a betrayal of the show's fundamental premise. (These people also saw Buffy refusing to kill Dawn at the end of S5, and presumably her refusal to sacrifice Willow in S3, as a betrayal of the show's premise.)

A lot of these people were smart, articulate, and excellent writers. They wrote reams of passionate meta explaining why canon Spuffy was not only impossible, it was immoral. The problem with this argument was that many of these people shipped other hero/villain pairings themselves – Spike/Angel, Ethan/Giles, Clark/Lex. Interestingly, these other pairings were almost always m/m slash. Apparently it was possible for a hero with a penis to have sex with a villain and retain their moral virtue, but if a hero with a vagina did so, they would immediately be Tainted. Gee, I wonder why that particular double standard went unremarked as they prided themselves on their cold, implacable logic? (I think that trans headcanons would have broken their brains entirely.)

When the anti-Spuffy meta failed to convince all the newly-minted Spuffy shippers to abandon the error of their ways, or worse, the equally smart and articulate Spuffy shippers wrote meta pointing out assorted logical flaws in their arguments, they descended to ad hominem. People only shipped Spuffy because they were hormonal, hysterical fangirls, who were so blinded by the beauty of JM's abs that they were incapable of making moral judgements. When Seeing Red aired, it provided a whole new raft of insults to sling at Spuffy shippers: they were rape apologists, bad feminists, they romanticised abuse. (I think the "Spike is supposed to be seen as extra-specially racist and misogynist" arguments started to pop up around a year later, largely courtesy of a Big Name AtS femslash fan who was incredibly angry about Lilah Morgan getting cut from AtS to fit Spike in.)

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that there has always been a faction among Spuffy shippers which tries to deflect these insults by agreeing with them: yes, most Spuffy shippers are fluff-writing, rape apologizing, Buffy-hating Spike stans, but I'm not like that! I'm different!

I was kind of guilty of this myself for awhile. I joined online fandom late in S5. I made a modest splash with my first long fic, which was an ensemble bringing-Buffy-back-from-the-dead piece wherein Buffy didn't even show up till the last couple of chapters. I wrote a lot of meta, some of which was pretty decent, some of which makes me cringe in retrospect, but it got me attention. By the time I joined Livejournal in 2003, I was not in Spangel or Spander fandom myself, but I had friends who were, and when I commented in their journals, I inevitably found myself in conversation with a lot of anti-Spike, anti-Spuffy people.

And as I said, these people were often smart, funny, and articulate. They were Big Name Fans. And because I had a somewhat different take on Spike than a lot of Redemptionists (Redemptionists were the fans who thought, starting in S5, that Spike was getting a redemption arc. Many of them were Spuffy shippers, but not all of them) did, they often couldn't use their standard lines of attack on me. I did not fit the Stereotypical Spuffy Fan they'd built up in their heads, so think I baffled them a little. I became friends with some of them, kind of, for awhile. I was The Token Good Spuffy Fan. To my face, they'd be polite, and we'd talk about our shipping difference civilly. One of them even had a Road to Damascus moment (or so she claimed) after getting publically dragged for shipping Angel/Connor. She actually apologized to me for slagging off on my ship. But a few years later I ran across her talking unguardedly in someone else's journal, going off on Spuffy fans in general in the most insulting terms possible. The hypocrisy was more than I could bear, so I stopped interacting with them. By this time AtS had long been canceled and most of them were leaving fandom anyway, so it was easy.

The way people ship Spuffy has changed a lot over the last twenty years, and I am still an outlier, but now I am an outlier in a very different way than I was twenty years ago. I have no interest in being a Good Spuffy Fan any longer; nor do I have any interest in policing how other Spuffy fans choose to ship them. The relationship in canon is very complex, and admits of many interpretations. There is no One True Interpretation, no One True Way to ship. There are only ways I like better, and ways I like worse. And when I run across a way I like worse, there's this handy thing called the back button.

[empiregalaxy]

I read that you hate buffy and I just want to say that I fucking thank you! I'm sick of buffy stans acting like she so perfect and great I'm like shes not all that. she is not the best and her fans are annoying af

You are welcome, dear anon :)

They won’t even admit she fucked up in S7. It’s quite sad. Her fans need to calm down.